Neuroscientist REVEALS How The Law of Attraction ACTUALLY Works | Dr. Tara Swart

Dr Tara welcome to the podcast a pleasure to have you here if people listen to this interview and they get a chance to step into your world what is possible for them when they understand the true power of neuroplasticity and they combine that with the power of source and manifestation so give us a little bit of an idea what's possible after this conversation so what I would say about visualization is that the way it works in the brain is if your brain has never seen or experienced something before it would consider it as a threat so when seeing or experiencing something for the first time there would be some fear involved with that and that would likely mean that your stress hormone levels would go up that then changes the blood flow around the brain and makes you less likely to take risks um because it wants to keep you safe so if you have visualized something whatever it is that you want then to your brain it's like it's experienced it before so it makes that first real event easier so I advise people to either create actual images in a collage like you know what we call a vision board or an action board or to regularly visualize the outcome that they desire to start to really tell your brain that it's already come true so that when it starts to happen you notice all the things about what it sounds like what it smells like what it feels like um and then to give gratitude for the fact that it's come true because gratitude is like the opposite of fear when you're in a state of gratitude of love and trust and joy and excitement you're releasing the bonding hormone oxytocin which makes you feel warm and open and it lowers your guard and allows you to take healthy risks I'm so glad that you start off with gratitude and by the way thank you so much for being here I super appreciate it I know you're highly in demand I find that gratitude to add another layer to what you said what you shared is that many people forget about how far they've come in life so far so we tend to focus a lot about what do I want to manifest and bring in from the future and great that's important and that's a big part of what today's conversation is going to be about but we forget that five years ago ten years ago there's things that we have in our life that we had been working on that we would have you know shouted from the top of the roof if we knew that we would have achieved that thing or brought into our life so I think loving the life that you have is that also part of training the brain and stepping into the power of manifestation that's so true what you've said and you put it really well which is that you know I like the way you said like five years even one year ago there might be things that you think if that ever happened it would be so amazing but when it happens we don't really tend to acknowledge it that much we you know when something like that happens we just think okay what's the next thing that I can try to manifest so there's a serious lack of acknowledging and celebrating you know the things that we've already achieved and the importance of that apart from just enjoyment in life is that the more evidence you can give yourself that you had a goal and you achieved it and the more understanding you have of how that worked in your brain what the circumstances were that made that come about it's obvious that that makes it more likely for you to achieve the next thing I often find with high Achievers especially a lot of people who are listening today are high Achievers in their life it feels like okay check I'm ready to move on to the next thing what does Celebration look like for you in your life right you have gone on so many podcasts and you've talked about different examples we'll share some of them today of manifesting in fact in fact I might even ask you what's something a year ago that you were putting attention on that has shown up in your life maybe today or in in the recent you know few weeks and what was a way that you solidify that in your brain and body by having even a small little moment of Celebration so what does Celebration look like and what is something that a year ago you wanted to bring in such great questions um so in my journal so journaling is an important way of of you know marking down a lot of these things that have happened but I have a separate section which is a list of accomplishments and achievements so when I'm feeling like nothing's manifesting at the moment you know there's something I really want but there just feels like there's an obstacle every time I try to make it happen I go back and look at my list of achievements some of them I've looked at frequently enough now that I can summon them to mind but when you feel like things aren't working out like I said the blood flow in your brain changes and it can actually go against you because to keep you safe it will say well don't take a risk don't try to get onto that podcast don't you know go to America and do you know whatever you've got planned stay at home it's safer so then when you go and look at this list of achievements you think of the times that you felt like that thing wasn't going to work out but then it did and so as you were saying a year ago I I can hardly believe that a year ago I hadn't even launched my podcast so I launched my podcast in September 2022. you're huge yeah and and it was quite a sudden decision because I've as as you mentioned you I've been working on creating um a TV show for quite a while yeah and then we came up with the brand of reinvent yourself with Dr Tara and TV shows don't happen overnight so it was kind of like that excitement of wanting to get that out there but knowing that it was going to take quite a long time sure I always saved writing the book it's like you're pregnant for a year but then you don't get a baby at the end of it because you have to wait till the book gets published um so launch the podcast in September 2022 and my my team the studio in the USA sent me this massive bouquet of pink flowers Pink's my favorite color and I love flowers so and I wasn't expecting it at all so um you know even if it's something small like that so occasionally I will buy myself something and say this is because you launched the podcast or this is because your book came out um and then that object becomes more than just what it is it's it's a constant reminder every time I see it whether it's you know um a pen or a piece of clothing that that's related to a certain achievement yeah it's a reminder of the power that's inside of you that's inside of everybody who's listening today and we all need reminders because so much of the media that's so pervasive that's around us even without without even trying to can pull us into a place where if you look at the subtext it's reminding us that we are powerless that we can't impact the world that we're all victim to circumstances and that there's a lot more bad in this world than there is good so do you feel like people have to become resilient in sort of being able to push back against