The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - No.1 Neuroscientist: Why You Should Always Look Into Someone’s Left Eye! & How Stress Leaks Through Skin, Is Contagious & Gives You Belly Fat! Dr. Tara Swart

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Have you ever want to change your mind? Well what if you changed your brain instead? In this new episode Steven sits down with neuroscientist, executive advisor and author, Dr Tara Swart Bieber.  Dr Swart, has a PHD in Neuropharmacology and a past successful career medical doctor as a psychiatrist. From there she transferred into becoming a top level leadership coach, specialising in improving mental resilience in CEO’s and helping them to operate at peak brain performance. Her clients include leaders of FTSE100, Fortune 500 and Magic Circle firms. She is a Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan, and the author of the bestselling book, ‘The Source’.  In this conversation Tara and Steven discuss topics, such as: How emotions are contagious Neuroscience tricks for love and connection How Tara uses neuroscience to help leaders  Using neuroscience to handle stress How stress can make you fat  The way that exercise can combat stress How the brain cleans itself  The chemical nature of love How to improve relationships using neuroscience Why your gut instinct is real Why the world needs a spiritual revolution The impact of porn on the brain  How your friendship group impacts your brain and health The ways to physically change your brain How trauma can be inherited  How trauma changes your genes  The ways that you can train and strengthen your brain How exercise can change the brain The science of the law of attraction and manifestation Changing the voice in your head How your thoughts can stop you ageing  You can purchase Tara’s book, ‘The Source’, here: https://amzn.to/461TDRS Follow Tara: Instagram: https://bit.ly/48hJ1k2  Twitter: https://bit.ly/46gqYZI  Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. Did you know there's a really fascinating experiment done on weightlifters? They lifted no weights for two weeks. They just sat there and they visualized themselves lifting weights. They had a 13% increase in muscle mass. People should realize how much potential they have in their brains. Dr. Tara Swart. She's a neuroscientist. Medical doctor.

Executive advisor. And best-selling author. She's here to teach us on how to build mental resilience. To overcome our biggest challenges. Is stress contagious? So cortisol is the main stress hormone and it will leak out of our sweat about this far around us, go into the skin of everybody else and it's going to impact them. And as a survival mechanism, it will help you to store fat around your abdomen. So stress causes belly fat?

Belly fat that's really hard to shift. There's another rabbit hole you could go down about social contagion. So there are statistics that show that you meet people who are at a similar psychological level to you. For example, if someone gets divorced, you're more likely to get divorced in the next year. Your own brain can play tricks on you. So what can I do about that? The brain is actively growing and changing till we're about 25. But from 25 to 65, if you do things that are intense enough to force your brain to change, you will actually improve the highest functions of the

brain. Things like regulate your emotions better, solve complex problems, think flexibly, override any unconscious biases that you may have. It begs the question then, where do I start? Dr. Tara Swart, what are the sort of existing ideas that your work and what you speak about is confronting the like unhelpful existing preconceptions about the brain human potential that your work is confronting head-on so the first thing i came up against because this was around the time of the financial crisis was the lack of understanding of the brain body connection so these high-performing executives were kind of acting like their body was just

the vehicle that was moving their brain around from meeting to meeting and both disrespecting their physical health but also not understanding that what they were actually really being paid for was to use their brain. And they weren't creating the best conditions for that brain to operate in. And I'm talking about really basic things like sleep and a good diet and hydration and not being sedentary, managing your stress, etc. So, you know, this tiny organ, if it's not in an environment that is giving it the best chance of doing its job it's not going to and a crack's going to appear somewhere and the first time I really kind of had a big confrontation with the bank was when

people were dropping dead on the trading floor of heart attacks. And they asked me to work more in my capacity as a former medical doctor to help with the physical stuff. And I said, I can't do that if we don't address the mental and emotional piece, because that's what's causing this. And they just could not get that. What did you want to do with those people in a specific and practical sense? If you could have, you know, been in charge of preventing them from dropping dead on the trading floor, where would you have started? The understanding that stress, so everything that you're experiencing mentally and emotionally that's challenging, and things like a lot of travel, which is challenging for your body, that that raises levels of the hormone cortisol, which comes from your adrenal glands. And that cortisol courses around your blood through your entire body and brain.

And the brain has receptors for understanding what's going on in terms of threat to your survival. So in a 24-hour cycle, depending on your age and your gender, there's a normal range for cortisol. So it can go up and down like this, you know, something challenging happens, we need to adapt and rise to meet that challenge. But when that level is above the top range, all the time, these receptors in your brain, basically think that there's an imminent threat to your survival. So there's this whole cascade of hormones. And basically cortisol causes inflammation in the body. So inflammation of your vascular system, inflammation around your heart,

and everything else, gut and other things. But particularly around that time, we were seeing a lot of heart attacks caused by stress. This was in the absence of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking, it was all stress. I read a study and I was watching a TED talk that seemed to make the case that stress was somewhat subjective, i.e. it's an interpretation of events. So one can be in a situation where they feel very stressed, you can put a different person in that situation, and they wouldn't experience it as stress. Also, there is, I think there's quite a famous TED talk that makes the case that stress only has physiological consequences in

the form of disease and inflammation and the heart attacks you're describing. If we believe that stress is going to have that effect on us if we believe stress is bad it's bad yeah i get that is that true um so i would define stress as when the load that you perceive on you physically mentally emotionally or spiritually is too much for you to bear so yes it is subjective um when i moved into business and leadership, people would use the terms good stress and bad stress. And I found that really difficult having been a psychiatrist and seeing people actually break down to think that there's any such thing as good stress. But what I have, you know, the way that I've adapted that over the last 10 or 15 years is that

there's an adaptive response response which is a healthy response to a challenge and we have that for a reason we need that and that can be a good thing but that should be a spike it should go up and it should go back down again if it stays high all the time that's not good my second question now was about the contagion of stress once upon a time i googled um because i had a thesis i googled is stress contagious and it came up and it said it was contagious is it contagious in what circumstances do we need to be aware of that contagion and more importantly how and why is it contagious okay i will tell you the answer to that but i'm going to ask you a question first

have you ever walked into a room with someone and by the time you've left that meeting with them you just feel so drained okay so you know yeah you know so you know the feeling so I'll tell you how it works physiologically um I'm going to start with something else to like build you up to this story so did you know that women who live together or work closely together will synchronize their menstrual periods within two or three months yeah i found this out many years ago and it has completely changed my perception on so many things so many things because i have to be honest i'm i'm a very sort of logical i need like science and evidence and so i always thought about i don't know physical physical things like

if I can't see it doesn't exist yeah it's kind of been my framework for thinking about life yeah and when I heard about that I checked it was true found out it was true and it broke the frame in which I think because if if there are if it's possible that invisible forces now between me and you are interacting with our bodies I go what else is possible so i'm already using a certain form of eye contact with you to create emotional resonance what have you done we're gonna get sidetracked you want to go back to the eye contact are you using with me tell me so basically we'll go back to the hormone thing we'll just yeah we'll park that it's related. Okay. So when a baby is born, one of the ways that it learns

what emotion the mum's experiencing, how it understands its own emotions, everything that grows over childhood and teenage into pro-social behaviour, starts off mostly with eye contact with the mum. So at first they can hardly see anything. They can just kind of see two blobs and then they start to understand more about like micro facial expression changes and stuff. But eye contact with the mum is hugely important.

So most people are right handed. So they'll be holding their baby in their left arm so they can still use their dominant hand to do stuff. And that means that when you gaze at your baby your right eye is looking into their left eye and then that interaction that from the optic nerve is going around the brain it's impacting the um amygdala where emotions come from and it's creating this emotional resonance loop that's part of how the mother and the baby bond. So that right eye to left eye eye contact is the most bonding eye contact that you can have with someone. Now you could say, oh, but my mum was left-handed or you could be left-handed, but you know, if I'm taking a chance on trying to build that bond with someone, that's the

statistically most likely one to create good resonance between you. So you walked in here and you started looking in my left eye i waited till we sat down i gave you a hug you gave me a hug you know so all of those little things they start to and you know we've laughed about a few things before we've come on air those are the sorts of things that create like um higher levels of the bonding hormone oxytocin so you're more likely to lower your guard trust the person take a healthy risk um so yeah i mean like i said i know that stuff so i live my life like that just want to get make sure i've got that clearly in my mind so i could

repeat that to someone else later it's great for dating yeah of course it is I think we might go down that down that path a little bit but the reason that works is because there's association in our brains that if someone is looking into your left eye it kind of triggers something a bonding response that is quite innate in us yeah is that the tlvr of it yeah okay super interesting what else what else if I'm trying to bond with someone so everybody listening to this right now whether they're in work they're in sales they they're looking for a partner whatever it's a nice little trick to look into someone's left eye I'm gonna only look into your left eye for the rest with your right eye how do I I'm just looking with both yeah you

feel like that but once you start doing this I promise you you will notice a difference okay um what else what are the tricks to make to encourage bonding encourage bonding so physical interaction so um you know depending on the appropriateness of it minimum handshake maybe a hug maybe a kiss on the cheek you know depending on what um situation you're in i do this handshake where i we hugged so we didn't handshake i many many years ago i read an article that if when you shake someone's hand you put the other hand over the top of it it creates a sense of warmth and trust so i've been doing that for 10 years now give them my left hand on my right hand and the other hand goes over the top of it yeah it's definitely extra and you see this in a lot of um kind of more

ancient cultures that there is like more of a handshake than what we do which seems it's just one hand and it's quite brief and stuff so yeah the more of that kind of physical touch that you can get the best so you know everyone that i've met since i've come in this morning i've either shaken hands with them or hugged them and i would not not do that is there anything else in terms of encouraging the release of oxytocin that you're aware of what are the behaviors that increase that bonding chemical in our brains um eye contact and touch are the main ones laughing together is another one um and then not to do with another person but if you take a bath rather than a shower then you'll release more oxytocin massage helps well you're immersed in warm water so it feels like a hug so you theoretically get out of the bath and be kinder and happier and more people

would want to bond with you more well you'll be more in the mode of bonding doing that yeah so interesting what about um vulnerability because i heard shared struggle is one of the things that is oxytocin yeah so um yeah going through something not necessarily traumatic but that's highly emotional that is very bonding as well so we see this a lot on the reality shows where people are like oh we're going to be friends for life you know if you do something like a skydive or a bungee jump in a group then you know you do feel more bonded to those people um but they're not as practical as the just the little things that you can do every day okay so let's go back to this hormone conversation we'll take that off the shelf

