The Liz Moody Podcast - Neuroscience Hacks For Creating Your Dream Life with Dr. Tara Swart Bieber

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

I’m so excited to welcome Dr. Tara Swart Bieber to the podcast. Dr. Swart is a neuroscientist, psychiatric doctor, senior lecturer at MIT Sloan, and visiting senior lecturer at Kings College, London. She’s also the author of best-seller The Source: The Secrets Of The Universe, The Science Of The Brain, which now has translations in 38 different global territories, and the host of the podcast Reinvent Yourself with Dr. Tara. As an advisor, she’s worked with leading companies such as Samsung, Sony, BBC, LinkedIn, KPMG, Schroders, and many more. Dr. Swart is most known for using the science of neuroplasticity to empower people to manifest their dream lives. On this episode, we talk about:  what neuroplasticity actually means + how you can harness it to transform your life why, from an evolutionary perspective, we get wiser with age the science behind why vision boards actually work + how to make the most effective one, according to research how to figure out your positive qualities & actually internalize them how manifestation works, from a neuroscientific perspective + how to do it the most effectively  how to figure out what you want in life  why your manifestations or vision boards aren’t working (and how to fix it) the 5 best ways to support your brain health daily neuroplasticity hacks for: taking risks, building resilience, relieving stress, tapping into your intuition & being more creative  and so much more!  We would LOVE to hear from you any thoughts, reactions, or takeaways you have as you’re listening, so definitely screenshot and tag me @lizmoody and Dr. Swart Bieber @drtaraswart on Instagram.  To join the Healthier Together Podcast Club Facebook group, go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/healthiertogetherpodcast. Stock up on Healthy Convo Co decks now for the holidays at healthyconvo.co!  This episode is sponsored by AG1 by Athletic Greens. Visit athleticgreens.com/healthiertogether and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today.  This episode is sponsored by Paleovalley. Head over to paleovalley.com and use the code LIZM for 15% off. This episode is sponsored by Thrive Market. Go to thrivemarket.com/healthiertogether to join Thrive Market today and get $80 in free groceries. This episode is sponsored by Seed. You can get 15% off your first month's supply of Seed's DS-01™ Daily Synbiotic by going to seed.com/daily-synbiotic and using the code LIZMOODY.  Healthier Together cover art by Zack. Healthier Together music by Alex Ruimy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the healthier together podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I'm a best-selling author and long-time journalist. This podcast is all about helping you live your healthiest, happiest life, whether we're getting raw, honest tips for up-leveling our relationships, hearing a death duelist perspective on navigating grief, or diving into the research on how the heck to make friends as an adult. And yes, those are all real episodes, so if any of those topics sound good to you, scroll on back in the archives. Today's episode is all about harnessing the power of neuroscience to create the life of your dreams.

I'm going to be completely honest. I've always been somewhat skeptical of vision boarding and manifestation and things like that. They felt a little out there and also dangerously close to saying that when people have bad things happen in their lives, it's their fault, which I absolutely hate. And we definitely get into that in this episode. But Dr. Tara Swart-Berber completely changed my mind. First of all, her credentials are amazing. She is a neuroscientist. She's a psychiatric doctor. She's a senior lecture at MIT Sloan, a visiting senior lecture at King's College London. She has basically a top-level neuroscience background and a top-level medical background, and she was really able to explain to me for the first time the science behind how our thoughts can help create our reality. And importantly, why negative realities aren't the result of negative thoughts. I came away from this interview feeling so empowered and excited to go after my biggest and I hope you feel that way too. We get into what neuroplasticity actually means and how you can harness it to transform your

life. Why, from an evolutionary perspective, we actually get wiser with age. The science behind why vision boards actually work, plus how to make the most effective one, according to research, how to figure out your positive qualities and actually internalize them, how manifestation works from a neuroscientific perspective, plus how to do it the most effective way, how to figure out what you want in life. this is really important if we're trying to manifest an action board and vision board things. We need to know what we want so we can go after them.

Why your manifestations or vision boards aren't working and how to fix it. The five best ways to support your brain health daily. Neuplasticity hacks for taking risks, building resilience, relieving stress, tapping into your intuition and being more creative and so much more. Tara and I would both love to hear your thoughts as you're listening to the episode. So definitely screenshot and tag us both on Instagram. I am at Liz Moody and she is at Dr. Tara Swart. You can also pick up her brilliant bestselling book, The Source, The Secrets of the Universe,

the Science of the Brain, wherever books are sold. And you can listen to her new podcast, reinvent yourself with Dr. Tara, wherever you get your podcasts. If something from this episode resonates with you and I have a very strong feeling that it will, please share it with someone in your life whom you think would benefit. We get into so many important and actionable tips for creating a life that you love. and I think we can all think of some people who might need to hear this as a pick me up going into 2023. And if that person is you, I hope you walk away from this episode feeling empowered to dream

up your best life and actually go after it. Thank you so much to everyone out there who continues to send links to family members and friends and coworkers. It is so, so appreciated and it's 100% the best way to support the show. And before we get into the episode, I want to quickly remind you to grab your healthy ConvoCodex ASAP so you can use them for all of your holiday celebrations this year. We launched three brand new games. We have our launch year together game, which is R-rated. It makes any dinner party or couples night or a bachelorette or girls trip. Way more fun. It would be perfect for New Year's Eve, by the way, so much fun. And you can drink or not drink. We really designed it so you could have a sober curious time or you could use it with

alcohol. Either way, it is just as fun. We have our working together game, which is meant for everything from Zoom meetings to mentorship sessions to happier happy hours. And then we have our We're All In This Together deck, which is a perfect companion deck to this episode. It's a journaling prompt deck that's actually designed to change the direction of your life. And it is a must have as we're heading into the new year. So head to Healthyconvo.combo.co to get your hands on them before we sell out. Again, that is Healthycombo.com.com. This is, sadly, our last Healthier Together episode of 2022.

We're going to be taking a little break just for the last two weeks of December, but we will be back the first week of January with a series where the world's best doctors break down the health impacts of alcohol. And we answer all of your questions about how to navigate the social elements of being a little bit more sober curious. So get excited for that. I am so excited to share it. And to all of my beautiful H.T. fam members, whether you joined our community this year or

you've been around for a while, I am so, so, so grateful to have you here. It is an absolute honor that you choose to spend your time with me learning and growing and laughing. And there is not one single day that I forget that. So thank you for being here. It has been an amazing 2022. And I cannot wait to see what's next in 2023. All right, let's get right into it with Dr. Taras Wart Beaver. Dr. Taras Wart Beaver, thank you so much for joining me today. I was telling you before we got on that I'm just so impressed by the breadth of your knowledge you know about so many things in so many different arenas. I feel like if you understand the brain, then you can apply it to lots of different arenas.