that Onslaught that's there two things I would say about that is um one that most of the neuroscientists that I know all the ones I know personally and other ones that I've heard of don't watch the news or read newspapers that's powerful and it's not because we don't want to be informed because obviously we do manage to stay informed in other ways of important events around the world but if you just look at the nature of news the the proportion of it that is bad news and the impact that that has on your brain is is disproportionate so the first thing is to curate your news feeds your social media feeds so that you're not getting bombarded with so much bad news and you balance that out for yourself of course life can be hard so yes you have to be resilient as well but the first thing is to take charge of of what you're actually feeding your brain and that's everything from your diet to information how is it that regularly exposing ourselves to negativity or sort of fear-based media what does that do to the brain and how is that actually happening so we've come on to the subject of neuroplasticity which is essentially neurons that fire together wire together now every time you meet somebody experiencing emotion recall a memory watch the news neurons are uh you know firing in response to to what you're experiencing through all of your senses and you know the information that you're taking in so neuroplasticity is an incredible thing but what we need to not forget is that it can be as bad as it can be good so if you repeatedly look at bad news if you repeatedly obsess over a you know a bad relationship or a breakup that you had you are going to be embedding that wiring more deeply in your brain so it's a Force for good but it also can be reinforced I don't want to say bad but unproductively what are some of the habits and addictions that people even maybe people listening today that are dealing with certain behaviors they don't want what are some examples of those that their brain is kind of in hijacked by this pathway but for quote unquote bad right what would be some addictions habits behaviors that people are suffering from today that that is an example of this yeah so I like the way you framed that as not good at good or bad we could say positive or negative or you know it's productive non-productive um and so through my work which is which is very varied so you know I work with Executives mostly in financial services I teach at MIT Sloan um I work with a very different demographic through my social media and through you know people that read my book and listen to my podcast but I see the same issues surfacing across the board and this is based on the dopaminergic Pathways in the brain which are related to motivation so motivation is um the neurological mechanism that makes us seek something that's good for us but motivation and addiction are on a spectrum so something that used to be good for us if we overdo it or we're doing it and somehow it's starting to actually not have the same effect so we have to do more of a certain action to get the same reward that can become destructive and obviously drugs and alcohol are examples of that that everyone will understand but I'm talking about things like being a workaholic so working excessive hours over exercising particularly in a really high intensity way that actually creates more cortisol and stress in the body um so basically screen time and the story that I hear with this is it's really important in my job to be responsive I always reply to emails straight away and I get rewarded for that and then that can at the other end of the spectrum be I'm constantly scrolling social media I'm working across time zones I'm looking at my phone in the middle of the night so you can see with all of those things how you know being having a good work ethic is great but working excessive hours and damaging your health in your relationships isn't doing you know not being sedentary is good but exercising to the point and and I see it with the most high achieving people you know the high Flyers the the Professional Services the lawyers that I'm I met a lawyer at her lunch party and um as soon as she said she does this intense super intense High you know High um really like challenging exercise the first thing I said to her was you're exactly the kind of person that shouldn't be doing that you should be doing yoga and walking and and she sort of said I know straight away which means that you even you know that it's bad for you but you you still keep doing it because that original driver is exercise must be good for you and I'm sweating out my stress by doing it but it's just really good to step back every so often and check is this still good for me um and the same with obviously using screens and social media I'm gonna jump around a little bit as we sort of stack and build a little bit of your background of the audience we're of course going to come to your story which is so fascinating I'm going to go back to a little bit of the beginning of the interview because I think you know my audience here this podcast used to be called the broken brain podcast we've done a lot of episodes on brain health what are my audience is not used to hearing so much about is an Oxford MIT train you know doctor Professor talking about manifestation that is new for them and maybe even some people thinking is manifestation real is it not real so I'd love to start off here tell us what manifestation is and tell us what it isn't yeah so it's definitely had a bad you know sort of rep um and I think that is just for all the different definitions and possible Journeys to manifest you know the umbrella term of manifestation you know that that one can have but as a scientist if I were to say to you that manifestation is not much more of a new setting a goal and making that come true in real life then there shouldn't be any argument that it could be quite scientific um and when I wrote the source which came out in 2019 so I was writing it in 2018 I was I'd always personally been interested in spirituality and visualization and manifestation but I felt like there was no overlap with my professional work at the time I was I'd re you know until recently being a psychiatrist um and I already had my PhD in neuroscience so when I started looking into the science behind manifestation for me personally I had to be able to explain it based on cognitive science which is Psychology and Neuroscience just for it to make sense to me that wasn't necessarily even the book that I was going to write but I had to feel like okay I really understand how this works and then what am I going to do with that how am I going to share that with people but the fact that explaining manifestation through cognitive science means that it's your brain that makes these things come true felt extremely empowering if if it had to be Blind Faith in some something you know a higher power or the universe or it had to be about quantum physics which I certainly you know I'm not qualified to understand deeply that's okay but it made me feel like