so we're talking about stress and the contagion of stress. So you started by setting the scene with the fact that women who interact with each other physically closely, they synchronize their menstrual cycles. And so whenever I want to explain something that's complex, or I don't actually know the current neuroscience, I always take it back to what happened in ancient times. So when we were living in the cave, the men hunted and gathered and lived quite nomadically. So sometimes they would go away for months at a time. And actually, if they went far enough away and were closer to another cave of the same tribe, they would actually just stay there and never return to the original tribe, original cave. But mostly they would leave for weeks or months and then return to the original cave. And in those days, the most fundamental important thing for the

survival of the human species was that the alpha male must pass on his genes. So if he was going to be away for months, and he couldn't, you know, there weren't men there to defend the women from predators, maybe there was going to be a spell of the ice age and they would all freeze to death or they wouldn't have food. He needed to make sure that at least five women were impregnated with his sperm at the same time. So that if there was a food shortage or there was like stillbirth or miscarriage or whatever, at least one out of five would survive. So to be able to do that, they had to be fertile at the same time. So that's why that mechanism exists. Now, we don't need that mechanism now. But it's still wired into the way that we operate. So those sex steroid hormones like estrogen and progesterone,

they leak out of our sweat about this far around us. And that's why if you're living with another woman, or if you know, you're sitting across the desk every day, then particles of hormone from my sweat would go into the through the skin of the other woman. If she's within what distance? I mean, it's not, you wouldn't have to be sitting next to each other if you live together then that means you're interacting enough that it would happen okay so particles not if you work together if you work together and you sit right next to each other every day then it does happen too so you know in a small office that's got like six girls in it that that the menstrual synchronization will happen interestingly it's led by the alpha female so yeah so you can you can work out if you don't

know already who the alpha female is well if you know basically let's say my cycles don't change and everyone says oh i got my period early or i haven't had my period yet but now it's started then that would mean that probably I was the alpha female. How does the body know who the alpha female is? That will be to do with levels of testosterone. Why does that matter who the alpha female is? Why does it matter that they sync up with her? I don't know if it really matters. I think it's just a case of physiology. So it's a little bit like in the troops of gorillas, the stress levels of the silverback gorilla affect the other gorillas more than gorillas who are peers to each other. So there is, we have a natural hierarchy and it must be related to survival as well.

So she was probably the person who the alpha male was going to impregnate first probably so everyone needs to kind of fall in line because when she starts having sex they need to be ready yeah okay and also it'll probably be to do with things like you know survival genes so it'll be the people with the hardiest genes because that's what you want to pass on as well okay makes sense most resilient okay okay so where were we stressing contagion we've done all the hormones in the menstrual cycle so basically cortisol is a hormone that works in that same way so cortisol is the main stress hormone and this one doesn't matter if you're male or female but it does matter where you are in the hierarchy of the organization as i just mentioned so usually in that conversation i mentioned to you where you go into a room and

you just feel completely drained afterwards, usually the person that comes out feeling drained is less senior than the person that's had that effect on them. And that's why this is so crucial to leadership because your stress levels as a leader, as a CEO, are going to have more impact on everybody else than the rest of the people put together, basically. So managing your stress is obviously important for you. But it's important in terms of what happens to other people. And the first issue I came up against was CEOs and CFOs that said, well, I won't show them that I'm stressed. I won't tell them what's happening with the numbers. I won't display emotions in front of them. And I said, they're still going to know physiologically, it's going to impact them. So now you really have to do

something about it. And the other thing about cortisol, which is quite funny, well, one of the side effects is quite funny, is that as a survival mechanism, it will help you to store fat around your abdomen. So, you know, again, in the cave, if you were potentially going to like not find food for a month, then if you had extra fat around your abdomen, you could digest that and survive till you could find food. So with my clients in financial services, it got to a point where as soon as I walked into the room, they just lift their t-shirt up and say, now you know how I've been in the last month. And then I had a really, really funny incident when I was speaking at a bank and the CEO's PA was there in the the audience and i was explaining that you know leadership stress leaks down that that stress can lead to abdominal fat that you can't shift and she shouted out so he's the reason that i'm fat but steve no one laughed really yeah and that's when i knew that okay he obviously is like really stressing everyone out oh gosh no one laughed no through fear or something or just because

they all just thought it was true it wasn't funny it was true jesus so stress causes belly fat belly fat that's really hard to shift so again what I would see with people is that they would say, oh, I've put on a bit of weight around the middle, you know, had to loosen the belt a bit. So I've started eating less. I've started like exercising more and I still can't shift it. And again, that's when I would explain this is the impact of cortisol. As long as you're still leaking out extra cortisol, nothing's going to change so and like i said even exercising more or eating better less or differently whatever it is wouldn't shift that fat you had to get to the root cause you had to reduce the cortisol it also made me think about

when you consider promoting someone in your organization. You have to be very careful that if you put a particularly stressed, cortisol leaking individual high in the organization, there's going to be a significant impact for everyone below them. Yeah. Is that accurate? Is that an accurate observation? get you there which is more about the fact that people get promoted because they're good at what they do but they don't really get taught all the you know best management and leadership skills but that's a really pertinent point if there are a person who is stressed particularly who suppresses stress um which some of these you know successful people do then it would have an impact down the organization it begs the question then so if if someone's listening to this and they go do you know what i'm a leaky cortisol person I'm highly stressed and it's probably getting to people around me what can I do about that? So first of all if someone's saying that half the battle is

won the problem is when people are not aware of that but let's say you are so let's say that I give you that list of signs and symptoms that you've got high levels of cortisol which include things like sleep disruption because cortisol is part of the 24-hour clock melatonin helps us to wake up cortisol helps melatonin helps us to fall asleep cortisol helps us to wake up um maybe you've noticed the belly fat um because of the really strong connection between the brain and the gut any sort of reflux or indigestion symptoms are often signs that you've got high levels of cortisol too. And of course, things like irritability and mood changes. What I mostly would hear people say is that I can just about keep it together when I'm at work. But when I get home, if my kids are, you know, annoying or my partner's asking for too much I just snap so that means you're like one step away from snapping at work if somebody like pushes you too far so that's not good because cortisol is pro-inflammatory it's very drying of the system as well so you might notice that your skin's really

dry or you've got skin problems your skin isn't just the physical border of your body it's the psychological boundary of your body too so often stress shows up in the skin then there are two main things that you can do one is physical exercise because you can literally sweat cortisol out of your body so you can sweat excess cortisol out of your body by doing aerobic exercise the other one is journaling so writing out what's on your mind rather than just let it be in there and keep going round and round or if you've got a therapist or a trusted friend speaking it out loud so it's all about getting cortisol and or the negative thoughts that are associated with your stress out of your brain body system i've had a real revelation in my life over the last um maybe six months about sleep again it's why i said i think before we start recording that i don't have any meetings scheduled before 11 a.m

and i sleep with my eye mask on and i just wake up when i wake up yeah me too oh really yeah never really met anybody that has that it's it is a privilege I have to acknowledge that that not everyone can do because of work circumstances whatever else but um the importance of sleep you're a neuroscientist yeah um there's a lot of people who have dysfunctional sleep we live in a world where it's I feel like it's increasingly difficult to have, you know, great sleep. How important is that for the brain? And also, you know, we were talking about stress there,

but for containing our stress levels. It's so important. I can't stop going on about it. And I do understand that for some people, it's not a choice, that they just don't sleep well or their sleep gets interrupted because they've got young kids or they do shift work so I'm not particularly talking about the people where there's a reason that you can't sleep in this way I'm mostly directing it this out if you have a choice this is the way that you need to sleep and this is why if you don't have a choice there are some things that you can do to mitigate it as well I mean obviously I have done shift work as a junior doctor in the NHS and I travel a lot so I'm like jet lagged half the time but I try to do everything I can to make that as good as possible

and the reason is we've always known that when you sleep you lay down your memories and new learning you process your emotions the cells in the body regenerate themselves. We've known that for a long time. That's never really been enough for these very driven CE level people to want to give up eight hours a night to sleep. You know, it's if they feel they can get by on four or five, then they'll rather do that because they've got so much to do. The ideal is eight hours and 15 minutes in population norm studies so that doesn't mean it's for everyone but for most people that's the ideal. Actually sleeping more than that can be depressogenic so it can start to lower your mood so you don't want to really be sleeping for nine plus hours but you

ideally need to be in bed for nine hours to get that amount of sleep. And so there was some award-winning research around 2012 to 2014 when we were beginning to understand how important the cleaning of the brain is overnight. So this entirely new system that we didn't know existed, which is called the glymphatic system, it's like the lymphatic system in your body, but it's to do with glial cells. So it was named the glymphatic system. That system is a very active kind of waterway channel cleansing system of the brain. We used to think that the fluid around the brain and there's ventricles, which are like lakes, and then there's just like trickling areas that that sort of passively dripped through the brain overnight we did not expect to see like jets of fluid flushing out toxins from the brain so the exact things that we see in the pathology of dementing diseases like alzheimer's and parkinson's like

tau proteins and amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. How do you say that in English? Those things are being flushed out of the brain very actively overnight. And that process takes seven to eight hours to complete the cleaning. That's why you need to be in bed for eight to nine hours. So it takes seven or eight hours of restorative sleep or just being in bed?

Just sleep, not in bed bed just sleep not in bed if you're in bed awake you're not asleep you know you have to be asleep but you'll go through the different sleep cycles every 90 minutes this isn't in time with that this is just taking seven or eight hours to flush this stuff out of your brain so one of the things i do say to people who don't sleep well is if you find yourself awake at night and you're not lying on your side turn yourself onto your side because that's the best position for this cleansing process I actually have a special pillow that makes me sleep on my side because I wasn't naturally a side sleeper so it doesn't matter if it's the left or the right but that is a better position in terms of the veins in your neck um than sleeping on your back or your front so that's

one thing you can do oh you woke up you know your sleep was disturbed at least turn yourself onto your side what is this special pillow you just bragged about it then moved on i feel like it's it's a memory foam pillow am i allowed to mention the brand of course yeah yeah we'll make sure they sponsor it before it's a memory foam pillow this my one is by tempo uk um and they actually they gifted it to me because i was talking about side sleepings yeah it's great okay i'm a side sleeper my girlfriend's a back sleeper but i can't sleep on my back it's funny because i start on my front that lasts for 15 minutes because i get bad back at the bottom of my back yeah i roll onto my side but i i've always wondered if there was um when you look at tribes and our ancestors how they would sleep would they sleep in groups

would they sleep alone would they sleep on their side their back do you know the answers to any of that um I know that co-sleeping is definitely how we evolved from co-sleeping so in groups and what was what I find interesting is that you needed to huddle together like that for physical warmth in the cave but it also because of that proximity and and interaction you got more of the bonding hormone oxytocin so you also experienced the warmth of being part of a tribe um and i think they stepped on their side because they would have to be ready for an attack from a predator so you'd need to keep your dominant arm um ready to you know grab something and most likely they slept on their left because they would have been protecting their most vital organs the heart um just thinking then about

this bonding chemical and how it comes out when we're in close proximity. A lot of couples, a lot of people, me sometimes as well, sleep in the spare room because I have work commitments. That'll mean that I'm up early or my partner has work commitments. That means she's up early. But even some of my friends who are in the early stages of parenthood have separated and have a sleep divorce situation. When you talked about the bonding and the oxytocin being released when we're in closer proximity

and obviously at nighttime is when we're literally touching each other. Is it conceivable that by separating rooms and by doing a sleep divorce, we're actually eroding our bonding? I would never do it. You would never sleep in a different room from your partner?