Let's start off with, can you explain what neuroplasticity is as if you were explaining it to a five-year-old? Like, what is happening in our brains and why are they even set up to work that way? I love the way you said as if you were explaining it to a five-year-old, because if I was explaining it to a five-year-old, I would have, I think you call it silly putty, where you call it plasticine and I would make it into the shape of a brain and I would just show them how you can squidge it and then make it grow. But if I was just going to explain it in words, I would say that it's the ability of the brain to change and grow throughout life at any age, any stage, any mindset. But there are some obvious bursts of time like zero to two when babies go from being completely

helpless and vulnerable to walking, talking, sometimes several languages, able to able to. to control their bowels and bladder. And then in the teenager, there's a lot of pruning, so you kind of sophisticate the brain ready for adult life, more about understanding emotions and sexual behavior and socialization. And that actually carries on until we're about 25, quite actively. We're like a sponge that's just learning and changing and growing all the time. But from 25 to 65, you have to put in a little bit more effort to keep your brain flexible.

What happens after 65? You can do things after sort of late 30s, early 40s that can help to stave off any of the decline that can happen in things like memory. The typical patterns are remembering names and faces, remembering the sequence, the order in which social events happened, that can become a bit harder. But actually, I don't really ask people to focus on that. I say that your wisdom and intuition massively grow at that time and it's really great to use that. And it's kind of to do survival because at that age, you wouldn't necessarily be physically strong enough or quick enough to escape from a predator. So that's why our wisdom and judgment gets so honed at that age.

That's so interesting. So at different points in our life, we're essentially wanting to lean into different things that our brain might be more adept at doing. That's a beautiful way of putting it. And I think there can be a plateau, 25 to 65. And that's why in the modern world, that's such an important time to not just do what you're good at all the time, but try to challenge yourself to learn new things. And a lot of your work focuses on how we can harness the powers of neuroplasticity to really transform our lives in these incredibly positive directions. I would love if you could just kick us off with maybe a few of your favorite stories of the power of neuroplasticity in action. Well, I'll put it in a few ways. One is that I take on a new learning

every year just for the reasons of neuroplasticity. So I've learnt several languages, I've learned a musical instrument, I've re-learned tennis, I've applied it to more intangible things like my general level of happiness, but the biggest thing that I've applied it to, which I think you know is manifestation. So bringing into my life the things that I want professionally and the examples of things I can give you. I mean, I cannot tell you, I must have tens of thousands of DMs from people who read my book who got engaged, got married, got pregnant, started up their own business, changed their health, whether it was just physically what you look like or something kind of deeper than that, wrote a book, launched a podcast, I mean, you know, traveled to a place that

they'd always wanted to earn a certain amount of money. I mean, these are the most common examples. And the funniest one is my friend who is a yoga teacher who was probably planning to have a baby in a couple of years time and was planning that year to get maybe a place where they could have a room for a nursery and get that ready. So she'd actually put a picture of a cradle in the center of her vision board. And I got a slightly accusative phone call one day saying, I'm pregnant and I wasn't planning for that to happen this year. And it's because I put the cradle in the center of the action board. And you never told me before that where you put it is so important. Okay, wait. So let's get into like vision boards. And you call them action.

board. So first of all, let's start there. A lot of people know vision boards as vision boards. Why do you call them action boards? It's exactly the same thing. But the reason I do that is because for too long, there has been this idea that you can sit at home and create a fantasy ideal life and just do nothing and wait for it to come true. And based on the neuroscience, I'm not a proponent of that attitude. I mean, I think there are some incredible stories of people who visualize things and checks are fallen out of the sky or whatever, but I feel like it's actually just better for you and your own brain and your sense of agency and your belief that you can do more in the future. If you can show yourself that this is what I did to make this happen. So you would create the images exactly the same

as a vision board, but it would have to be connected to you taking action to make those things come true. And what's the science behind why an action board would work? So, Vision boards and visualization, I can talk to you about the science of them. The way that they work is through three brain processes called selective filtering, selective attention and value tagging. Selective filtering is because we are bombarded with so much information all the time. I mean, 100 years ago, we were bombarded with too much information for our brain. But if you read the LA Times, the whole thing today, you would receive more information.

than someone did in their entire lifetime 100 years ago. So just to give you an idea of the exponential rise in how much we're overloaded. So our brain has become very good at filtering out things that aren't relevant to our survival. For example, you're not aware of your clothes on your body all day because you don't need to be. But the brain is still very much focused on your survival. It's not really thinking, what could I do to thrive and massively become successful and take lots of risks? your brain doesn't really want you to do that. It can help you to do that, but you have to prime it. So by creating a vision board or visualising something every day, you're priming your brain to

not filter out the things that it considers not essential to your survival. So you're telling it, these are things that I want to thrive in life. Then the selective attention is that you are more likely to notice the things that will lead you to whatever your goals for manifestation are. And value tagging is what's behind those two processes in both the logical and emotional systems of the brain. The order that the brain says, these things are important in my life. Now, if we didn't prime it with a vision board, then it would make that decision automatically, and you wouldn't even be conscious of it. And the logical system tends to override the emotional system. So it'll be very important, but basic things like food on the table, roof over my head,

clothes on my kids. And the emotional system is more like your dreams, your desires, your manifestation goals. So you're essentially just putting them higher up in the order of what your brain values and then filters in and you pay attention to. I was going to ask about that because you said our brain isn't necessarily tending towards these things that we need to. thrive to live our best lives. And I'm like, does our brain even care if we thrive? Like for the perpetuation of our species, we just need to literally stay alive to procreate. And that's it. Like our brain doesn't care if we're happy. And it seems like actually in a lot of ways our brain doesn't even want us to be happy because we have negativity bias and things like that.

Yeah, you're so right. And you've put that really well. And it's all to do with survival. And yes, survive long enough to reproduce. That is the basic thing. And in the modern day it is more important to be happy and not have mental health problems, but they weren't even a thing when we lived on the savannah and we walked barefoot in nature and we stared at stars in the sky and sat around the campfire and had quality time with our tribe. Now it's very easy to go through a day, a week, a month and not really have done many of those things. And even though that negativity bias doesn't necessarily serve us, it's still very strongly there It's been in our species for so long.

And it is important. We do need to, like we needed to escape from predators, we need to keep ourselves psychologically safe now, which is that you keep your job, you keep your relationship, you keep your health. But just the nature of how you get the best out of those things is more than the basic survival. So you could meet somebody and procreate with them

and maybe even cohabit with them. That's not really enough for us anymore. We want to have positive, meaningful relationships with emotional regulation and care of the children in a mindful way. It's just different. And although we can prime our brain to filter things in a different way and the brain is able to cope with the demands of all the information, which is so different to cave times, some of the fundamental things about the way that the brain works haven't really changed that much in millennia. So the value tagging is essentially you telling your brain. brain. Like, I know you don't care if I wake up feeling satisfied and fulfilled every day, but I actually want you to hierarchize that differently, and I want you to care. Yeah, there's that, or there's another way