I'm not part of this story of creating success and and personally it works better for me to feel like I am and what I was really surprised by is how many people in my real life who aren't scientists at all said I've always been interested in manifestation but now that I understand how it works in the brain I'm actually going to do the things like make the action board or you know set set the goal and work towards it that I always read about but never actually acted on before I think that's a beautiful phrase you set a goal and you work towards it but what you are clearly stating if I got right and please feel free to correct me is that if you're tapping into the power of manifestation you are just tapping into what is the most effective way to go about that process is that correct yeah that's correct and it kind of marries up very nicely with the brain science which is that the brain is a small organ if you look at you know it in proportion to your body size but it's very energy hungry so it uses up 23 20 to 30 percent of the breakdown products of what we eat each day when we're asleep it's using up 20 of what we've eaten that day so it likes to always choose the path of least resistance so it's very it likes to be efficient so therefore being you know efficient and effective in your real life in terms of what you do to achieve the things that you want make sense to the brain so that's already kind of started aligning quite nicely and I was smiling internally when you said oh I'm going to jump around a bit because in the brain it's all about interconnection so I hope this makes sense to the to the audience and I'm sure the podcast will get edited beautifully but for me jumping around completely makes sense because it's all connected and I'm sure as we draw to a conclusion all of those threads will come together and hopefully people have you know really great Insight even if it sounded like we went from brain science to manifestation to you know like different topics we're weaving threads like the brain is weaving neurons totally inside a neural Pathways yeah and there's a deep connection that's there that you explain beautifully with that and manifestation now one question about manifestation is it that everybody even the people who don't realize it they're still tapping into the powerful manifestation they may not realize that they're actually manifesting things in their life that they say they don't want but that their mind is completely preoccupied is that how does that fit within your wheelhouse yeah so like you said it is a subject that has attracted skepticism in the past and and you know still does to some extent and what I'm always amazed by is the small number of people that I see that I consider to be the biggest negative manifestors that I've ever like come across in my life and I I always think and it's and we've all been guilty of it to a certain extent oh you know that will never happen for me oh that goal is a bit too big for you know let's let's like take it down a notch kind of thing um or worse than that which is you know it's just my luck bad things always happen to me nothing ever works out for me as I said neuroplasticity if you are continually saying and thinking those things it's more likely to come true if you're so powerful at manifesting that imagine what could happen if you decided to say that will work out for me that will work out better than I even dreamed that it could and I just invite people to try that for a day or a weekend or a week or I have a very close friend who is also an executive coach but not particularly into manifestation who one year said I'm just going to say yes to everything that I would normally say no to um you know for me sometimes learning to say no to things has been an important part of my journey and I'll share something with you that I've I've never shared before apart from with my close friends which is just from the sort of upbringing and education that I had so you know you will understand the expectation of first generation immigrant Indian parents and then I was very fortunate had a very privileged education but it was very competitive and you know I was absolutely expected to go to the best universities and be professional and that does leave this little girl inside that always thinks she's never going to be good enough and so I remember when I was filming my um online program for MIT Sloan I said to one of my best friends that you know it's super hard work it was I was in lockdown in the UK so it was on a you know different time zone as well and it was you know a sort of run of deadlines every few weeks to get it ready and I remember saying to her it's not perfect it's not going to be good enough I'm so stressed and there's just not enough time left to to get it right and she said to me I have never seen you not knock the ball out of the park and Beyond and I said to her this is the one time that's not going to happen I'm absolutely sure of it and I think I made like my family's life quite miserable for a few weeks around that time and then it came out and I I did I can't remember all of the like statistics now but I mean it was literally number two the number two program second only to the AI program at NYC so yeah it had a net promoter score of 98 it had like over 200 people sign up for the first iteration and for the first time in my life I actually thought you cannot at this age keep saying nothing's going to be good enough and then it turns out to be that good like you've got to make a change here and so the next big project I took on was my podcast and I didn't have a lot of expectation around it something that I just really wanted to do and I had a great team around me um but they also said you know it's brand new so if we want to get kind of you know supporters on board then it would be better if we can do that before it launches just because once it launches people will ask for analytics and it's just new and I wasn't offended by that I thought you know it's going to take some time to grow and um quite quickly but certainly by the end of season one it had charted to number one in the UK and the US on Life Sciences on Apple podcasts and for the first time in my life I didn't say I can't believe that happened I said I'm not surprised that happened and that was a huge neuroplasticity change for me so I still have to prove myself a bit by doing that again because I've only done that once in my life but um it's things like that like more intangible things like difficulty saying no you know not prioritizing yourself because your level of self-worth and deservingness are pivotal to manifestation if you don't believe that you deserve something you immediately make it less likely to happen because of every action that you portray in the outside world based on what you believe about yourself that's so powerful it really brings up this theme that I've heard you talk about you write a little bit about in the book is that many people are not aware about how their early either childhood insecurities or early belief systems they didn't choose to