Never. Apart from maybe if there was a young baby and one person had to go to work and one person didn't that i get but that's temporary and ideally people would find ways to make up for that i mean i guess you're in a bit of a love bubble with the oxytocin from the baby at that time so that is quite neuroprotective but co-sleeping is fundamental to our survival. It was physically when we were in the cave, but now I would say emotionally, spiritually,

it's fundamental to our survival. I mean... What do you mean by co-sleeping, just to clarify? Sleeping together. So mostly in our society, that's as a couple. But a lot of other cultures, the whole family sleeps together. Why would you never do it? You seemed quite passionate about that. Because it's so good for you.

The bonding, the physical warmth, the skin to skin contact, the love, the trust. You know, I mean, I'll put up if somebody is waking up early and I don't have to wake up at that time, I'll even put up with that. So you'll have less quality sleep. It won't be less quality sleep. I've worn HRV monitors and shown that even at the time if my husband woke up at five and I wouldn't wake up at all before eight and he gave me a kiss goodbye, I got a spike of resilience at that time. Resilience? Yeah. How do you measure that? before eight and he gave me a kiss goodbye I got a spike of resilience at that time resilience yeah how do you measure that so I was using that Finnish technology um where you wear the HRV monitor with a gel pad on your chest um and so it's color-coded for whether you're doing light exercise heavy exercise whether you're stressed or whether you're recouping resilience. And mostly people recoup resilience overnight. But, you know, you could clearly see with people

with young children, you could see when they were woken up overnight because it would go into stress. Some people recoup resilience during the day. If, you know, let's say you're like with your partner or your sibling and you're just sitting together and it's super relaxed or if you love your job you know that you can see that happening during the day as well but because I am so obsessed with my sleep I wouldn't normally welcome any sleep disturbance but the power of sleeping together and cuddling all night is so neuroprotective that I would encourage everybody to do it if they can. I also know some people who say, oh, I sleep better if I sleep on my own. But we were not meant to survive on our own. We are meant to survive as part of a tribe. And I think now, you know, since the pandemic, people are more lost and lonely and disconnected than

ever. If you've got somebody that you can actually sleep with overnight, I strongly suggest that you do it. So I want to go in that direction, because I'm super compelled by that, the change in the world and the lost, the lonely, the disconnected. But just to pause for a second on this word resilience, you're using linked to heart rate variability you're talking about like a physiological resilience like the body being more resilient versus the kind of when we talk about resilience we we we say it in more of a psychological context of like i can withstand greater stress or pressure but you're you used a heart rate variability monitor that measures the distance between heartbeats and saw that when your husband gave you a kiss your heart rate variability increased

which means that your body was more physiologically resilient. It actually measures both because it compares your heart rate variability to your heart rate okay so it knows if you're exercising because your heart rate has gone up but if your heart rate is at like base level then the so the then then the very the change in variability can either mean that you're stressed or you're recouping resilience if your heart rate is high then it's obviously physical um but it it's a it's a factor of both so it's not just looking at physical resilient as it is looking when when it's in this turquoise zone that is actually more about recouping psychological resilience but those two things you know they feed into each other but it can tell the difference because of your heart rate so obviously i was asleep so my heart rate was low and you saw what

on the monitor when he gave you this i literally saw us but because it does it by every 15 minutes as well and I saw the highest spike of turquoise at that exact time funny because my um girlfriend a couple about a month ago or two months ago I left the house quite early in the morning maybe about the similar time 6am in the morning when she was still in bed and I came up to her and gave her like a big kiss I basically kissed all around her this is so sloppy I kissed all around her face and on her nose and just gave her a big big hug and stuff and I walked away like got on the got on the taxi and left whatever and she said to me the same day or the day after she went I don't know what happened there but it unlocked something in me and you know then my girlfriend went on to say she'd um had some challenges with her menstrual cycle and and she came on her period

that's amazing and she's always right like when she says things to me and she knows this but i give her a credit i'm always skeptical because we think differently she's quite spiritual i'm very like i need some science and um she said that to me and I just thought a kiss and a hug in the morning it hasn't couldn't have had any physiological impact on her but um now I'm starting to question whether once again I was wrong that's amazing I mean you know some of these things can't necessarily immediately be explained by science but if you use your intuition then you have to ask yourself and I feel like you are coming around thinking that could be true when I'm when I'm given a reason I accept things if you know if

there's even even a slither of science that could justify it then I come around to ideas but I do need the science do you think that men and women are different in terms of their intuition and their their ability to want you're smiling their ability to kind of understand some of these forces that exist in the air because my girlfriend seems to be so attuned to feelings and intuition and I'm less so yeah so if let's let's put it like this. If you had 100 people in a room, 50 men and 50 women, and you ask them to line up in order of height, not all the men would be taller than all the women in the middle, there'd be a bit of a mixture. And it's like that with the brain and intuition and everything else. So yeah, there are some, there's some disparity. So I think most people would agree that it feels like more women are in touch with their intuition than men, but it's absolutely not all women versus all men. Do you believe women are more in touch with their intuition?

I think they're more open to accepting that it's a thing. And I believe that more men need the science to explain how intuition works. Interesting. I wonder if there was like a brain, a neurological reason for that. I think there'd be more women and men that believed in intuition and those like feelings that are hard to explain.

Yeah. You know, That's changed a lot. I mean, I remember when I was teaching at MIT about seven years ago and I was teaching the science of intuition, someone actually stood and that, you know,

it's all senior leaders in the classroom.'s executive education um someone stood up and said well I'm not going to make a really important decision like higher or fire based on my gut feeling am I and he was quite young and quite a few of the older guys turned around and were like that's absolutely how I would make my decision and my most important decisions. But at that time, it was still kind of like not everybody was really sure that that's like your superpower. But I think people are beginning to understand more that with age and experience and wisdom, you do understand that intuition is actually your strongest, should be your strongest decision making modality. What is intuition? So because you can't remember everything that you've experienced in your whole life, but, you know, somewhere in the neural architecture and, you know, in the gut neurons as well,

that information is stored because you have experienced it. So maybe you would say that you understand that wisdom and experience is the product of patterns that you've seen repeating in your life that are conscious to you. Intuition is the lessons that you've picked up along the way that you're not conscious of, but they're still stored in your nervous system. And so the less conscious you are of them, the deeper they're pushed into the nervous system. So there's a process called Hebbian learning named after the neuroscientist Donald Hebb. And that is, it's basically, you know, neurons that fire together, wire together. But it's that the things that you've learned today, like things that you've learned by speaking with me, that's going to be very front of mind and kind of just in like little pathways

that are just kind of connecting up with each other. But stuff that you learn when you were five, like when you put your hand in a fire and it burnt you and you never ever want to do that again, that's deep down. You're not really conscious of that. But, you know, and other things maybe that you don't recall. So we believe that your,

that wisdom gets pushed from the outer cortex into the limbic system which is the emotional system of the brain into the brainstem into the spinal cord and into the gut neurons and that's why they sometimes call it gut instinct because it's that feeling of knowing something but not knowing why you know it um but it's actually to do with the fact that you have wisdom and experience that is it's in it's it's embodied in you but you're not conscious of it necessarily it's quite surprising to hear that those memories that wisdom can be in the gut people think of you know i think I'm certainly someone who always thought that my cognition my memories and my all of the intelligence exists just in my brain your memories and your cognition and your IQ are in your brain but your intuition is in

your brain and your gut this sounds super stupid but i don't care i should just be i should just be honest about my stupidity where in my gut i'm like i thought that was like my stomach that's where i put the food yeah so you know you've got your stomach you've got your small intestine you've got your large intestine yeah you have other organs your liver your spleen your kidneys and they're all innervated which means they've all got nerves going into them so does your heart so you know we could we could have a similar conversation like this about your heart as well because your heart only knows how to beat because of the nerves that that penetrate it so you know this

round brain in here and the spinal cord that goes down the center of your back, that gives rise to all of the neurons that go out to your arms, your legs, all of your organs, your skin, which is your largest organ. And so that's how that works because every single part of your body has nerve cells or nerve pathways in them. So that's the connection that's brings us back to what you know what i was saying about the brain body connection that they're intimately connected and it's a bi-directional thing it's they can't exist without each other and the more you understand that there's that constant feedback going back and forth the more you can tap into that kind of thing the more you can know days before you're going to get sick. I bet your girlfriend knows days before she's going to get a cold or flu.

Yes, she does. Yeah. All the time. And my clients never know. And as soon as they go on holiday, they're sick the whole week. Why when they go on holiday? Because they suppress it to be able to do their job. And you can suppress illness or you can just not acknowledge it?

It's not necessarily that they had a cold virus that they suppressed, but it's that their body is, you know, the immune system is being run down by the cortisol. And so as soon as it gets a break, that's when it kind of succumbs. And there was a time after the financial crisis when I had people saying, I've had this cold for like four weeks now or six weeks, but everybody's got it. And I was like, I'm sorry, but do you actually think that's normal? Do you think it's normal to have a cold for more than a week? And, you know, then it takes a challenge like that because also the other thing that happens in you know with group think whether it's at work or in your social circle is that we don't challenge each other enough on those sort of things so if a friend said oh I've had this

cold for six weeks I might say oh poor you but if I wouldn't but someone might but um you know it's also about saying, is there something else wrong? Because that's not, that's not usual. And for me, that would absolutely lead back to cortisol. Second ago, we were going to go down the pathway of the looming crisis that you speak about. What is the looming crisis that you're concerned about? Stephen, I, I saw this looming at the beginning of the pandemic. It's not looming anymore. It is, we are in crisis. So, you know, all of the health anxiety and the uncertainty and the fear and the loss that we experienced during the pandemic was bad enough.

You know, it caused a level of stress that no one who's alive today has experienced before um but we've come out of it you know we're relatively i don't know if i could say back to normal or in the new normal and we have not paid any attention to the consequences of what happened to us and when I say us I mean everyone from the babies that were born at that time that never saw anyone but their immediate family the teenagers that interestingly boys did better than girls because they play video games on the internet so they stayed connected you know the older people that were isolated the people that like lost loved ones etc like there's so many things I could say more things than that.