I would put it, which is, I know that I have the means to get enough food to survive. I know that I have a safe place to sleep and kind of cleanse my brain overnight. So the things that I would like more than those basic things that I already have to survive are this, this, this and that. And then what was the word selective? The selective filtering and selective attention. Is that when you didn't know a word or you didn't know about a certain thing? And then all of a sudden you learn that word and you see it everywhere. That's selective filtering happening. That's selective attention. Yeah. I've had that happened like a zillion times. We were looking for cars and all of the sudden I like saw the car that we were looking at everywhere. And I was like, oh, interesting. Was it always there? That's just what we're

paying attention to. So are there dues and don't of creating an effective action board? Like you said with your friend, she was placing stuff in the middle and perhaps putting too much weight on that, that weight that she wasn't ready for at that moment. But what are our do's and don'ts here? I would say there are parameters rather than do's and don't. So you can split it into sections like health, relationships, work, travel, but you don't have to. You can give importance to certain placement, but you have to tell yourself what that is because I could make one and it could not mean the same thing to you. So I'm quite careful about what I put across the bottom because I feel like that's the foundation of my year. And then I'm obviously also careful about what's at the top,

because that feels like a top priority. For me, it's just very esoteric thing, but on the left-hand side is more likely to be about love because that's where your heart is. And then central also seems important for a different reason. But for me, I would most likely put home things in the centre, because that's kind of the center of, you know, everything else and more likely to put travel around the outside. Then there's things like, do you cram the board full, you know, so that there's no space or do you leave space? And what does that mean to you? Is it the feeling of my life's really busy or I have mindful time in my life or is it I'm leaving a bit of space for magic because maybe I don't know everything that I want this year? I think the intention behind it is really important.

So in that respect, however you do it, would be fine. as you know what it means where you place things and why you've made them touch each other or be far away from each other, that kind of thing. And then I've heard you say that you recommend beginners start with physical action boards, but you personally do yours on Pinterest? I do a mixture. So during the pandemic when I had more time and wanted to be more creative, I did a really big one on, you know, glued it all down, spent ages looking through magazines. We don't always have the luxury of that time. I still think the physical ones are the best. But with the digital ones, you can have them as your screen save or you can have them somewhere on your phone.

So you can look at them more throughout the day. But you do have to remember to do that. Whereas if there's one in your house, then like, for example, by your bed, you're naturally going to see it at least when you wake up and when you go to bed. And how specific should we get? Like, should we be writing down dollar amounts of wealth that we hope to achieve? Should we be putting a baby specific? Like, what level of specificity are we looking for? Yeah, so if you want a baby, I would definitely put a baby.

When I started doing it, which was when I was starting up my business, I would put specific numbers for money each year. And then I got to a point where I felt like manifestation was happening really well and that maybe I didn't want to limit it. So I would just put something that represented abundance. So I think, again, that could be to do with the stage of life that you're at or just your preference. But if you've got specific goals, because you're starting up a business, I would put

specific amounts. And I've heard you talk about the difference between visual stimuli and text-based stimuli in terms of a vision board. Can you speak to that a little bit? Yeah, I've actually opened up my thinking about that a lot more because some people do so well with lists. And now I've thought about, you know, let's say you're dyslexic or you're not very visual, then why not record something and just listen to it every day? So I think using your senses, one of the reasons I say make a physical board is because then you've used your hands to make it as well. So, there's more of a tactile connection to it. But I think either of visual representation, a list, I've done lists in the past as well. I've never tried the auditory version, but I think that could

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Right now our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. That's 15% off at masterclass.com slash Liz Moody, masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. The number one rule of habits is to make the things that you want easier and the things that you don't want harder. Yet so many of us want to eat healthier, but so few of us actually take the steps to make eating healthier easier. That's where Marley Spoon comes in. What I love about this company and what's different than all of the other companies out there that are doing like stuff in the same arena is that you can customize your choices based on the effort that you want to put in.

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We're talking like chicken Milanese with a crunchy cucumber arugula salad or everything. bagel salmon with truffle chive potatoes. My favorite recent meal was the creamy lemon chicken tray bake. I had one of those moments where I looked at my plate and I was like, wait, I made this and so quickly, like so easily. It's just so little effort for so much reward. Marley Spoon just makes eating well feel easy instead of stressful and honestly that is everything. This new year, fast track your way to eating well with Marley Spoon. Head to marlyspoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. That is right, up to 25 free meals with Marley Spoon. That is Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody. So remember to get the offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25

free meals. And the goal is really just to get clear about what you actually want in your life so that you can activate those processes of tuning into where that occurs in your life, essentially. Yeah, that's always what it was, but during the pandemic or post-pandemic, I'm getting more messages from people saying, I don't really know what I want. And what I've said to them is maybe try to represent a feeling of how you would like your life to be. But actually, the more I have conversations with people like you, the more I realize that this is more of an issue now that people are really struggling to know what they want. So I always said being clear on that is super important.

And yes, if you are clear on what you want, then you're providing the video. visual cues for your value tagging to get you there. But I'd also really like to say at this kind of time that it's okay if you're not really clear on what you want, like either keep searching for images or just represent a feeling or just actually, you know, make your neuroplasticity journey that you're going to feel clearer about what you want. That could be almost like the pre-part of it. That's really interesting. And again, it's not like you need to put a universal symbol of like, I don't know what I want on your board. It's more just like you need to be clear that you want to know what you want.

And that's what that symbol means to you, correct? And that you'll be open to it because I was actually having a conversation with someone on my podcast where she said, and then I said I felt the same, that we felt like we could just have a blank piece of paper for 2023, but that's quite anxiety-inducing for people who've always had goals and been very ambitious. For me, I do feel uncomfortable about that, but I would say, okay, this is a new challenge for me. Like, it's okay to not know what you want.

maybe it's just about being open to things that come to you because I've been doing them for 15 years. So maybe it is time for a change for me or maybe it's to do with the stage of life that I'm at and I can't really see where the next path will be yet because possibly there's going to be a really big change. And so just being kind to yourself and giving yourself a bit of time. It doesn't have to be done always at New Year's or on your birthday or whatever. It can be done three months into the year. Do you recommend it be like an annual practice though? think once a year is a nice cadence for it? Yeah, I do. I do because usually there are things on it

that you have more control over that you can manifest quite quickly. And then there's usually things, the more emotional things like love and romance that can take longer. So you do need to give yourself some time. And I have had times because I'm very open about mine with my friends where I remember once, I think it was 2015, December, and my friend who's a professor of neuroscience at UCL, so not really into vision boards, which I think just finds what I do quite interesting, said, well, you said you were going to find husband number two and you haven't. But, you know, I met him in February 2016, so that one took a little bit longer than a year. That's okay. What would you say to somebody who's like, well, I made a vision board last year and nothing

happened off of it or I did it the year before. Like, I've done this practice before. It hasn't done anything for me. It must not work. I did actually have someone say that to me recently, but I remember when I was doing a lot of press for The Source in 2019 that I spoke to a journalist and I said, I've never heard anyone say that they did a vision board and it didn't work. And then I kind of held my breath because I thought, what if she says, well, I did one and it didn't work. But actually she said, I know I did one once and it was amazing. So I think mostly there's a very high success rate. When people DM me and say, I did one last year, none of it came true. I've been trying to manifest the same thing for years. It's not happening. I'm getting so depressed. What should I do?

I do ask them to preferably work with someone else if they can, even if it's just a friend, to really work out whether the things you're putting on your board are really aligned in your head, your heart and your gut. So, you know, logically makes sense for your life. Emotionally, you have a huge amount of desire for and intuitively you feel that it's the right thing for you. Because there's a lot of societal pressure and parental expectation and religious expectation and the things that school taught us and that sometimes, unfortunately, make us put things on there that we think we want and that all our peer group are doing, but may not actually necessarily be what our soul really desires.