believe they kind of just inherited from their environment they don't realize how powerful these are and how these narratives shape what they pay attention to right um how do some of those from a neuroscientist perspective how do you want to help our audience think about the power of these early moments and that even when we become adults like it's like you're an adult now you know that you have a track record you have receipts about it you teach other people about the point of gratitude and yet still these early stories and ideas have a hold over you what's going on in the brain that that's the case um well there's several mechanisms that we could discuss here so but probably from the Neuroscience point of view the most fundamental one is that the longer that Pathways have existed in your brain the deeper they're buried the more powerful effect they have on you and the less conscious you are of that so the earlier the earliest experiences and that will tend to be about the family that you grew up in and obviously there's concentric circles because then there's the community that you grew up in the school that you went to and the you know the politics of the country that you grew up in and any major events that occurred sort of you know in your young childhood but if we just take it down to the family because obviously the adults in your family and also teachers and Community leaders are very very important for children whose brains are so impressionable you only really need one really striking role model in your life to have a huge impact on you but either you know positively or negatively and so your survival depends on the love of your caregivers and so you learn at a young age what is okay to do and what you shouldn't do to keep that Safety and Security around you and I'm talking about things like the values that your family hold um the boundaries that are you know acceptable or not acceptable in your family the secrets that are kept in your family um who you identify with and that will have been put on to you as a child because you won't decide that by yourselves yourself but it'll be things like oh you're just like your mother or you're just like your uncle you know in that or or you were mentioning in your family like we're a high achieving family we have to do it this way yeah yeah um so you know there's a sort of a few things like that that have a very very strong impact early in life and um there's a whole other area that we could go into of epigenetics which is a you know really quickly growing field but we certainly know that what happens in the womb is um we know a lot more about that's not epigenetics we know that that is also very critical to what happens to you um so just at the most basic example if a mother is stressed and she has high circulating levels of the stress hormone cortisol that will of course affect the baby because they share the same blood supply we know in animal experiments that pregnant mice that were um given the smell of peppermint and given a mild electric shock at the same time that when the baby mice were born they were never given an electric shock but they would have a stress response to the smell of peppermint so that's the part about being in utero and then we also know that now we know more about the fact that what happened to your parents throughout their lifetime and your grandparents and possibly even beyond that also has an effect on your neural wiring so um the most so so one thing I find really interesting is that you don't inherit the genes that your parents were born with you inherit the expression of their genes at the time of conception um and further back than that we know from Dutch famine disease and the Holocaust that there are switching on and switching off of the expression of certain genes that you know will affect you in in your life and that that can sometimes it can be good even if a bad thing happened like if a stressful thing happened it can make you more resilient or it can make you more prone to anxiety so even there there is a level of I don't know if choice is the right word but let's say maybe agency over how you use what you've been given to make the most of your you know the life that you've got now and and certainly like you said in adulthood there are things that you can look back on and reframe and you know in more popular psychology these are known uh these things are known um by phrases like re-parenting or inner child work or mirror work um where you basically obviously accept what's happened to you in the past but but see if you can reframe some of the emotions around it or just so either reframe emotions or manage that memory in a way that allows you to move forward in a different way to how you have up until now yeah I appreciate you going into that because I brought it up on the context of sometimes people feel like well I'm trying to manifest I'm trying to put attention on the things that I want to create in my life the things that I want to attract the things that I want to bring in and they don't often know if they're not paying attention to it that there might be still some background thoughts that you have to push up against which by the way everybody has of course there's degrees of trauma that people have went through but everybody's gone through some version of an imprinting and your parents were just doing the best that they could they have their own imprinting and a lot of times it wasn't even that they sat down and said it's you know they didn't tell you to your face like you're not good enough right they would say certain things and we would infer from those situations some people did and my heart goes out to them have a parent that you know just did straight up say you're not good enough so you go around constantly in your life even when you're trying to achieve even when you're trying to manifest all you can see is that I'm not good enough I'm not good enough I'm not good enough so I think that when we start to become aware that these thoughts are there as we begin to put some of our resources into action boarding Vision boarding manifestation really take advantage of the power of the brain we can say okay great that's an that's not that's not my uh it's funny when people believe everything that they think some of your thoughts are like popcorn that's like your old high school coach or that's your elementary teacher who said you're you don't have good handwriting or you're not creative yeah um in fact I think at one point in time one of your beliefs as an example was I'm not creative yeah what were some of the earliest experiences that you had that left that impression for you just as an example for our audience so I'd like to just say something before I go on to that which I has just come into my mind please please jump into it it's really important so if you think about a pendulum swing of the formative experiences that you might have had as a child and on you know one side is extremely good which may be you know parents or teachers that have said you can do anything you set your mind to um on the Other Extreme