We haven't really acknowledged that that's what happened and what we went through. Most people are not really understanding what's changed for them or what's going on for them at the moment as a result of that. And we certainly haven't made any plan for the future. You know, I'm really into indigenous wisdom at the moment as a result of that. And we certainly haven't made any plan for the future. You know, I'm really into like indigenous wisdom at the moment. And one of the things I've learned about the first Americans is that when they make a big decision for their community, they imagine the impact of that decision

seven generations into the future. We don't even think about one generation into the future. We just think about like what's going on right now. We don't even really think about our own future like some of the time. I remember thinking like literally in March of 2020, this is going to be a mental health crisis, like whatever happens physically. And as time went on, more so I thought mental health crisis mental health

crisis and then I started to think okay what else could it be and I had time of course to indulge in some of the other areas of interest that I couldn't when I was like traveling and working full-on so I you know started reading more about spirituality and ancient cultures and stuff and I thought this could be a spiritual revolution when you say spiritual revolution it's a very big broad term what do you mean if I look back and you've you know you've led a very nice story of of my my journey since I changed career is that it started off with that physical piece you know you've led a very nice story of of my my journey since I changed career is that it started off with that physical piece you know for me where I was working there was stress but people were having heart attacks then I spent many years working on mental resilience

with people um and emotional regulation was part of that and that became important again in the pandemic because we were in like closed quarters with people. And, you know, it was just very different and it was hard and there was homeschooling and working and everything. What I've seen as some of the good things I've seen as a result of the pandemic is that we've definitely appreciated, again, the importance of our time in nature. So I think most of us felt that, that, you know, being able to get out and be somewhere green was really important. And because there was like no planes and no traffic, you know, we could see the stars in the sky again. We saw amazing sunsets. People began to appreciate bird song. And now the studies are showing that time spent in nature actually has a really positive

impact on your physical health, your mental health and your longevity. So, you know, that's one good thing that's come out of it. But are we all still, you know, making time for that or are we just going back to kind of our old ways? The other thing, things of interest that have come out is that having a purpose that transcends yourself is really important to your mental health particularly but it will have knock-on effects so you know you could say well I do my podcast and I love doing my podcast and I get to meet interesting people and I you know I share that knowledge with others a lot of that is still to do with self-satisfaction so having something that doesn't necessarily do anything for you but gives you purpose in life is really important and what could that be that could be

that could be volunteering it could be um you know for you know for me like i i give out a lot of free information on Instagram that and not for to try to get work or anything like that. It could be so, you know, when I say volunteering, that sounds quite big, but it could be like asking your elderly neighbor if you can do their groceries for them when you go to the supermarket. It could be calling up a friend and checking that they're okay just something that makes you feel like life is worth living but doesn't necessarily earn you money or directly improve your life i've spoken to a lot of therapists who talk about the fact that we two of the things we never want to feel is like we're a different and b we're not enough and i was thinking about that through the lens of our tribes in a in the context of a tribe if I was

different there was a risk of me being kicked off the tribe and if I didn't feel like I was enough I again would have a risk of being kicked out of the tribe because I'm not valuable to the tribe and in the context of what you were saying about serving others is that again sort of like a prehistoric desire to feel like we're adding value and we are of use to the tribe by serving the greater good of the of our tribe is that where that instinct comes from alas i love what you've done which is exactly what i said which is when i when i'm not sure of the answer i'll go back to evolution i always do that yeah i love that i think i hadn't thought of it like that exactly like that before but i think

it's true you know a tribe sadly could not afford to carry dead weight. So if you weren't enough, you know, if you were injured, if you were immobile, if you were elderly, if you weren't contributing, then you might get left behind. And then there's this really interesting new area of research called neuroaesthetics or neuro arts which is about having some kind of creative activity in your regular schedule so um there's there's lots of research that shows that if you're not doing something creative once a week and that could be dance music painting drawing going to the theater reading a novel so really quite broad time in nature actually is included in it. Then because nature is the palette that we all love. You know, you could have different taste in art or music to me. But all humans love nature because we've always been in that, that beauty. So the impact

of that on your mental health and your physical health and your longevity is huge as well. But even just like every morning, I actually thought of this this morning, because I wanted to mention this, but I had zested a lemon last night when I was cooking. And so this morning, when I went to get the milk out of the fridge, I smelled it because it was in the fridge. And I just thought, that is so beautiful. And so they say things like, you know, if you've put like, a bunch of flowers on your bedside table, and it smells nice. And that's the first thing you smell in the morning. And then you like look at the beautiful flowers if you've got objects of beauty in your house if you listen to birdsong in the morning that that's all neuroaesthetics

it's living a life that is aesthetically pleasing to your brain and that's good for your health why um should we go back to evolution? Should I make a guess? Please, that's my favourite thing to do. I think it's to do with safety. So if you were able to spare your mental resources to appreciate beauty, that must mean that you're safe.

That must mean that you're not just trying to survive. So it's actually, I mean, we do appreciate beauty. So seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting nice things, it's going to make us feel better. But also, we're only going to be doing that if we have the luxury of being able to do that. And it can be such small things. But also what it signals to your brain is,

I'm safe because I have time to read a novel or I have time to crank the music up and dance around my living room. Through the frame of this idea that pathways that fire together wire together. I was also thinking about every time I've seen a tree, I've been safe. So is there an association that trees are safety you know what I mean every time I've been out in nature yeah I've been physiologically psychologically safe so is it now the case that because there's that neurological association the pathways have widened fired together if I you know you talk about the brain body response if I put myself in that situation again it will signal to my body that I'm safe yeah it will

that's neuroplasticity it's the It's repeating that and giving yourself the message that every time I'm around trees, I'm safe, I feel safe. It won't be the same for everyone. I would imagine that, again, when we lived in the cave, that we naturally did things like looked at the stars in the sky at night, danced around the fire, did cave paintings. So that's very wired into our psyche as well. You know, they would adorn themselves a lot more than we do.

So that appreciation of aesthetics has always been there, and not just from nature, from some of our rituals and ceremonies as well. And really the conclusion that I've come to with this whole spiritual crisis and then the potential revolution is that all the things that we need to go through that revolution have always been in the world as long as we've existed. And that to me is beautiful because it's not like we have to do

some crazy new different things that we've never thought of before we can the way that I put it is we know about generational trauma and intergenerational trauma and epigenetics and how all these bad things can like come down the line but there's also a lot of beauty and wisdom that's there that we can have access to it's we don't have to like reinvent the wheel at all we can just go back to doing the things that we did when we were at peace it's interesting but it but that's not gonna that's not easy to do in the world we live in because we've built a society in a world where yeah we live in these like white four white walls in cities alone yeah we're more lonely than ever before we order our

food using glass screens we use pornography as a replacement for intimacy and connection we use social networks instead of socializing internet connection has reduced real connection how you'd have to like completely redesign society it seems you can start with yourself so i completely agree with what all those things that you've just said is how most people live but i don't live like that. How do you live, doctor? I actively try to spend as much time in nature as I can and I have a lot of plants and flowers in and around my house. I am very, very careful about who's in my tribe.

So it's positive, deep spiritual relationships um i don't use pornography or dating apps i'm just going through your list um yeah and i you know i try what do you think of pornography on the brain I mean the two most basic drives in the brain are sex and food so the potential impact is is huge I agree with you that increasingly it has created a big disconnect between men and women in real life which is really sad what is that disconnect um i think that the ideal of what a woman has to be or can be is very distorted by pornography um

i think if i put together you know what i hear from my friends about dating apps with that that the way that people feel they can treat others has really really changed and I think this has accelerated since the pandemic as well so this real lack of empathy for the consequences of your actions and comments on other people and I think pornography contributes to that because it changes the way that men view women um I think the impact on women in terms of what you have to look like like how much plastic surgery you have to have what you've got to be prepared to like do in an intimate relationship or or actually the biggest issue I would have is what you're expected to do when you're not even in an intimate relationship you know just when it becomes more of

a transaction when the rules have changed about you know again what I hear now very commonly is oh well we've been on three or four or five dates or whatever it is that must mean you know move to the next level kind of thing so I think that going back to having like really respectful relationships having a lot of empathy for other people looking out for the people in your life that might be lonelier than you um when I said you know I mean I absolutely do not have my phone in my bedroom but when I say limit screen time that is a do not have my phone in my bedroom but when I say limit screen time that is a difficult one because we all use our screens for work and to communicate with our friends but there are studies that show the amount of time you spend even communicating

with friends online versus face to face has all sorts of impacts in terms of like how like socially comfortable you are how empathic you are it can even have on teenagers a really big impact on body dysmorphism so it's fine to actually spend quite a lot of time online as long as you are also spending a lot of time with people face to face one of the things you said there was about limiting who's in your tribe why is that important why is it important to not hang around with certain people and spend more time with other people from like a neurological perspective in terms of our health and our outlooks and our outcomes and neuroplasticity so if we just like link this back a little bit to the question that you googled which which is, is stress contagious? Then there's another rabbit hole you could go down, which would be about social contagion.