What would happen in that circumstance? Why would that stop from a neuroscientific? perspective, the efficacy of an action board. In the book, I wrote about some of the concepts that would lie behind your brain being able to feel and think and act in the way that's going to bring those things into your life. And the first one is related to the negativity bias that you talked about. So it starts with abundant thinking. If your level of self-worth or deservingness is so low that you don't think you deserve to find a wonderful partner and have a really nice freelance business, then that lack of deservingness is going to be a barrier for you. So abundant thinking.

And then I talked about deep emotional desire. Neuroplasticity and manifestation are hard work physically. You are changing pathways in your brain. It's not, oh, I have a thought of this goal. You have to work very hard to get in the right mindset to achieve that goal, to be brave enough to go out there and do the things that you'll need to do to make it come true. And a lot of psychological work goes on in the background where we can feel like nothing's happening and we want to give up. So to keep your motivation through that difficult period, which, you know, then there's a tipping point where you build up enough neurons and you've got this new pathway and you're out there networking or dating or whatever it is, that requires what I call magnetic desire, which is an emotion that is so strong that you will keep going when other people feel like giving up. And then patience is part of it too, the desire and the patience. So both the forward momentum and the not giving up. And then there's another two parts which are harmony and universal connection. So it can't be from a competitive sort of scarcity mindset where if that happens for Liz, then it's not going to happen for me.

Or I want to do something that's going to make it harder for Liz to be able to get the same thing because I've taken the lion's share of it. That can't be part of it. It's got to be good for everyone and in keeping with the order of the tribe or succeeding and doing well. When you say like we can't be having these jealous thoughts or it can't be something that maybe society has told us that we should want, but maybe we don't feel aligned with that. Is that where neuroplasticity comes in from another perspective? Because it's like, oh, we have these thoughts, but we can rewire, reprogram and change them to make the life of our dreams available to us. Liz, you're so smart. I just love speaking with you. So yes is the answer to that. And I think, you know, the way I would put that really practically is that you get to a

certain age where should is no longer a word that should be in your vocabulary. So that's the things that were expected of you by your parents as a child or by school or in your profession. And obviously for me, that was like a very big change moment where I literally woke up one day in my mid-30s and thought I never chose to be a doctor, I didn't choose to live in a certain way. So what do I actually really want to do? And am I going to go out there and actually live in the way that I want to be? It's not like such a moment for everyone. For some people, it's more of an evolution. But absolutely, you can use neuroplasticity to rewire old ways of thinking that aren't serving you anymore when I was doing a lot more coaching before the pandemic. The question I would ask is, what are you still fighting for that you don't

need to fight for anymore that you've actually got because we're so bad noticing our accomplishments, we just immediately move on to the next goal. Sometimes it can feel like life is always a struggle, but it doesn't always have to be. And it isn't always, but sometimes we just haven't caught up with that. Do you have any advice for somebody who might be looking to identify more of those shoulds, more of those societal messages in their lives? And then also do you have any neuroscience hacks for beginning to reprogram that messaging so then we can get into the larger dreams? The first answer to that is journaling. I mean, it's such a simple, obvious answer, but if you write down the way that you think, the emotions that you experience, the way that you make your

decisions, is it more logical, is it more intuitive? How did it pan out based on whether you went with your gut or you went with your brain? And reading over it. So journaling itself is great, but the biggest thing I found was reading back over it and just seeing myself writing the same things over and over again, like not learning until I saw it in my own handwriting. Oh, wow, I didn't go with my intuition again, and I should have because now I can see with hindsight what happened. And definitely I noticed patterns of emotional processes

that were just the same over and over again. That was really, really eye-opening. And then things like writing a list of my accomplishments and golden moments, writing them into my journal so that if I felt like, oh, this isn't going to work out for me, I could go back and look at those and think, I didn't think any of those were going to work out for me, but they did. And obviously, gratitude journaling as well. And making that more about your internal resources like your creativity, your vulnerability, your resilience, rather than things like my friends, my travel, you know, sort of external

things. And can you speak to why that is? It was either Samantha Borence, Boardman or Susan David on the podcast. They talked about how we cope with stress in a completely different way if we believe we have the resources to deal with stress. Is that the same thing that you're talking about? Yeah. I would say that when I changed my gratitude journaling from things in my life, my external life that I was grateful for, to tools inside me that I was grateful for, which I did after my first big stress, which was getting divorced, it definitely gave me a feeling of whatever life throws at me next, I know that I have these resources to be able to deal with it better than I did the first time. Unfortunately, in life, and we've all seen this particularly recently,

there can be things that break you and that we're trying to make sure there's a lot more help out there for people if that happens. But before anything like that happens, thinking of all the stresses that you've been through as ways that have helped you to build resilience and understand what you're coping, you know, mechanisms are and how they've worked and how you can bring them into your life again. I also used to have a list of things to do if you're feeling down or like things aren't going to work out. And for quite a long time, I used to have to go and look at the list when I felt like that. And then eventually it got to the point where the list was in my head, so I didn't need to go and actually look in the journal. What was on your list?

Eat a square of dark chocolate, take a bath, call a friend, read a magazine, go for a walk. those are the five that I can remember. I think I had 10, but those are my go-to ones, I would say. And when you're doing your gratitude practice, are you doing that in your journal? Like, is there a benefit to writing that down? So neurologically, the benefit to writing it down is that you're writing, which is using one part of your brain, you're reading what you've written, so you're using another part of your brain. And if you then also say it out loud, that's even better because then you're also articulating it and hearing it. So it's almost like you're giving brain and say a message four times. So what does your gratitude practice look like and your journaling

practice? Are you doing it in the morning or you do it in the evening? Are you combining those into one event? Some days I just do 10 things I'm grateful for. That's my minimum. And some days I have a huge urge to write in the journal pages and pages. Sometimes it's just noticing emotional things that happened and writing it down so that I can see if there's a pattern. I wouldn't really describe myself as a spontaneous person, but I don't have a fixed time for things like that. I kind of just do it if I feel like it. But I want to go back and say, when I started it, it was an everyday practice. And even then, I don't think it was a fixed time in the day. But like with the vision boards, I always did the full, get the magazines, cut out the pictures, kind of take a few days to do it,

keep it somewhere visible. And then you just get a bit more like, I know how it works for me, so I can be a bit looser with the instructions. And I would say, it was the same with journaling. I did it properly the first few years and now I kind of do it more when I feel there's something that I'd like to record in case I forget it and don't notice a pattern. This might be a little bit of a weird question, but I feel like in this day and age, we've internalized so much negative messaging that it can almost be hard to sit down and draw on our positive qualities. And I was wondering if you could just give us a few more examples of the like, I have resilience, I have courage, those types of things for somebody who might have a

hard time tapping into those sides of themselves. Yeah, and I think it is really hard if you're already in a negative thought spiral to suddenly say, I have resilience and I have courage, even if you've written it down before. So I would say two things for that. One is that you create your own positive affirmation. So if there's a particular negative thought that you keep having, try to dig down and understand what the belief must be that's underlying that thought that keeps recurring for you. And then whatever it is, like, I'm not good enough or I'm not smart enough or I don't have enough time or I don't have enough money, just create the opposite statement and use that as your mantra and use that every day. Every time you have that thought,