there may be not something as obvious as you're not good enough but it may just be something like that's that's not the kind of job that you could end up in that's not going to work out for you it's better for you to do something else so those two things are very obvious we often remember those things consciously and even the bad things like that will never happen for you some of those things have spurred me on to achieve those things more because somebody told me that I couldn't do them I think the most potentially dangerous but also area with Highest Potential is the very middle of that pendulum swing where there are small what we would call perhaps like you know micro um experiences that you may not even remember consciously that really affect what you still do in adulthood so that's why it's really work worth doing in a work like journaling or therapy or meditation to to try to find out what it is that you're not conscious of that might be driving a lot of your behaviors um so yeah mine is a very classic example I found out once I started sharing it and that's something I'm a big fan of you know that there are lots of things that we hold secretly because there might be some shame around them and when we share them we tend to find out that a lot of people have you know have similarly we think we're the only person exactly and then we start sharing and then other people raise their hand well so my one which was that was you know it's not like traumatic or anything but my art teacher at High School said that because I wasn't good at drawing that that meant I wasn't creative so I think I was about 15. I fully 100 believed that till I was at least 35. and that was okay because I did my science a levels I went to medical school I became a doctor you know it wasn't that relevant to my life but it was certainly a lingering thought it was only actually when I was um giving a lecture at Stanford at the D school which is a a really interesting concept where they have a design school right yeah it's a design school but they take people from all the different faculties like medicine and engineering and you know the Arts and they get them sort of brainstorm and come up with ideas that you wouldn't come up with if you just stayed in your own and I mentioned this to um the guy that was running the d-school at the time and he said well that happened to me as well and in fact around our age group there's a generation of people that believed they weren't creative because it because at that time being creative meant that you could paint or sing um and it wasn't kind of a more expanded view of creativity that we have now but but even then and that that then for me went hand in hand with the fact that my English teacher said to me you're so talented at acting that you should read English at Oxford and go to Radha and become an actress and when I told my father he literally said Over My Dead Body and he said go to medical school first and then you can do whatever you like um but obviously once you've gone to medical school it's quite tough parents love to see that but uh it's like interesting of how to make that pivot exactly especially here in America at least you guys have a little bit better of sort of a higher education program yeah you're not ending up with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt you know which is very common here yeah but uh yeah that's interesting advice for sure yeah and you know at that time you really didn't see many Asian people on on even the small screen um and it's been so fascinating for me to see that change in the last 10 15 years and so another thing that's really important in terms of manifestation and US overcoming some of these beliefs that we might hold about ourselves is giving ourselves examples of people that we identify with for whatever reason it doesn't have to be actual skin color or anything like that but that is somebody that feels like they're like you that's achieved something that you want to achieve I mean your own past successes are are great things to you know write down as I've said as well so that when you're moving on to the next thing you can say here was something I didn't think I would achieve but I did so I know I can do it if you really don't have an example of the specific thing that you're trying to achieve then you know I could have looked at you or wrong gun or rupee and said well you know they launched a really successful podcast so you know that should help me to believe that I can as well it's possible yeah exactly um and then so in that in that area there's four things that are important so focusing on your own past successes finding the kids these days call them receipts are you aware of that no I heard you use that word I didn't know yeah so they got receipts it's basically you know here's proof that you went through this right it's your it's your record just like you get a receipt for buying something it's like show me your receipts which basically means like hey are you putting in the work that's so cute I love that I'm gonna take that that lingo on um so if you don't have a receipt yourself then looking for you know example of somebody like you that's that's achieved that um keeping your brain and body in good condition so the usual Basics that I speak about like sleep and diet and exercise um and then the last one which is cup you know coming full circle to the question that you first posed is is um dealing with that voice in your head that tells you that you can't do it and wherever that's coming from whether it's your parents your teachers you know the past um and for that I suggest people create their own personalized affirmation or mantra so underneath every thought that we hold about ourselves is a belief that we're often not fully conscious of so you need to do the work through self-reflection of digging under the thought the recurring thought that you may have about something specific finding out what it is that you believe about yourself that's driving that thought and then create a statement that is the opposite of that belief and just one clarification these are recurrent thoughts so like a negative recurrent thought or sort of like a weighty like like it's kind of like it doesn't have a positive yeah aspect to it it's sort of negative or maybe even slightly leaning neutral negative is that which is something that's holding you back something that's holding you back yeah okay got it a neuroplasticity really is boosted by repetition and emotional intensity so either a recurring thought or like you've said a weighty thought um and so this comes from from Buddhism as well as neuroplasticity which is that to replace and a thought that you don't Desire with a thought that you do desire or that's going to help you to move forward or that's going to unblock you know what's not been happening up until now so you know if it's something like I'll just use a really really common one which is you know I'm not good enough then you would change that to um something quite bold so not you know I'm not a fan really of that phrase I'm enough