So there are statistics that show that in your social group, if someone gets divorced, you're more likely to get divorced in the next year. If someone in your social group is obese, you're more likely to become obese. Now, I'm not absolutely not saying don't be friends with someone because they got divorced or they put on weight, but I'm talking more about the attitudinal stuff. So the, you know, how you treat other people, how kind you are, how generous you are, how open you are to conversations about intuition or spirituality basically you meet people who are at a similar psychological level to you and so we're always working on ourselves hopefully and you want to be with people if you are then you

want to be with people who are growing too who are open to challenge who are learning who are interested in exploring spirituality um who care about their mental health and other people's mental health so it's really about you know having this this circle of trust and knowing that you've got support but equally that if you do something that's really not okay that somebody's going to tell you you mentioned the word earlier neuroplasticity what is it why did it matter and i think from looking at your work previously you had a bit of an epiphany on this subject matter in your career where you realize that you know are you

probably like most most people don't even think it's a thing they don't think it's they think that once you grow up you're set in your ways but it sounds like there was an epiphany at some point in your career where you realized the importance and the possibilities that neuroplasticity presented well we have to start by saying that when i was at medical school and doing my phd in neuroscience we did not know about neuroplasticity so we absolutely thought that when you physically stopped growing that everything in your brain was set for the rest of your life that you couldn't change your intelligence you couldn't learn to manage

your emotions differently um that it would be much harder to learn new things what we know now is that the brain is actively growing and changing till we're about 25 and i missed it no you didn't you didn't miss it you didn't 31 I know I look 24 but you didn't miss it so from 25 to 65 and I would say even beyond now if you don't do anything to change your brain it will tend to plateau so you know if you're in a job where you do the same thing every day and you're pretty good at it you could stay like that for the rest of your life and that is fine for some people if you do things to that are intense enough to force your brain to change then you can basically you know learn lots of new things but also get what we call global benefits in your brain so let's say you decided to learn a new language maybe you'd learn portuguese or french

have you spoken to her have you spoken to learn a new language maybe you'd learn Portuguese or French have you spoken to her have you spoken to her that just felt very it feels like you know when someone says something to you it feels like they've already had a conversation behind your back because it's so on the money no I actually have a deal with her this year that I'd learn Portuguese by the end of the year and we're in September, and I know six words. So that just felt a little bit close to home. So let's move on. So that's great. So you have actually a reason to learn one or two languages. If you do that, your brain will not only get the benefits of being able to speak French or Portuguese, but you will actually improve your executive functions. Now, these are the highest functions of the brain. Things like being able to regulate your emotions better,

solve complex problems, think flexibly, think creatively, override any conscious or unconscious biases that you may have. These are great benefits to get from actually just doing something like learning a language or a musical instrument. And it can be smaller things like travel, interacting with people who've had a different life to you, cooking something new, taking a different route to work, reading a newspaper or a magazine that's very different to what you normally read. Doing a podcast. Well, you do this every day. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so it's not inducing neuroplasticity in your brain although you're learning different people yeah you're meeting different people you're learning

new things but it's probably not what we would call attention intense enough to actually be shifting pathways in your brain oh so having all these conversations isn't like expanding my it is in terms of your like the facts that you're learning yeah but your actual process of you know finding a person doing a bit of research into them meeting them having a conversation with them being good at asking them certain questions that's a very natural pathway for you so you know you're you're getting better and better at it, but that's not a new big change in your brain. So what, okay, right. So I think when people hear about neuroplasticity, when I first heard about that it was even a thing, it was a revelation that we could do things to change our brains. What is it that people typically want from neuroplasticity? They want to be someone else

in other ways. They want new habits. They want new ways of thinkingity they want to be someone else in other ways they want new habits they want new ways of thinking they want to stop being a negative thinker or an overthinker in certain situations if i wanted to to stop being an overthinker or a negative thinker or if i wanted to um you know there's certain habits we all have and that i have in my life that i'm like i just feel like it's me now yeah like procrastination procrastination shows up sometimes I'm just saying that because I'm not learning who have you spoken to I'm joking no I don't I don't procrastinate too much because I don't really have a choice these days I procrastinate on some things I think we all do things that I find yeah yeah we all do um no I'm really glad you've taken this into the intangible because obviously I use

the analogy of language as a great one to help people understand that you you learn something new it builds up that pathway in your brain it shifts your brain around it has other benefits but what people are really looking for is changing habits and behaviors that are not serving them in life yeah so whether it's lack of motivation yeah lack of motivation. Yeah, lack of motivation, overthinker, negative thinker, lose your temper, you know, sort of feel very stuck, people pleasing, you know, like so many things. Mood, reactions, how you react to things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the process for that, which is underpinned by neuroplasticity,

like the physiology of what happens in the brain is raised awareness so let's say that you've you know you've had a relationship breakup again for the similar reasons and you know whatever happened before so then you get to a point you're like okay last time I just kind of didn't really deal with that and just moved on to the next relationship now I'm beginning to see there's a pattern. I think I need to do something different. Step one is spot the pattern. And step one is 50% of the battle. So, you know, once you know, okay, this is a thing that I think or I believe or I do that comes out with a result that I don't want, that is half the battle. So once you've done that, you don't try to change anything straight away the next stage is called focused attention so you look around in your life at work in your personal life in like you know

sports if you play sports um with different types of people and through your past where are the times i've done that what what what triggers me into doing that or what pushes me into doing that let me give you an example so we can work through this uh these steps with an example got a friend in my life that repeatedly dates people who are married or in a relationship oh and it ends how you'd expect it to end in her heartbreak yeah but it's this spiral she's on yeah so step one would be becoming aware of this pattern. You're dating people that are in this, for some reason you're...

So in this case, that is obvious. If you're getting into relationships with people who are already attached, you're aware of that. What I would want to dig into with her is what it is that she believes about herself that makes her think that that's okay. And I'm imagining already that there must be a level of self-worth that is has struggled you know and maybe there's something

in her childhood that's caused that but you'd only do that if you didn't believe that you deserved someone of your own so that's the kind of conversation I would have with someone like that I would I would probably with someone like that. I would probably ask her like, you know, what goes through your mind when you decide to do that again? And she would say something that she's conscious of thinking. I would want to dig below that and ask what it is that she believes about herself that makes her think that. So that's quite an important part of the raised awareness is getting below the thought into the belief. Next step is, well, certainly if she's got a history of this is, you know, maybe in journaling, acknowledging, writing down, OK, this time that I went out with someone that was, you know, kind of engaged in a relationship with someone else.

Well, this time I had an affair with a married man. What happened? Like that decision making process, the point from which you agreed to get into that what was the consequence so really that's the focused attention marrying together that decision with the consequence you know one of the things I say is you are basically the sum of every decision that you've made in your life that's who you are so once there's a bit more understanding and attention around like what causes that and how it happens, the next stage is deliberate practice. So the first challenge is going to be the next time she meets a man who's not available. And she may not yet be able to say no to that.

She may have to make another mistake, but she'll make it armed with all the knowledge that she's got now. And she'll see it for what it is. Or she will be able to say no to that man this time so the next step is deliberate practice which is where you say okay i used to behave like this uh this is the new me that i want to be as somebody who says no to every man that's married who um you know replaces every negative thought with a positive thought or whatever it is that you're working on. You then look for scenarios to practice this new behavior. And at first, it will be hard because you have a pathway there that may have been set since childhood that is used to doing a certain thing. And the brain is a very energy hungry organ. So

it's always trying to use the path of least resistance. Let's say I'm an overthinker. Okay. And you're asking me these questions and I've got this voice in the back of my head saying, why is Stephen asking me that? What's he trying to get to? Is he trying to trick me? What I would try to do is silence that voice in my head and say, okay, in this podcast with Stephen,

I'm gonna focus on him, I'm gonna take his questions for what they are and I'm gonna speak from my area of expertise. I'm not gonna worry about that other know, can go on in my head. And let's say this time, I managed to do that 50% of the time. And then I go and do another podcast next week. And I managed to do it 75% of the time, you know, and so on. Eventually, this new pathway that I've been building will become stronger than the one that I had before. And then every time I turn up for a podcast, I'll just be completely present and attentive and I'll get to the end of it.

And that's the new me now. So behaviours that we repeat. So let's start starting at the beginning of those three steps. The first step is becoming aware of the pattern in our lives the second step is becoming really cognizant of the pain or the consequences of that pattern and the third step is kind of like setting an intention for who we want to become and the goals we have and then practicing it as much as possible and that is the three steps to the fourth it's not a step but the fourth factor is accountability because most people left to their own devices will give up on that process

when it feels too hard a step three yeah um so you know with years of practice and journaling i have become better at holding myself accountable but for most people there's got to be some external so it could be a friend um one of the reasons I'm a big fan of doing these action boards is that there's a very tangible thing in front of you that with images of what you said you wanted to achieve this year which you can clearly and your friends and family can see at the end of the year whether you did or you didn't um and you know of course you can have an actual like professional person that is there like your language teacher to hold you accountable to we're gonna have to edit this out because you really are pushing this

you've got an agenda here i've been really used to talk earlier about just a second ago about how when you're trying to create a new pathway if there's an existing one that is very well established from your childhood it's increasingly harder so i've always been unorganized i lived i grew up in a home that was looked like an atomic bomb had hit it yeah it was just a shit show inside it was an absolute mess so that habit of just being messy is quite well established. The pathway in my brain of being messy is well established. But more broadly, I'm thinking here about trauma

and how trauma looks in the brain. When we've had really traumatic early experiences in our life or in the context of my friend, we might've learned that we're not deserving of someone or we're not worthy or we, you know, we're not enough or we're different. That might be a really well-established pathway doesn't doesn't that suggest that there are some behavior patterns that are just practically immovable practically unchangeable um i don't

want to say yes to that but what i am going to say is we've moved away from using this term hard wired which kind of means like it's there forever and we talk about soft wiring now because of neuroplasticity. I know people who have been through incredible amounts of trauma there's going to be an example coming up on my podcast soon who has done so much work on herself that she's really in a beautiful place as a psychologist and a Vedic astrologer helping other people learn to deal with their trauma. So there's a lot that can happen. She was clearly a very resilient person and got herself educated. Some people deal with the consequences of trauma for the rest of their life and you know it runs their life and it's sad um you may not be able to deal with every single thing that you've

experienced or the full extent of what you've experienced but i do believe that there's a lot that everybody can do earlier you talked about generational trauma um and epigenetics as you said what what are both of those things the first time i heard about generational trauma i thought it was like woo woo uh fluffy hopeful like wishful think like a nice way to blame your ancestors for the way that you are that's when i first heard about this concept that you could be passed down trauma from your parents or your grandparents it just seemed like it couldn't possibly be true yeah i know i mean it's a relatively new area of research so i'm actually going to separate this into a few things so generational trauma um and you can look this up is related to specific times of acts that were placed onto particular marginalized groups. So like first Americans, slavery.

In Asia, there are some particular groups that were treated in a certain way. And that is, so the impact of generational trauma is when something happened to one generation, there's a psychological spillover. And it can be something to do with you always feel isolated or you always feel lonely or you always feel at the margin or you always feel left out. That's because a whole generation retreated in a certain way and that has an impact. intergenerational epigenetic trauma is about how some external event actually changes the expression of your genes so we have a genotype and a phenotype genotype is your dna it doesn't change but the phenotype is which bits get switched on and switched off the most famous examples of this are the Holocaust and the Dutch famine. But there are other examples. And we are sufficient generations away from that now to have

seen like three plus generations changes in the stress responses. And so and it's not always bad. So sometimes people are more resilient because their grandparents or great grandparents went through something terrible. Sometimes people are more anxious and it's hard to know necessarily why things might go one way or another. I always say to people that you aren't born with the genes that your parents had when they were born. You're born with the expression of the genes that your parents had around the time of conception. And then, of course, your mother's stress levels through the trimesters of pregnancy. And this isn't meant to blame anyone for what happened in the past or how stressed they feel when they're pregnant. It's meant to raise awareness of the fact that if you have something

in your family's history or you did have a particular stress particularly stressful pregnancy you can use neuroplasticity to improve the chances of your baby expressing genes that will be more helpful for them in life than if you didn't know about all of this stuff so if you had a particularly stressful pregnancy let's say you're a woman who was really under stress when you were um eight months pregnant how does that impact the baby and what what symptoms are you like to likely to see in that baby that it wouldn't have had otherwise okay so i'm going to give you a really like tangible answer before i take it back to the um something we were talking about before imagine the mother's a heroin addict. That is affecting the baby, right? Yeah, yeah.