replace it with the mantra immediately. And the other one, which I really love, is identifying with a powerful icon. So it actually comes from Tibetan Buddhism. And it was originally about identifying with a deity, a Buddhist deity, or a Hindu goddess or something. But these days, you can pick someone that you really admire. It might be an actress. It might be a historical figure. It might be someone in your life. And basically sit down and think about all the qualities that they possess that you really admire. Like imagine them sitting in front of you and think, these are all the things I love about Liz. And then just do like a meditation where you embody those characteristics yourself. What is that doing on a neurological level to you? I think the most basic thing that it's

doing is actually often making you realize that you have those qualities already. You can see them in other people, but you can't see them in yourself. And then it's that whole thing about even having an example of somebody, but also believing about yourself. Like it's the four minute mile. Like when that barrier was broken, several other people managed to do it in the next two or three months, but when we thought it was impossible, no one was doing it. And so I always say, think of an example of a person like you who's achieved the thing that you want to achieve, or maybe you've already achieved something similar and keep reminding yourself, oh, well, I did that, so, you know, I could do this. And be very mindful of that negative self-talk and do all the physical

things that you need to do to keep your brain and body in good shape, get enough sleep, eat as healthily as you can, make sure you're not sedentary, drink enough water, do some meditation or walking in nature because even if you just do like five minutes of some of those things, they're micro habits that put your brain in a better condition. If your brain is in a good environment, you're less likely to think negatively. If you skipped meals, if you didn't sleep much last night, of course you're more likely to think, oh, that's never going to happen for me or I'm not as smart as Liz. But when you're in the best possible physical state,

then you could sit down and do that meditation and actually feel like, yeah, actually I do, I have those qualities, so maybe not all of them, but I have some of them already. And actually, I want to add in another exercise because it's just such a nice one. I call it caring for the animal. And you can do it in the bath or shower

or like when you're moisturising your body. And I always start at my toes. And I literally, as I'm touching, each part of my body, thank that part of my body for what it does for me. So, you know, it could be your feet for walking you around all day, but it could also be something like my skin for being the physical and psychological boundary of my body and my hair for being so dark and shiny. And if you do that, I promise you, you will feel like you don't need to wear any makeup that day. You will feel like a million dollars. So it's usually a good one to do if you're

starting to just feel run down about these, you know, things that you're not achieving or that you think you can't do or just it isn't working for you. What is the science behind why an affirmation like that would work? Because actually the scariest thing to the brain is uncertainty or anything new. So often that feeling happens when we are about to like take a bit of a leap and we keep thinking, no, I can't do this or I don't know what it's going to feel like. And so either visualising it, and further than visualising it, mental rehearsal, but also telling yourself, I can do this, I have this quality, this is going to happen, just breaks down that bias that

your brain has to keep you safe. You're telling your brain that it's not unsafe for me to go networking, whatever you have to say to yourself to like take that first step. And usually when we do that, because of the safety bias of the brain, we find that the thing that we were scared of is actually not as bad as the being scared of what it's going to be like. So full disclosure, I am somebody who has struggled a lot with like hypochondria and with anxiety. So on one hand, when I hear these stories about how our beliefs can shape our reality, I find them incredibly inspiring and wonderful. And then on the other hand, I'm like, do these underlying negative beliefs,

that I have, are these shaping my reality in a negative direction? Like, I have spent years as a hypochondriac telling myself that I'm not going to think myself into a negative health condition, but there's literally research of people thinking themselves into more positive health condition. So it's hard for me to balance that and for somebody who is not thinking the thoughts they want to think, how dangerous is that to them. Actually, the same professor of neuroscience who commented on my vision board. I remember once saying to him, I get a lot of psychosomatic pain. And when I get that, I think there's something wrong with me in whatever, like, you know, area of the body that it is. And he said, well, psychostomatic is still your brain

talking to your body. So, oh, a cool hypochondria, like similar. It's, yes, you're on high alert and it's not fun to feel like that all the time, but it's still your brain and your body talking to each other. So I think acknowledging that at first, because in a way, it's your brain trying to survive in the best possible way. It's your brain's trying to keep you safe, but it's kind of doing it too much. You know, it's kind of like a parent that hovers over their child a bit too much. It's you doing that to yourself. And so whenever you have a concern like that, I mean, one of the things to do obviously is to get it checked out medically so that you can be reassured. But the other one is to ask your brain, what are you trying to tell me and what do I need to do

to soothe you? Instead of thinking I'm a hypochondriac, I do think this is wrong with me, but it's probably just made up, actually like talk to it, give it some space to be acknowledged. And I definitely found with my, like the pain that I used to get that if I either breathed into that area or I got the reassurance medically that it wasn't anything terrible, it just disappeared immediately. And it's crazy to me that you could be in that much pain for so long. And then as soon as someone says, oh, no, that's definitely not cancer, it's just gone. I think that your mind is very powerful, but at times it can take over your body. And what you need to remember is how powerful your mind is and use that to make this better. You've got neuroplasticity

potential there waiting to be channeled in a different way? It really resonates because I definitely think my hypochondria is a result of childhood trauma and spending a lot of time as a child not feeling particularly safe. I just want to say in no uncertain terms, why can we manifest ourselves millions of dollars, our dream jobs, all of these things? But then if we have cancer, if we're struggling with infertility, if we have anything bad in our life, why is that not our fault? It feels like it has something to do with intentionality. It feels like it's like you're not sitting around and trying to create cancer. Is that it?

Yeah. Actually, I really love that point about intentionality and I probably may not have picked up on that myself. But I would say two things. The first one, which I think is really important, is that this idea that if you work to attract positive things into your life, that means it's your fault if negative things come into your life. Is it a man-made theory? It's not a fact. And secondly, I should smile a bit because like, okay, if you're a super powerful manifester, you might be manifesting millions of dollars, but I don't think most people are doing that. Otherwise, we'd all be doing it. I would preface all of that by saying, if you are

really spiraling in negative thoughts, if you've got terrible health anxiety, if you have feelings of being unworthy, then physiologically, that could cause some inflammation in your brain-body system. So I'm not going to say that it's okay to have negative thoughts and not address your health anxiety, for example. I mean, to me, it's down there as a neuro myth with saying that if you just visualize and create a fantasy, you can sit on your couch and do nothing and wait for it to happen. You can't do that. And equally, it's not your fault if something bad happens to you. Life is very complicated. So we shouldn't really even focus it on health. What if you had a car crash? Is that your fault?

I mean, that's nothing to do with how you're thinking. I think it's so important to be clear on that because that can create fear. And that's exactly what we don't want. We want to create trust and love in the brain to magnetize the things that we really do want. So would one part of that be the difference in your mind between a vision board and an action board, that you're not just sitting around and imagining stuff to make things happen in your life. if you're actually taking action about that. And on the negative side, if you're having these fears, you're probably not taking action.