because I think everybody is is enough and needs to be like more you know feel that they're more than that so it'd be something like this is perfect for me I'm exactly right for this I'm more than good enough for that you know and you just every time you the doubt Creeps in you replace it with that thought and so from a neuroscientist perspective perspective that works right is there's research behind it like you know you've heard people anecdotally I remember people kind of talking to that when I first got into the world of sort of positivity culture reading about Tony Robbins or this person or that person when I was early in college but you're saying that that is backed up through the research that it actually is useful for the brain to have something else to latch onto that creates a different future yeah and I'll tell you why remember what I said about how energy efficient the brain is so basically if a thought has been recurring or or holds a strong emotional intensity then it's probably a lot it's aligned with a neural pathway that's probably made up of lots of neurons that have connected up together and when a pathway in the brain is thicker it's easier for the chemical and electrical signals to pass down that pathway so by and and what's important to know in the brain is that you can't undo a neural pathway in the brain the only thing you can do is overwrite it so to create a pathway that is more energy efficient than the one that's already there so by continually interrupting the negative thought and replacing it with the positive one you will eventually get to the point where that pathway is stronger than the original one I think I just had an aha moment and it might be misguided but you're going to correct me right that's why you're the expert on the interviewer here the aha moment that I had is that so many times I see people wanting to focus on the negative aspect of why they are the way they are right which which I'm sure there can be benefits obviously you need to initially look at something but it could be they want to use their thought power to say you know and it's a reoccurring thought like oh my gosh I'm so stupid like why do I keep on doing things this way right why do I keep on doing the same pattern and that feels like you're just writing down that pathway again and again and again when you're using that phrase instead of a little bit of gentleness that's there which is tough it takes practice but going to something else like going to another thought that's positive versus people I think this might even go back to the dopamine connection is that some people are addicted to beating themselves up do you ever see that out there that people want to beat themselves up and say oh my gosh I'm so stupid I do I always do that all right I do that again I just like there's an addiction to wanting to do a little bit of self-harm is that a dopamine thing so so for first of all all of that language I'm so stupid why do I keep doing that is you know things that we'll need to work on so from what I've just shared with you I would immediately try to change that too I can be smarter than this I don't always do that or I can change myself to not always doing that you know so that's the start or I'm showing up the best that I can and I'm working on even being better some version like if whatever feels true to you but is still towards the positive yeah and but you still have to have awareness to be able to do that in the first place it's you know it's like you said some people are in the loop of I'm so stupid this always keeps happening to me um and so it will be that will be a very complex mechanism in the brain made up of the whole array of neurotransmitters it leaves everything all kind of intersecting which well you know they're all um underpinned by different neurotransmitters but the way that it works is um so your amygdala is an almond-shaped object deep in the limbic system which is the um seat of your most basic Primal emotions some people call it the first brain sometimes do you think of it that way um like our earliest brain we've got to move Beyond yeah yeah we've kind of moved beyond that it used to be called The Reptilian Brain but um and there are kind of it's it's easy to think of the brain in like sort of three sections that have grown around each other but our understanding of the brain is much more sophisticated now so we like to think of it as systems that interact with each other that are underpinned by these different neurotransmitters and you know the brain is just a lot more complex than than that that which we believed for a very long time and it was only when we got scanning technologies that we've understood it a bit differently um so yeah the amygdala is part of the limbic system and it's it's to do with it's that's where our emotions arise from in the first place and then there's a whole kind of cascade system of um biofeedback loops and stuff that affect how they you know pan out in the brain and the body and then the hippocampus also part of the limbic system is where our memories are formed and stored so those two parts of the brain interact with each other a lot because obviously we lay down memories that are associated with emotions and when again going back to what I said about when we're under stress not feeling good about ourselves that we have higher levels of cortisol the stress hormone when the brain detects that levels of cortisolar are higher than they should be and they're staying High one of the things it will do to keep you safe is that the amygdala and the hippocampus will get together and dredge up every bad memory of you having failed at something telling you why you shouldn't take a risk and you know go out there and try to make it better telling you that you're stupid that this will always happen to you that you can't change it because if in that mode let's say I was feeling like that this morning and then I came here to record the podcast with you probably wouldn't be you know I wouldn't give my best performance you'd be cautious you'd be worried about saying stuff you'd be second guessing yourself exactly um and you know I wouldn't want to share as much personal information because I would think that that could lead to me being criticized or ridiculed or humiliated so it basically makes you hold back on in a way I feel like in that mode the brain when you need it the most doesn't give you the things that can really helps you so for example let's say I'd had a bad day today and I thought well I don't I've never met Drew before so I'm obviously not going to tell him like what's happened this morning because then he'll just think I'm a bad podcast guest you know that's the way the brain will start help you know like justifying yeah but if that had happened and I came here and I said look Drew you've heard me on podcast before you know what I'm capable of I've just had this you know really unexpected bad morning how can we work together to make sure that this interview comes out the best that it possibly can with you knowing that that's what's happened in the