And that's because they share the same blood supply. Yeah. So if the mother is stressed and she's got high levels of cortisol, then that cortisol is going through the placenta into the baby's blood supply. And basically being stressed from in utero could switch on genes for not being resilient to stress or being more

liable to anxiety or mood disorder. And it's already starting off, you know, inflammation in this like tiny baby that hasn't even been born yet. I know that sounds terrible. And I really don't want this to come across like all mums have to be completely zen and never get stressed because that's just not reality. But, you know you can do of course to manage your stress during pregnancy is helpful but then completely understanding that if your child then starts to show any like symptoms of anxiety or you know inability to manage their emotions after an age where they should be kind of able to do that you can introduce them to meditation you can sit with them and talk to them about their emotions and how they're feeling there are lots of really like great books and videos that you can use to like educate children about that kind of thing

um i always say knowledge is power and unfortunately difficult things can happen to people in life but every time something like that's happened to me I've gone down a rabbit hole of okay what can I find that can help me to overcome this and be better just thinking about as you're talking about grief and the brain the relationship between you know what happens in the brain when we're experiencing grief and stuff think about grief and heartbreak as strong emotions so many of us including one of my best friends his reason is recently grieving a relationship he's lost and i've got another friend that's lost someone in their life who's passed away and it's such an

all-consuming force that seems to be resistant to advice i just wondered if through your work you'd learn anything about grief in the brain and heartbreak in the brain yeah so i think there's so many uh versions of grief that we've seen particularly in the last few years which is loss of sense of self loss of someone through a relationship breakdown and loss of someone through actual death um and it's interesting to hear you say as a caring onlooker that it's something that's so overwhelming and resistant to advice. I strongly believe that to ever heal from grief, you have to go to the bottom of the hole. And however you do that is not something that anyone else can comment on. I think if you are doing things like throwing yourself back into work or like partying too much to avoid it that's not right but if somebody has to go somewhere

emotionally to deal with grief they've got to be supported and allowed to do that and and then maybe at times gently nudged in terms of like how you're doing you know is it kind of are you feeling any sort of like healing or resolution or understanding or acceptance I do think particularly with grief that if we haven't been through something ourselves it's it's it's really hard to imagine how bad it is even though you might you know care very deeply what makes you think that what makes you think that you have to go to the bottom of the hole? Because I think we are very avoidant emotionally. I think that's part of the greater issue that I was talking about, which is being lost and disconnected. And I remember when my first marriage broke up and I was changing career, thinking if I hadn't been a psychiatrist and know the things I know, I can see how you could end up on a psychiatric ward going through, you know, the breakup, breakdown of a marriage. So what all I'm trying to say, I'm not trying to say you have to feel terrible. What I'm trying to

say is you have to process all the emotions and you kind of have to surrender to it a bit because if you try to gloss over that, it will come back and bite you later and I've seen many stories of that happening where people you know did really great things like write a book about it or you know shower all of their care and love and attention onto other people and then eventually found that they hadn't actually dealt with their own emotions so when I say go to the the bottom of it I don't necessarily mean feel really terrible I mean process all of the emotions fully because then you can actually heal and at some stage move forward it doesn't mean you forget you know the person or what happened but if you try to gloss over it i think this it's it's

dangerous because it's such a deep it's such a deep emotion it's such a facing of your own mortality in your book you talk about the mechanisms of neuroplasticity what are the mechanisms of neuroplasticity and the three factors that have the biggest impact on changes in the brain so the first one is myelination and anyone who does a lot of sport who repeats a certain um you know weight training will understand that that's what's happening in their muscles. You know, when I said, you know, you come here pretty much every day and you sit with someone and you interview them and you're really great at asking questions. That's like something you're super good at that because you repeat it, it becomes like a superpower.

And that means that what's happening there is myelination. So myelin is a fatty substance that coats some neural pathways and those pathways become fast pathways. Now there's a reason from evolution why we have some fast pathways and some slow pathways. And the reason is that if you put your hand in the fire, your reflex to snatch your hand out is a fast pathway, but your pain reflex is a slow pathway because if you were incapacitated by pain, the minute you put your hand in the fire, you wouldn't be able to get away from it. One of the mechanisms of neuroplasticity is becoming even better at something that you're really good at. And that happens through myelination. The most common one, which is something that you're quite good at, but if you had loads of time, you could become really

good at it, but you maybe don't have loads of time. Happens through synaptic connection. So that's the one that can feel like quite hard work. But if you put in the effort, then you can change your brain. So that means that neurons that already exist in the brain connect up with each other and start to form new pathways. And the third mechanism, which doesn't happen a lot in the adult brain, but it does happen around the hippocampus because we do lay down new memories in life, happens a lot in children's brains, is called neurogenesis. And that is little embryonic nerve cells that float around in the brain, actually becoming fully formed nerve cells,

neurons, and connecting up through synaptic connection and maybe getting myelinated. And there's a factor, a growth factor that's involved in that, the embryonic cell becoming an adult cell, which is called BDNF or brain derived neurotrophic factor. And trophic means growth. So neurotrophic is growth of neurons. And the things that contribute mostly to that are aerobic exercise and eating dark skinned foods yeah dark skinned foods yeah so let me just cover the exercise one first because this is one of my fun facts which is that if you are regularly doing aerobic exercise the turnover of those cells in your brain is about 13 14 percent so like the the amount and the speed in which they like die die off no the speed in which they go from embryonic to full-grown oh okay yeah okay so because we want neurogenesis to happen okay if you haven't been

doing exercise for a while and then you start the rate of cell turnover is like 30 so it increases after a period of inactivity with new aerobic exercise so that's my excuse for like being a couch potato half the time and then starting up again oh yeah who are you kidding okay so it will accelerate the speed in which you're making those connections yeah making the embryonic cells grow into new cells and then connect up with existing ones. So I want to make sure I'm super clear on this. So if I'm trying to develop, if I'm trying to speak a different language, by doing exercise that has an impact on... Oh, it'll help you learn and retain memories.

Yeah. So in simple language, if i'm doing aerobic exercise my ability to accelerate my neuroplasticity will increase yeah what if it's like not aerobic exercise what if i'm just lifting big weights um there are benefits to your brain of other types of exercise but weight training doesn't relate to neurogenesis as much okay this isn't so much about language but it's another example of mind over matter so this was an experiment done on two groups of weightlifters thought you might like this one um that's a big compliment thank you so much you think i'm a weightlifter you think i identify as a weightlifter you looked at me and thought weightlifter compliment thank you so much you think i'm a weightlifter you think i identify as

a weightlifter you looked at me and thought weightlifter totally thank you so much um this was finger and elbow weights though so maybe not so glamorous in this experiment okay so one group lifted finger or elbow weights i think this was a two-week study and they showed, I think it was about a 40% increase in muscle mass of the targeted muscle group for those weights. Their counterparts only imagined lifting weights for two weeks. They lifted no weights for two weeks. They just sat there and they visualized themselves lifting weights. And they had a 13% increase in muscle mass interesting so we can tell our brain to grow muscle have you been secretly doing that no but i could be doing that instead i've been

going to the gym be much easier if i could just watch the football and tell myself that i'm lifting weights well i don't think you can watch the football i think the whole like visualization and you know intention and attention stuff was important part of it I mean that's that speaks to the the power of our thoughts again doesn't it really if if our thoughts can tell our brain to grow muscles has that been is that it's in the book but but is it like is it is that widely accepted as the truth I'm surprised there's not like personal trainers that just sit you down in an empty room and just go right well think about the number of athletes that use visualization as part of their training of course they do the

exercise and the practice and everything but they that's hugely used in sports interesting it's obviously not a case that i would just then go home and start imagining working out but it does it does again remind me of the importance of just thinking about um positive things that are in line with my goals yeah i mean what's the harm in imagining yourself more muscular or more youthful alongside eating the dark foods and getting enough sleep you know it's like it's part of the package do you want to know what you should eat so that you can please what is this dark skinned foods so basically you know at the basic level we want people to have a healthy balanced diet mostly plant-based but where you can choose a darker version of a food the pigment in the skin of

that food has higher levels of antioxidants called anthocyanins and they also contribute to neurogenesis so it's basically like eating black beans instead of white beans or eating blueberries instead of strawberries dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate purple sprouting broccoli instead of green broccoli um and good quality coffee counts as well. Yeah, so I try to vary what I eat but also always choose the darker option if I can. Okay, so is there anything else that one needs to know about the process of neuroplasticity? So from what I've ascertained so far,

it's about understanding the patterns we have in our brain, understanding the consequences of them. Repet repetition is key to establishing new pathways um is there anything else that i need to be really aware of because i do want to grow my brain and change my brain yeah so the accountability piece which we discussed but also creating the conditions in your body for your brain to be able to do all of that stuff. And so, you know, this is a bit of repetition, but sleeping roughly eight hours a night, having regular sleep and wake times seems to have an additional benefit. We don't know why. So within an hour, so go to sleep between 10 and 11, wake up whenever. Not being sedentary. So being physically active doesn't necessarily mean

you have to pound it at the gym. To be honest, in terms of neuroplasticity, you don't want to do too much high intensity exercise because it spikes your cortisol levels. So it's better to do kind of quite gentle exercise. Eating 30 different plant products a week and varying the color as much as possible. You know, managing your stress, whether it's through meditation or just like removing the causes of stress if you're doing and being hydrated if you are doing all of those things and you want to play at level two of the game you could start doing time restricted eating so only eating between i only eat between 12 noon and 8 p.m but you could do 8 a.m to 8 p.m so that kind of fasting is very beneficial for your brain as well.