So they're not going to come true in the same way that the positive things would. Yeah, absolutely. That's why I make that really important distinction between vision board and action board, because you have to take authority and responsibility and go and grasp the opportunities that you can. So equally, sure, if you smoke, you're more likely to get cancer. But if you sit at home thinking I might get cancer because it's in your family, that's not more likely to make it happen. Right. That makes sense. And then going back to the action board thing, I am curious, once you have your things on your vision board, how do you know what actions to connect them to?

Like if you're like, have a million dollars on there, how do you know if you should ask for a raise or quit or start your own company? And if you want to get married, but like dating hasn't worked out for years, how do you know what to do if the actions you've been taking haven't been manifesting the things? that are on your board. Yeah, I mean, you need to work that out. There's no easy answer to that. And you also need to be somewhat realistic. I mean, it's great to think about doubling your salary or whatever, but going straight from something that's way off a million dollars to a million dollars probably isn't the right way to do it, only because then you'll just reinforce that it didn't work. And I would rather you said $100,000 and see yourself achieve that quicker and then build it up over time. And I find that journaling is a good.

good way to say, okay, read back over my journal, whatever I've been doing wrong in the dating game, what could I do differently? But if you feel like you can't do it by yourself, well, that's where like a coach or a therapist or, you know, a kind of a friend who won't put their own agenda onto your situation who can just be a sounding board, it's always good, I think, to get another opinion as well. If you have headaches, allergies, brain fog, skin irritation, or you've been dealing with hormone issues, you are especially going to want to listen to this ad. Every single thing that I just listed has been linked to chemicals and household cleaners. One study found that regular use of cleaning sprays was associated with a lung function decline comparable to smoking 10 to 20 cigarettes per day.

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at BowlenBranch.com slash Liz Moody with code Liz Moody. That's Bullen Branch, B-O-L-L-B-L-B-Range.com slash Liz Moody, use code Liz Moody to unlock 15% off. Exclusions apply. So the ideas you're kind of looking at your action board with all of the visions of everything you want on it. And then that should kickstart you to be like, well, how am I creating these visions? How am I making these visions come true in my life? And then you take action from there.

Yeah, there's that. But there is also a slightly more passive version of it, which is that the fact that you're repeatedly exposing your brain to that imagery because of the things that we talked about like selective filtering, selective attention and value tagging, you are more likely to notice those opportunities in your life. And then the action part is that you then have to grasp them and do something about it. So it's proactively taking action, but then it's also priming yourself to notice when action opportunities are available. Exactly. If you're willing to take action, but you're not noticing stuff, then that's not going to work either. So you need to both notice

and grasp. And then you've talked very openly about the fact that your brain is this physical organ and we often separate we're like oh I should be able to wake up and not have slept well and not have eaten very well and we still expect to be able to feel great can you talk about some ways that we can support our brain from that physical sense sure but before I do I would just say to anyone that thinks that would you not fill your car up with gas and never take your car to be serviced at the garage and never clean your car. No. I am constantly getting in trouble with my husband for not filling the car up with gas and I don't know if there is a metaphor there that I should be examining on a personal level. Oh my goodness. So the way that I look at those things are rest,

fuel, hydrate, oxygenate and simplify. So rest is both adequate length and quality of sleep overnight, but it's also having some, you know, either napping or some actual like downtime scheduled into your day. And then fuel is what you eat and how regularly you eat. So you know the basics, the nutrition dense, mostly plant-based, healthy diet with the good fats and the hydrating foods. But I think it's a really particular issue for women of like missing meals and dieting and stuff like that. Hydrate is pretty often. obvious. It's just drinking enough water. The neurons that talk to each other through the synapses, they need hydration to actually, for those chemical and electrical messages to pass. So

hydration is really important for the brain. Oxygenation is, you know, it would be obvious to say it's exercise. And it is not being sedentary, but it's actually breathing properly. So if we're stressed, we tend to breathe shallow or just hold our breath quite a lot. So remembering to take deep breaths, having some kind of breath practice, having some tools to do something if you find that you are holding your breath or breathing very shallowly. And then simplify is both mindfulness practices like yoga and meditation, but also things like reducing unnecessary choices in your life. So choosing your outfit the day before so that in the morning when your brain's just woken up, it doesn't have to use up all that

brain power, meal planning, just bringing like more structure into your life. Your brain definitely likes that. Do you have any thoughts on Yoga Nidra or sort of the deep rest, non-napping type of rest that you can do during the day? I'm a big fan of Yoganedra. Yeah. Can you tell us why something like that would be so beneficial for the brain? Because we are used to being completely switched on and most of us know how to sleep, but we're not very much ever in that middle state of relaxed alertness where you're not

fully asleep, although you sometimes are in Yoganidra, but you're conscious, but you're very, very relaxed. That's a state that way too many of us have forgotten how to be in. That's so interesting. And then to the point of neuroplasticity, the more that you are able to practice being in that state, the more accessible that state will become to you. Yeah, because I have done yoga nidra in the past and I do like mindful cooking, mindful eating. And that comes from my culture. So I'm very lucky like, we have to eat mindfully. So it's very ingrained in my brain. And I'm a real people person. So paying full of attention. to the people that I love when I'm with them, not scrolling on my phone or thinking about work.

I've tried to bring all those, you know, almost like build a patchwork in my life that is lots of little examples of relaxed alertness. And I've, I've even worn heart rate variability technology and seen that like if I'm with certain people, my body is as if it's asleep. That's so interesting. Can you explain in brief what Yoga Nidra is just for anybody listening who's not familiar with the practice? So it's not yoga as you would think about it. but it's otherwise known as psychic sleep. And you usually are lying down and like wrapped in a blanket because your body temperature can drop quite a lot when you do it.

And it's at the most basic, it's a progressive relaxation of your body. So you could lie in bed. You can use it if you're having difficulty falling asleep and just relax your toes, relax your feet, you know, just work up your body. Again, the same professor of neuroscience. He's actually a sleep neuroscientist. He says most people don't get past their waist.

It's that effective. But you can also go to classes or my friend Beth Baers actually does recordings, which she shares for free, which you can listen to. It's just very relaxing and it just gets you into that state of physically almost being like as if you're asleep, but mentally just being very, very, very calm. And she actually says that it's a much more feminine, receptive form of meditation than, let's say, for example, transcendental meditation, which is quite active. I just love the idea. It's very resonant for me that like we run around. all day. We're like doing, doing, doing all day. And then we just are like, oh, okay, go to sleep.

And then you're asleep. And then there's no time in our lives that we're just awake, but we're relaxed, but we feel really calm and present and happy. And I love the idea of cultivating that state more. And I love the idea. I think one of the things I love so much about your work is that anybody can do it. They just need to do it more. Like we need to practice it. And the problem isn't that we're incapable. The problem is that we have been practicing essentially the opposite. Yeah, I learned even more about this during the pandemic when I kind of had to for myself and because of I was trying to help as many people as possible, that how many of my friends, when they go for a walk, also listen to a podcast? And actually what I said to some of them

was like, being is not going for a walk or listening to a podcast, it's actually doing nothing. And I think people feel so much shame and guilt about saying that they would do nothing. And thankfully, because I'm a neuroscientist, I can say that there are times where I just sit and do nothing and that's okay. It's the same as saying that you're not in the 5 a.m. wake up club, which I've never been in in my life. I'm like the biggest advocate away from the 5A. I'm like, we all have very unique chronotypes and chronological rhythms. like why are we all trying to force ourselves into this 5 a.m. thing to get like a little wellness pat on the back. I think it's ridiculous. I know. I mean, I was asked to comment on a big newspaper article on the benefits of waking up early. So I said to my family, obviously they're only asking me

because I'm a neuroscientist because then everybody that knows me knows they're not asking about me. And then it turned out that they weren't asking me because I was a neuroscientist. I was one of the people. every other person on there, which included Richard Branson, was, I wake up at five o'clock, I go for a run. I was like, I wake up at eight o'clock. Just to put a very fine point on it, because I do think I have a really hard time talking myself into doing nothing. And I think that a little bit more permission giving around, like in an ideal world, I would do nothing because it felt good. And I was like, yeah, I enjoy this. But I think I need to do nothing because I know it's good for me.