background that would you know completely change it yeah um so it's things it's understanding that sometimes when we feel really under pressure our brain isn't necessarily helping us and the more work that we have done when things are you know good or all right the more we can have access to the awareness which is so important in the moment to be able to override this potential safety mechanism of the brain that's telling you for actually survival reasons that's telling you that you're stupid that you shouldn't take a risk that things will go wrong do you think that that's the brain's version of you know also for some people it's fight and flight but for other people it's maybe is the is it the brain's version of pulling into the stress response of freeze like do you think that sometimes comes in you know we have fight or flight but then we also have freeze that some people just play dead when they feel like maybe they're not literally playing dead like the way that an animal animals play dead right when they're being hunted in other things and that some ways there's a ton of videos on this on YouTube and Instagram about animal plays dad for a little while the Predator that was chasing it kind of gets distracted for a second because it thinks that it made the kill and then the animal is able to Dart off right the rabbit or whatever do is is part of us sort of tensing up in a moment is that also tapping into that freeze response Yeah so basically fright is the um thing that triggers Us in response to Fright we can either take flight which is literally run away or we can fight let's use a workplace scenario that would kind of mean that you might yell at your boss or actually physically assault them which you can't really do so that's why in the modern day we're more likely to freeze and I love this example of animals playing dead it's a really great kind of analogy for it but we wouldn't obviously physically do that but we would try to go under the radar let's hope that my boss doesn't notice me and picks on my team member instead because I'm not getting anything done at the moment kind of you know scenario well let's shut down and not bring up the things that could be actually helpful for people to work through it's like I don't want to get beaten up so let me just shut down yeah and and like I said the blood flow in your brain is literally shutting down it's going down to the survival centers so that you are able to get up in the morning get dressed look smart enough go to work and sit at your desk but you're not able to be productive collaborative creative have healthy conflict all of those things are actually can you know make things much much better so I'm if I'm connecting the dots for myself correctly what I'm what I'm hearing from you is that it's what we do when times are good the training that we do having the affirmation diet which you've mentioned previously breathing which is also a way to you know continuously keep the blood flow High to the brain and all the other things you talk about we'll see some of those out in a minute it's the things that we do when times are good and having the the intent and the practice I don't want to use the word willpower but making it a priority when times are good that supports Us in these moments when times are bad is that accurate I have never been formally taught that in medicine or Neuroscience but I have certainly found that to be true in my real life um several times um I will quote a piece of research from a Mishi jar that balances that view out a little bit so when she was um working with the U.S Marines on mindfulness-based resilience training they had a group that were supposed to be practicing mindfulness before going to the Battle Zone and a control group that weren't practicing but in the group who were supposed to be doing X minutes of meditation a day there were some Skeptics and they just didn't do it and so they went with their group to the Battle Zone and very quickly noticed that the colleagues who had been meditating could sleep at night even though there was gunfire going on all night that the colleagues who'd done meditation weren't sweating or getting palpitations like they were so they went to the researchers and said okay I didn't do what I said I've been doing for the last month but I want to start now please can you like help me and they said of course we can help you to like start this meditation program but we cannot promise that it's it's suddenly gonna help you now that you're in the Battle Zone and what was really surprising was that it had a very very quick effect a positive effect on people so even the people who hadn't done meditation in preparation for battle got benefits like in a matter of days so I don't want people to feel like oh well I haven't been meditating for years and you know journaling and I don't always eat super healthy so I'm doomed um I I always say the best time to plant an acorn was 200 years ago but the second best time is now off of that theme what are a few things you know I can imagine somewhere in the title of this episode whenever we come up with a title people are so curious about the topic of manifestation how do we get our body and brain prepared to be better at the end of the day if we use your definition manifestation is simply about setting a goal and then achieving that goal how do we get the brain and body better and let's tease out each one of the top few items that you have to really walk people through like what that looks like in reality in creating it right what would be one of the first ones that you would say if we want to get better at this aspect of creating things in our life and achieving our goals so a hundred percent the first and top one I would say is sleep so when we're asleep we are processing our memories our emotions um and we're also you know starting to mentally prepare ourselves for the next day and the next kind of chapter and I'm going to put that together with something that's directly related to manifestation so all of the benefits of sleep alone adequate quality and length that's basic science if we add that together with the fact that if you visualize or look at your action board last thing at night then you are priming your brain to tag in order of importance the items that are on your board or that you visualized just before you go to sleep so in the state between being awake and falling asleep also in the state between um being asleep and waking up those are two very powerful um times to impact your subconscious and if you can prime your subconscious to rate what's on your vision board or action board as more important than some of your like basic daily tasks obviously you know we all have to go to work and do our job and tend to our family and put food on the table but those things are kind of automated what we want to do is is um rise up the automation of noticing the things that we want to manifest because if you've done that whilst you're falling asleep and then overnight then the next day you're just more likely to notice things that you could actually grasp