But only if you've got the foundations right, it's not going to help you if you don't. What does it do for the brain fasting, intermittent fasting? Well, it helps to regulate your blood sugar levels. So, you know, spiking blood sugar levels aren't good for your body or your brain. And fasting and calorie restriction, they do have like brain health and longevity benefits, but that, you know, only if your foundations are right. You know, somebody who's stressed or eats badly or doesn't sleep enough will not benefit

from time-restricted eating or intermittent fasting because it is a form of stress on your body, because it is a form of stress on your body but it's a form of stress that your body can take and use to build resilience if the baseline level of stuff is good and for neuroplasticity to happen we need to be taking on big cognitive challenges challenges that kind of break existing pathways yeah so i want to learn to dj i've been learning for about 12 months now um that feels like a big cognitive challenge for me yeah that's great um that's the type of thing that would establish a new pathway in my brain absolutely someone's just looking to build their self-esteem and their confidence what does the brain tell us about

the process of doing that? Is it, does it go back again to what we said about awareness, about understanding the feelings and the consequences and about setting goals and repetition and accountability? It will get to that, but there's actually a little bit of a jumpstart to that, which is really helpful, particularly in terms of confidence and self-esteem, which is that usually there's a particular recurring negative thought that's associated with feelings of lack of confidence um so if you can identify what that is and create a positive affirmation that's like the opposite of it or something that counteracts it then that can be a great way to get started. My phrase would have

been, it has to be perfect and it's not going to be perfect. I wouldn't have been able to say this last year, but now I would probably be able to say, it is going to be better than perfect. It is going to be amazing. Like I know it. But to get myself there, I could have said, it doesn't have to be perfect, but it's going to be great. Or I could have said, maybe it will be perfect. Sometimes the question I ask myself is, what's the best possible outcome that could happen here? So it's changing your language in your mind about the things that you think. So that's basically metacognition, which is that you can understand your own thinking, and then reversing that narrative quite strongly, even if it doesn't feel like it's

totally true and just repeating that so much that you start to wear down that other pathway does language really matter the language we say to ourselves oh yeah yeah yeah it really matters yeah how we speak about ourselves how do we know that matters i mean it's neuroplasticity if you're repeating something in your mind or out loud then if that's being repeated more than another statement it's the one that your brain's going to believe so we can trick our brains effectively by saying something else to ourselves repeatedly because there's this whole movement in you know the personal development community which says you just kind of look in the mirror and you say to yourself like i'm beautiful i'm attractive everyone's gonna love me i'm gonna be rich and i've found it hard to get on board with that train

yeah that one because i know i'm bullshitting myself you know in my like subconscious or whatever i just know if i said those things i'm not saying about myself but yeah saying those very very far away things i just think my brain is smart enough to know that i'm bullshitting myself yeah i think there's an element of reality to it so so there's a few things there which is those particular things that you said are very shallow they are not really the things that people should need you know need to be saying to themselves um what i find and i picked this up from the podcast with Lewis is he said that sometimes he would just say to himself I'm safe I'm safe I'm okay and actually just sometimes saying to myself I'm safe is that's what I need to hear not I'm beautiful and I'm amazing that that does feel like

a it's kind of thing that everybody probably wants to say. B, it's not addressing the underlying issues. Yeah, it's not addressing. And I'm going to be rich. I mean, that's the worst one because you actually have to do stuff to make that happen. You know, you can't just say that. So I think finding the stuff that you need to say to yourself that is not to do with social expectation or parental expectation or, you know, social group. What everybody else is doing like what you really want to know for yourself that's going to set you up to be able to go out into the real world and do

the stuff that you need to do to get the other things that you want there you said you can't just say it you have to go out and do it now when people hear this term manifestation it's highly associated with just kind of saying stuff or thinking stuff and it's less associated with actually going out and doing it so yeah a lot of people just turn off when someone talks about manifestation because it sounds kind of woo woo put it on the vision board and it will happen and in fact i think i've said this a few times but i had um i wouldn't say it was an argument but a disagreement which resulted in the person i was speaking to literally getting out of a resulted in the person I was speaking to

literally getting out of a taxi in the middle of New York City and walking off. I was on a date many years ago and the girl was saying to me that she goes, you can just manifest anything into your life. So you can just think about it and then it will happen. So I said to her, I was like, you think you could just like think about

becoming a millionaire and then it will happen? And she goes, yeah. And I go, and you wouldn't even have to like do all the stuff. And she was like, no, you could just like think about it and the universe will attract it into your life. Do you believe in manifestation? And if so, what form of manifestation and how is that supported with neuroscience? Mm-hmm. So I believe in manifestation based on your brain. So your thoughts, your beliefs, your actions. So where I've called my book,

The Source, I have said your brain is the source of you being able to attract everything that you want into your life. So I sat down one summer and I like researched the laws of attraction and, and just looked at whether I could explain them through cognitive science, which is psychology and neuroscience. And I could. So, so I was kind of like, oh, I'm onto something here. And the first stage for me was understanding that it is absolutely to do with the way that you think, but then it's not magically like attracting something in the atmosphere. It's to do with the changes that you make based on your thought process. I do believe in vision boards, but I call them action boards because I see them as a representation of what I want, but I call them action boards because I see them as a

representation of what I want, but I still have to go out there and make those things happen. I think it's also much more empowering to believe that it's your brain that's making that stuff happen and not some external force that you're not really sure what it is. So how would I manifest something into my life say i want to manifest a great relationship i'm in a great relationship but say i was single and i wanted to manifest the perfect partner how would i manifest the perfect partner into my life using the brain as the source yeah so with that one i i think the preferred method is to create a list of the attributes that you want in that person. But you then have to make sure that you are everything that is on that list.

So if I want a blonde, I've got to dye my hair. I'm joking. I'm joking. Okay, I get what you mean. So you're talking about fundamental qualities and values. Yeah. And then making sure that you about fundamental qualities and values yeah and then making sure that you represent those qualities and values that's i've never heard

anyone say that but that is so important because i know so many people who would write a list that they couldn't meet themselves in terms of fundamental values they probably want their partner to be disciplined to care about their health to be honest and if they ask themselves are those are they those things they'd probably fail at that to be honest. And if they ask themselves, are they those things? They'd probably fail at that. To be fair, my partner is so much better than me in so many ways, nearly every way. I'd probably fail at that list too.

Why is that important? I think that you hear a lot of people saying, this is what I really want in someone. But you never really hear people saying, I've really worked on myself and this is what I believe I have to offer. And so psychologically, you meet people at the level of psychological evolution that you're at, but equally on the sort of flip side of the coin, you meet people at the level of psychological wound that you have. So to be in a balanced relationship with someone that's really great

you've got to be bringing something to the party I mean no one's going to go out with you if they're really amazing and you're a drag but drags want amazing people and this is the problem right it's true right I guess so are you scared to say it like when I was a when I was an optimal drag in my life when I was at optimal drag in my life when I was the most drag in my life I attracted drag people but I wanted amazing people and I could never get them yeah but I feel like with you that was part of your journey of knowing that you could become an amazing person I did I could yeah exactly so you got an amazing person once you did the work that took you out of

Dragsville. Amen. Okay, so that's super interesting. So make sure you are the things on that list, because we'll rise to the level of our values and we'll fall to the level of our wounds. Yeah, I love the way you put that. But also that, you know, what you have to offer in a relationship is just as important as what you want out of it and i don't know as a society we just don't really seem to think about it like that there's actually a note in my diary where i wrote people who focus on what they want don't typically get what they want people who focus on what they have to offer typically get what they want that's amazing that's

like basically the same thing yeah i literally just parroted it off you plagiarized it no but it is in my diary and i posted on instagram story a while ago that it was just an observation to me in business when you hire people the people that are focused on like can i get a pay rise can i get a pay rise don't typically get the pay rise but the people that focus on what they have to offer yeah they're the ones that you you give all the you promote and you give the pay rise rise to because they're focusing on the most important thing, which is I think over prolonged periods of time, not always in the short term and not always in every case,

but life will eventually give you roughly what you deserve over a long term generally for most people, not always. Yeah. Because there's going to be someone that says, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. So you can't what about me

because I've presented the caveat, but generally that's what I've observed. And I've seen people cheat the system. I've seen people get a little bit further ahead than their talent or their value. But life has a wonderful way of bringing us back to the level of our values. And you said it in relationships. Life will drop you to the depth of your wounds or to the height of your values. So really, if you want to find a sustainable way to get what you want in

life is to do that work on what you can offer other people yeah and as you were speaking it made me think that actually if let's say if i was constantly like oh you know i want i want this pay rise i want that man that's got to be a cortisol inducing state in your body but if instead of that i'm like what can i do for steven um i have so much love to give that's going to be oxytocin and who's someone going to be more attracted to interesting oh that's so true one of the things i want to talk to you about that has been risen in culture recently is neurodivergence big topic autism adhd um so much that i had a mother send me a voice note the other day her child has just been um diagnosed with autism and she's really struggling with it and trying to

understand uh what it means and where it came from and was it hereditary and there's so many guests on my podcast have talked about the rise in diagnosis of ADHD. And is it something that we are causing by the way that we choose to live our lives? From an understanding of neuroscience, what is neurodiversity and what are causing it and what is curing it? Yeah, so this would come more from my experience as a psychiatrist when I did do some work with children as well. So neurodiversity is basically anything that doesn't fall into the category of a typical brain. So, ADD, ADHD and autism slash Asperger's spectrum and other things. I think that a lot of it is to do with better diagnosis. So I'm not saying it isn't the case that these things have risen risen but I think we're also much better at diagnosing them so for example when I worked with mostly little boys with ADHD when I saw them for the first time and I took the full family history there was quite often an

absent father who'd actually been in like several different relationships and like couldn't hold down a job and you kind of thought yeah he probably had it but was undiagnosed so there is an element of that I do think that it is an adaptation to the world which is changing at such a rapid pace which is you know always switched on so much technology and some people would say that autism is even like a form of evolution in a way to like help us keep up with the changing pace of the world so you don't necessarily think we know if it's increasing in prevalence i think it is but it's partly naturally increasing and partly because we're better at diagnosing it okay i do wonder as well sometimes things like dyslexia, whether humans have always had an element of dyslexia, but it's more, it's more obvious and more of a, more of a challenge in the world we live in. Think about the schooling system and writing and education. These are fairly new constructs yeah yeah exactly and so this isn't to do with neurodivergence but

to do with things like gender identity and um sexual orientation what i found in my research with the um indigenous wisdom is that those things were understood long ago there was a place for people um and an understanding of you know their their role in in society and sometimes even an elevated role so it's really interesting that we're grappling with things now like you know what gender does your child want to be and what life you know is your child going to have if they're gay or whatever and like apparently these these ancient cultures were dealing with this like all the time. No problem.

Your second series of your podcast is going to focus on some of this work that you learned. Yeah. What are some of the interesting things that if you could only tell me a few that you think would have the most significant impact on my life and you can't mention learning Portuguese. What would you tell me about? So one theme that's come through quite strongly is related to creativity which was kind of mentioned but that doing things like humming and chanting are actually like really beneficial um and they've obviously been around forever and we don't really know why people did them in the first place but in terms of expressing creativity and like calming down the nervous system that's one thing that seems to have come through from kind of like ayurveda but also from the first americans as well james nesta said that

to me did he humming was yeah was good for your health and immune system i think he said yeah like through your nose like there's different you know there's different types you can do um even just like um go on i can see you you're avoiding it i'll be in the trailer but also humming like at the back of your throat humming like between your lips so like oh it's such basic stuff. I mean, you can do that on the tube. You know, you can do it.