So can you just kind of, I don't know, talk me into the benefits of doing nothing briefly? I'll just repeat something that we talked about before, which was that our natural sort of evolutionary wiring included walking barefoot in nature, looking at the stars in the sky, sitting around the campfire, all of those mindful things. But what the neuroscience shows is that if you sit, not getting distracted into daydreaming, this comes back to the intention thing. So if you're sitting at your laptop and you find that often your mind gets daydreaming, that's not good. But if you sit and you allow your mind to wander, you move it from the control network, which is the, I can solve, you know, complex problems to the default network, which is the creativity network. Because I feel like what you were asking me is tell me why doing that would make me a better, a better, you know, podcast host. And the reason is that you would be activating a whole system of your brain that never really these days has time to be activated. And that's the thinking flexibly, seeing patterns that aren't necessarily obvious to everyone and like coming up with creative ideas.

And is that why intention is important generally because when you're doing things without intention, different parts of your brain are essentially being activated than when you do things with intention? Yeah. I mean, this is quite a relatively in the last one or two years thing that has been backed up much more by research that your brain knows the difference between whether you've done something on purpose or not, and it has a completely different hormone and neurotransmitter profile in your brain. That's so interesting. Okay, I want to play a little game where I'm just going to ask you for one neuroplasticity hack for a bunch of different life scenarios. Are you down? Yes. All right. What would be one neuroplasticity hack for somebody who wanted to take a big risk in

their life? Start by taking small risks and building up. And why does that work? Because the best way to sustain a new habit in your brain is by breaking it down into bite-sized chunks. And so if you take a small risk and it's fine, then you're going to be braver. So you build up by taking bigger and bigger risks till you get to the point where you're like, I can do this one. Oh, I love that. What would be one neuroplasticity hack for feeling happier on a daily basis? Understanding that you can learn to do that just like you can learn a language. and it's going to take the same amount of effort. So you are going to have to spend time like you would,

either using an app or getting language lessons, preferably every day, noticing and writing down something that made you happy that day. And also noticing and writing down a time that you could have said, oh, you know, isn't that flower beautiful, but you didn't. I love that. Relieving stress or anxiety in the moment when it happens. So there's two things.

It's one thing called the physiological sigh, which is like where you breathe in, but then you take a sharp and small intake of breath, and then you breathe out slowly and you repeat that three times. So what is that doing in your brain? So it's actually doing something in your lungs, but obviously then the effects of the oxygen has an effect on your brain. So your lungs start off as two big branches, but then they become smaller and smaller bubbles. And then they interface with the blood supply and oxygen goes throughout the body. And small bubbles are called alveoli. And taking that extra short intake of breath before you breathe out causes the alveolai to close and it releases more carbon dioxide from your system. And so then you're more oxygenated than buildup of carbon dioxide.

And being more oxygenated was one of your things that is just very supportive for the brain generally? Well, basically, the only two things that your brain uses are glucose and oxygen. So glucose isn't sugar. It's the breakdown products of a healthy diet and oxygen. Those are the two resources that your brain uses. It doesn't use anything out. Yeah, so that's one way to reduce carbon dioxide and build up oxygen. And the other one is, it's called the Half Salamander. They're both ways of stimulating your vagus nerve. And if you want to Google it, it's called vagal toning. And it's basically, you tilt your head, let's say to the right, but you look up to the left. And then you look down to the right, and then you tilt your head the other way, look up to the right,

and then look down to the left. But you do it, hold it for 30 to 60 seconds in each. And you do it. Hold it, hold it for 30 to 60 seconds in each position, it usually makes you yawn or swallow. And it just moves your whole nervous system from sympathetic, which is fright, flight, fight, to parasympathetic, which is rest and digest. And that aligns with what we've been talking about, which is that state of a relaxed alertness. Okay. One neuroprasticity hack for tapping into our intuition more. That's got to be journaling and reading over it. Every time you have a big decision to make, what's your intuition saying? What's your logic saying? Which one do you go with? How did that pan out? That's definitely how I honed my intuition. And the next one was going to be making a big decision.

And would you say to tap into your intuition more? Okay. What about building resilience? I do think that the gratitude list that relies more on your internal tools and resources, the external things. But another quick hack for that, if you like, is the cold water, showering or plunging followed by heating up in a sauna or hot bar. And is that because of the dopamine? It's because of heat shock proteins and dopamine and oxytocin, because immersing yourself in warmth afterwards, the message is that you inoculate your body with stress by the cold,

but then you demonstrate your brain, I can make myself feel better afterwards by finding a way to warm up. And so then if you get an emotional shock, your brain already has the message, I can make myself feel better afterwards. That's so interesting. I do more sauning. We have like a portable sauna, so that's more accessible to me.

But I've always wondered, I have a dream of having a cold plunge someday. I do cold showers now. But I've always wondered how to stack them together for maximum benefit. So you're saying do cold first. Do you have a length of time you recommend? They say 1530 to 60 seconds. And then do hot after so that you're telling your brain you're capable of healing, of comforting yourself.

Yeah. That's cool. I love that. What is one neuroplasticity hack for being more creative? Spending time doing nothing. And that's because we're activating the different part of our brain that's letting our mind intentionally wander. The default system of the brain, yeah. And then on the other side, if we need to feel more focused, if we need to be less distracted and actually accomplish something, is there anything we can do to our brain, our environment, to prime ourselves for that state? So what we tend to spend a lot of time doing is looking very closely at our phones and our laptops. So when the executives that I coach need help with that, I ask them to preferably go outside. But if you can't, you know, either stare at a leaf or the palm of your hand in very great detail for one minute, time it. And then look outside or as far away as you can at a huge building or tree and stare at that for one minute. And then you basically reset your brain. out of that, I've become so narrow focus that I can't think anymore. And you've like opened up your brain more to the what's around, like how we used to live in the cave. And then it's easier to focus again. What about learning something new as an adult, like a language or tennis?