That was going in the drain. No, it's not. Why would that help? Why would that help us? I don't really actually like know the answer. I'm just thinking of this like, what can we get from indigenous wisdom that could help us now? But I guess it's something to do with regulating your parasympathetic nervous system okay that's actually what he said yeah yeah yeah now i've remembered this point about um aging generally longevity and aging one of the really interesting things you talk about in the book is this idea of sort of

psychological priming and psychological priming of aging and that psychological priming is the effect that the mindset of aging has on our physical body how our thoughts about aging affect our physical abilities what i interpreted from that is our thoughts about aging have an impact on our aging yeah so actually there's a really fascinating study it's one of my favorite ones to talk about which was um three groups of octogenarians what's an octogenarian people in their 80s okay and one group was the control group so they just lived like normal for a week one group um had to reminisce about being in their 60s for most of the week whenever they had an opportunity to. And one group were actually driven to retrofitted versions of their homes that looked like what their house looked like 20 years ago.

They were given newspapers dated from 20 years ago. They had photos of themselves in that house when they were in their 60s. And one of the things was they got there and they were sort of like, okay, who's going to carry our suitcase up to the bedroom or whatever? And they were like, no, you're 60 now. You carry your own suitcase.

So it literally started from the minute they got there. And these little old ladies had to and gentlemen had to carry their cases up. After one week, the people in that group were taller because their posture improved they were they had better musculoskeletal coordination than they had a week before in before and after photos that were shown to people that didn't know them they were rated as younger in the one week after photos and the photos from arriving at that place um and the reminiscing group also had some improvements but not as much as a group that lived like they were in their 60s and so there was three groups yeah the ones that went back and relived their life the ones that reminisced and the ones that did nothing at all yeah wow and that really goes to show the impact of

what we think about ourselves and then all of the physical physiological consequences of that you talk about this um your eyes as well about you're gonna get was it like laser laser eye surgery no no it's just like people told you you needed glasses well my optician told me so he's um of indian origin same age as me and he said oh i think you know you're probably going to need reading glasses next year and I was like no I do not want reading glasses that makes you look really old and he was like yeah I know I know we both look younger than we are but you know your eyes are gonna age just like anybody else's and I was like no they are not so I left

came back a year later he said, how's it going with the reading? So it's fine. He sort of went, okay, Tara. So he's doing my eye test. He spins around on this little chair halfway through and says, your eyes haven't got worse. They haven't even stayed the same. They've got better. And I said, I know. And he said, what have you been doing? And I said, well, I just said no to you when you said, I'm going to have to get reading glasses. And when I'm like looking at my phone or a book, and it feels like it would be a bit easier if I moved it further away. I just don't. And what's that doing in the brain? Why is that? Why did that improve your reading? Well, I hadn't experienced a problem with my reading but he was obviously seeing the

numbers slightly change um i really didn't do much more than what i've just said so it was like not accepting the limitation and then not changing my behavior and i think that's what you see from the third group of people which is that they they had to change their behavior to to live like without any help and in a way that they had to when they were younger. So that essentially removed the limitations that we impose on ourself, which is that if I'm X age, it must mean that I need reading glasses or I need a walking stick or whatever it is. There's a kind of opposite experiment to that too, which was done with young medical students in Florida. And they had to walk between five rooms

and on the table were five pieces of paper with a word on it and you had to string a sentence out of it and but that wasn't the real experiment they thought that was the experiment the real experiment was that in one of the rooms the words that were on the table were Florida, beach, sunshine, walk, bungalow. And all of them walked more slowly out of that room than any of the other rooms because those words are associated with retirement. And that made them slow down. You asked me, is language important to our brain? That's how important it is.

So just saying words can change our behaviour so quickly. That's what the experiment showed. I've been thinking a lot. You know, I said, I've got this vlog on YouTube called Behind the Diary. And in two of the episodes, I've caught myself out while I'm filming because I said words that I thought would be unhelpful. I think people, someone in the comments actually challenged me because there's one day when I'm filming because I said words that I thought would be unhelpful I think people someone in the comments actually challenged me because there's one day when I'm filming Dragon's Den and I'm filming myself I'm just talking about what's going on and I go oh I really need a coffee

this morning and I stop myself and say I shouldn't say need and then I go there's something about this casual use of the word need throughout our lives that is disempowering me it's making me a slave to the coffee so I make this point which I'm sure people think i'm a little bit bit weird for making that i should i really need to not say the word need associated to the things because i will then probably develop a psychological um and maybe a physical like a somewhat of a physical need for that for that thing and it just it's it's also just bringing that word need need into your life like you don't have enough like that you need something um i'm constantly changing my words like little you know tweaking them like that so i would say oh i'm

going to treat myself to a coffee and that was your decision you were powerful there yeah that's a choice you made yeah there's an overarching point here about personal responsibility as well when people talk about um i can't exercise um i don't have any time it feels like a really disempowering frame versus i've got other priorities which feels empowering and i think about this all the time because if you ask someone why they don't exercise they'll typically blame it on some force the frame makes it seem like there's a force that's controlling their life for them that has not given them the time or that they could not.

Whereas really it's just typically a case of priorities and your child or your job that pays your mortgage can be your priority. But I think it's important. I've always felt it's important to acknowledge the fact that you made the choice to take care of your child or to go to your mortgage paying job versus I didn't you know I didn't have any time yeah this is what I think about language so much

and the language that I use and how that's dominating my life even constantly telling myself that I'm unorganized like messy so how that's probably making me a messy person what haven't we talked about that that we probably should have talked about is there anything at all any studies or any insights into the brain and how we change habits that are stubborn um or anything else at all that you've learned from the ancient wisdom the you know i know that we've talked like very broadly on lots of different things but I hope that with for me my intention with every sentence that I've said to you is that people should realize how much potential they have in their brains like how capable they are of having an even more amazing life than they have already

I think I accept that now more than i ever have before because i've had this conversation with you i think i accept that there's so much untapped potential in me and that i'm not this kind of fully formed um rigid lump of cells i can change fundamentally um i think a lot of people probably are if they've gotten to this point in the conversation will also accept that if you were to close with i guess the step one like the the thing that i should immediately do as i move forward in my life from here that would help me to start moving towards that person that i want to become the organized great partner successful in his business great with his podcast all of those things what is that first step and you know what's funny is because my

brain keeps thinking about the taxi driver that I met on the way here who said he'd listened to the podcast and he told gave me a little bit of a window into his world so he's driving the cab every day and I meet a lot of cab drivers that listen to the podcast and we chat and oftentimes they sometimes they have dreams of doing other things so they might say to me you know I want to start my own business one day and I'm just looking I'm looking for the first couple of steps but I I reflect on what you said and go they're going to be so hardwired into their patterns and their jobs and their habits and their routines that it's very hard to make that jump yeah so if i could give people a takeaway to start with that's really simple but it doesn't mean there isn't a lot of hard work at the other end of it it would be be very clear on what it is that you want

so you've mentioned a few things spend five minutes sitting down and visualizing those things being true and then give gratitude for that that would be my first step give gratitude for those things being true just five minutes i'm a great partner i'm not messy my podcast is super successful like see it feel it in your body taste it in your mouth hear it in your ears completely immerse yourself in that for five minutes longer if you can and then just be so grateful for all of that essentially what you're doing is moving your brain from a fear state to a trust state and that is the gateway to making these changes thank you so much thank you really a thought-provoking wonderful conversation and i've

learned so much and you're giving me so much food for thought and you've changed my mind on a lot of things in my life that's a great compliment you know and i've i know a few things about neuroplasticity because i've had guests here that have spoken to me about it but i have a better understanding of it now and i also understand i think most importantly the part of manifestation that is understandable through the lens of science yeah i guess we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to leave it for oh this question

is what could you choose to change and choose to feel great about the same thing that's what the question question says what could you choose to change and choose to feel great about um I assume it's the same thing I could finally realize my dream of feeling like I am truly a creative person and I'm not exactly sure what that would look how that would look yet but I'm on the path to it. So I think getting clearer on that, um, would feel great and actually doing it would also feel great. You were already a creative person though. Thank you so much for saying that. I feel like I have one more step to go before I really feel that I've done that because

that was such a a deep-seated thing for me I mean there's a bit more of a backstory to it which I didn't give you but my English teacher said to me you are so good at drama you should read English Oxford and go to RADA and I came home and told my parents, and they literally said, my dad said, over my dead body, you'll go to medical school, and then after that you can do whatever you want. And so I think there is that frustration in there that's been in there for a long time. Like these days, you can't imagine anything better

than your kid coming home and one of the teachers having picked them out as exceptional. But of course, at that time, there were no brown people on tv so it was seen as an even bigger risk than than it would be now and i have to say you know every time i see someone that looks like me who's like made it as an actress i just it makes me so happy. Why did your father say that? I think that Indian parents, you know, they think that stability is the key to happiness for their children. So having a stable career, having a regular salary.

I don't really come from a family of entrepreneurs, which is why it was so crazy when I gave up my job and started up a business. No one could understand it. And I was afraid of not having a regular paycheck and then at some point I realized I could earn zero in any one month but I could also well you know I could there's a there's no limit to what I could earn and I think this realization came when in one month I invoiced what I was earning in a year as a doctor didn't they think you were your grandmother reincarnated and she grew up in a village in India and didn't have access to education and that was a big regret of hers so I was given you know the best education that money could buy got an MD and a PhD it's like over compensation and it wasn't really

necessarily what I ever wanted thank you so much giving me so much to think about what a wonderful conversation what a wonderful ray of sunshine and light you are in the world I'm so excited to see your your career continue to evolve and touch and help so many one people um all of your work is incredible you've got your podcast coming up as well, which I think everyone's going to be super excited to hear about because if it's anything like this conversation, it's going to be of tremendous, tremendous value. When is that going to be out?

It's launching on October 4th, but season one is already available to listen to if people haven't listened to it already. Reinvent Yourself with Dr. Tara. Yeah. Which is the second season, which is in that second season you're aiming to do a lot of the ancient wisdom yeah stuff so exciting really really excited to hear

that so october 4th we'll look out for that thank you so much for your time um thank you dr tara swart there's actually the word art in your name oh that's isn't there but there is have you ever noticed that no okay well i'm excited for our next conversation and to hear about how you've pursued that creativity because it's certainly within you um and it's such a wonderful honor to have met you today and to learn from you thank you so much thank you Thank you.