Is there a way to make that feel less insanely hard? I mean, those things are hard. And you know, the harder it is, the more you're going to change your brain. And that's why that's the level of task that I would take on. So we want it to be hard in some ways. Yeah, but let's be very careful that we would say, if you're busy and stressed, don't take on a massive neuroplasticity learning. Find a time where maybe work or family isn't as demanding and do it then. And then just to kind of tie it all back together, when we're increasing our neuroplasticity generally by doing something like learning, that will have this cascading effect where we'll have

more neuroplasticity in all facets of our life and be able to experience all of the benefits of that. Well, the first thing you've done is just started to make your brain change more. So once it's changing more, it's definitely more open to other changes. At the very minimum, you see global brain benefits in your executive functions, which are the highest functions of the brain, like overriding your biases, regulating your emotions, thinking flexibly, solving complex problems. But if you just learn to language, you would not only get the benefits of, now I can speak Spanish, I can go to Mexico, you would have other benefits as well. And even if you, even if you then learned something really different like tennis, there's a transferable benefit, which is just

that your brain's more flexible. And having a more flexible brain does what for us, just in very clear terms? So it helps us to make decisions better. It helps us to think more creatively. It potentially kind of changes the threshold at which you might get symptoms of dementia. Like I said, really right at the start, the brain can start plateauing and even shrinking, actually in your 20s. But if you really start to force some new learning into your brain from your late 30s, early 40s, then basically keeping your brain younger. We love that.

This is the last one. What about somebody who's actively going through a challenging time? So I don't know if we want to build resilience in that moment, but like it should have been done. We're in the hard time right now. What should we do? So I experienced this during the pandemic, which is that every single thing that I had done to build my resilience and mindfulness for however many years, all of it helped me at the difficult time. And so it really made me think, when you're doing it in the moment and you think it's helping you now, don't forget that it's there to help you when you really, really need it. But I will quote some of Amishi Jha's research into mindfulness with the Marines, which is that, sure, it was better if people had been practicing mindfulness.

for a month before they went on to the battlefield. But the ones that only started when they were in active battle, they got benefits as well. So that was a very interesting finding because we didn't think that would be the case. So if you're going through a hard time now and you start meditation now, it will help you. Are there any other manifestation tips or tips for creating your dream life using neuroscience that you really love that you think the research really backs up? Well, the two that I want to say that they don't really have research. I think, I feel like I've told you all the research ones that were the ones that I've learned more recently are to leave some

space for things that you haven't been able to comprehend yet because you don't want to be limited by what your brain thinks you're capable of. So leaving something open for that, because your brain is so much more amazing than any of us think it is. And then kind of on the other side of the coin of that is be careful what you wish for. Because, neuroplasticity is just such an incredible tool for being able to change your life and everything from the way that you feel and think and behave to the things that you can bring into your life and like how much it can improve your relationships and how much it can improve your health. So basically all of the research behind neuroplasticity is so related to manifestation.

I'm already thinking about my vision board and I'm annoyed because I like the aesthetic of things like overlapping on it and it having that kind of like collagey look but I'm like oh I should leave the white space on it for dreams that I didn't even know were possible but I don't like how that looks as much but I think this is another thing like you're not filling your car up with gas you're like you're trying to make it all too like full and overlapping and actually I think it'd be such a great exercise for you to do 2023 with everything with space around it and it's so funny because what I say to myself constantly is like I want space, I want peace, I want calm, I want quiet, but then I sabotage myself at every turn in trying to get that. Including what you're seeing

on your vision board, because your vision board is not about aesthetics at all. We already have it calendared as like a company exercise we're going to do together and then I think I want to make it my phone background. That's important right too to have it somewhere that you actually like see it and access it every day. Yeah. And I think a really nice aesthetic is sort of I'm seeing like a of nine things, like lined up, like a grid, but with space around all of them. That's a nice aesthetic too. You're like, it can look really pretty, I promise. Like you're almost saying that from a life perspective too. Like your life can look really pretty with some space in it, you know? Exactly. Yeah. Can you just leave us with one homework assignment, something that we can all

finish listening and go do immediately to start to manifest the life of our dreams? I mean, the one thing I always say in answer to that is make an action board. And ideally you'd give yourself two days to finish it, you know, not two whole days, but like start it, double check that it's got everything that you want on it, is there anything that you haven't thought of that you need on it, leave it overnight in a childproof, windproof, cat-proof place and then actually stick it down and put it somewhere that you can see it. I think that is absolutely the biggest thing that you could do and it doesn't take that long. Of course, we've talked about other little things like affirmations and walking in nature.

nature, but to me, that is the game changer thing to do. I love it. Well, I'm going to talk all about all of your amazing accomplishments at the top of the episode, but if you want to talk about anything that you're working on, that you're excited about that you really want people to know about, I would love to hear from you. Thank you so much. My biggest neuroplasticity journey was just believing for decades that I am not a creative person. So in September 2022, I launched my new podcast, Reinvent Yourself with Dr. Tara, which is stories of neuroplasticity, incredible people that have changed their lives personally or professionally. And on October 26, we launched our piece of original music,

which I co-wrote with this incredible rock star, Austin Winkler, who used to be the frontman of Hinder. I mean, launching a podcast was great, really great, the first step to feeling like I was a creative person, but co-writing a song that's actually like being released is just beyond my wildest dreams. I would never have put that on a vision board, not by a million years. So that is my thing. I left some space for magic and something I could never have believed what happened for me has happened. I absolutely love that. It's just such an evidence of like how many times a day are we telling yourself like, oh, I'm not a creative person or I'm not this kind of person. And all we're doing is limiting ourselves. And also I think it's so important because to the point

of neuroplasticity, like maybe at one point you weren't as creative, but like we are changing all the time. And we need to leave room for that. You're so amazing. You're making me feel like there's nothing I can't do now. There's nothing you can't do. We got to just go fill our cars up with gas. Yeah. And then we'll be good to go. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. I really enjoyed this. Me too. Thank you for having me. You know I don't like to choose favorites, but wow, this episode will be one that I come back to when I need help getting out of a slump or I just need some inspiration to live my best possible life. I feel like I learned so much and it changed my perspective on so many things.

And I cannot wait to do my own action board for 2023 because I feel like it's going to be such a big year for me personally and professionally. You might have seen my little hints on Instagram. I can't wait to share more about what's coming up in 2020, specifically fall, 2023. If you make an action board, tag me in it on Instagram. I want to see what you put on it and I want to cheer you on. If you're new here, make sure that you're subscribed so you don't miss out on any future episodes. We have amazing ones coming up in January, including our brand new, very special series,

all about the health effects of alcohol and how to navigate a more sober, curious lifestyle, and an episode all about preventing burnout, which I think many of us could use. I am raising my hand. So subscribe, subscribe, subscribe so you do not miss out on anything. And make sure to head over to Healthycombo.com.com to get your hands on all three of our new conversation starting games, raunchier together, working together, and we're all in this together. That is our journaling prompt deck. You definitely need that one.

I promise you it will transform your 2023. And then we also have our original healthier together deck, which can be used in any situation to have the best conversation of your life with your family members, with your friends, with your partner, any situation. Those can all be found at healthycombo.co. Okay, I love you. Have a wonderful holiday. And I will see you in two weeks for our first episode of 2023.

When you think about strength and resilience, like your ability to feel energized, to recover well to stay strong as you get older. What do you think that actually comes from? Most people say working out or good nutrition, and yes, of course that matters. But there is a biological foundation underneath all of that that most people are completely overlooking. I have been diving deep into this lately with the team at timeline and what I've learned has genuinely shifted how I think about my own health.

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