an opportunity you could meet a person you could you know go to a different place or read something that you wouldn't read or all things that basically make up a patchwork that at some point you haven't realized it but it's become a quilt it's a bit like to be honest I'll say that about mindfulness as well I I no longer sit down and meditate formally um I did for years but I got to the point where it started like a patchwork like I was making you know just putting little patches like not even together but I would cook mindfully I would eat mindfully I would do some mindful walking I would take digital detoxes I would make sure that I gave my loved ones my absolute full attention like not even thinking about you know what's on an email or a phone or whatever for you know certain periods of time and then those things just started to knit together more and become you know Loosely a quilt that's kind of going on 24 hours a day yeah I love that you said that because I think especially in our space meditation is so hip that the folks that had done it at some point in time and I'm right in your same boat I was a diligent meditator taking on different traditions and backgrounds and things in my early 20s and did that for years and then inherently just didn't feel that call for that formal version of it I got a little bit introduced to this work of this gentleman named The Shanti and it's called spontaneous meditation which is very similar to what you're talking about here and then this component of and of course I know people will say hey meditation is different than mindfulness but it being Incorporated my daily life through different versions of it and maybe at some point in time it'll shift and I'll go back to having a more formalized meditation structure but it's not always uh cool to say that Hey listen I'm not meditating anymore but that was something that was there but I'm still weaving it in because at the end of the day meditation is a vehicle that's taking you to you know everybody has a different definition but hopefully the present moment to be in in the now yeah and it's interesting because I I shared that with a friend who is a big fan of my book you know super intelligent and successful in a very different field and two or three times she said to me I couldn't I just couldn't manage if I don't meditate and and I felt like I was maybe I was doing something wrong and again being the scientist it took for me to hear from some people who actually research in that area in New York to say that that is actually an evolution in in on your spiritual path because if you think about it even if you meditate for an hour a day which I don't believe that most people do that means that for one hour out of 24 you're being Mindful and for the other 23 you're living your normal life but if you can merge those things so that all day is you know somehow not you know not every single hour but more of your whole day is somehow incorporating mindfulness or a form of meditation whether it's walking meditation or tasting meditation then that's both more integrated but it's also more time that you're spending in that mode for sure and everybody's gonna have a different version of getting to that destination but it's good that people speak up and say hey this is how my journey has evolved because I think a lot of people just like when you said I was like actually I'm in that same boat over here I've had to tell people who are huge fans of it they're like oh yeah you're obviously a meditator right you're like so calm and chill and other stuff and I'm like I used to a lot and I'm not scared to admit that I'm not as much of right now but that was a conscious choice that was there and I'm sure it might change in the future you know another thought that I had is that this idea of looking at going back to the last question I asked you your idea of the action board and we're gonna get into like why you call it an action board this idea of looking at that right before bedtime because you're prioritizing sleep as one of those important things to tap into to really supercharge your ability to step into manifestation and the power of manifestation in the brain people know that this is inherently true I mean how often is it that you watch either for some people it could be a scary movie or it could be a really intense film or it could even be a subject that you are even looking forward to and then that night what ends up happening you have dreams all about that all evening and the next day it's still kind of on your mind it was occupying space all the night before just from watching something so intense the night before which makes me feel so much for people who are literally watching news right until they sleep CNN Fox MSNBC all this stuff yeah you know it's funny there's a gentleman here in um in Los Angeles I don't know if you've come across them before Reverend Michael Beckwith yes okay he's the founder of the Agape Center he's very close with Oprah and did a bunch of her Super Soul Sundays he has a great phrase he says you know the news is simply a collection of the lowest common denominator of human society Yeah so basically if you want to find out everything that's wrong yeah and increasingly you're starting to see that social media is kind of becoming that same sort of way because uh even if you try to curate who you follow I don't know if you've noticed this now Instagram Tick Tock Facebook Twitter even they show you things that they know are going to excite you even if you don't follow them have you seen this a little bit yeah so you get shown all this information you're like I'm not following that while all of a sudden am I getting connected to it anyways I digress but my heart goes out to people who right up until that very vulnerable space of you know in Buddhism they call it like ego death right like going going to sleep there's a little bit of baby ego death that happens when you go to sleep each night you're very vulnerable and you're getting exposed to all this negative imagery no wonder that people wake up the next day and they're in a bad mood they feel that there's no support for them they feel that nothing works out they feel that the world might be out to get to them or they feel like they're not enough for all their creative ideas visions and goals they want to bring to their life to better themselves and the people that are around them we have to and I love that you said it I'm going to probably clip it for social media you know that neuroscientist that you know are not watching the news at least on like that regularity of a basis yeah I feel like that's one big hack that could help so many people even with people addicted to their phones right before bed at night time we're so impressionable and I don't think a lot of people understand how it's impacting us no and um I'd like to add something to that which is that and I'll also share that I love a love a scary movie so yeah yeah I'm all about like people watching to watch whatever they want to it was just an example of how impressionable we are in these moments totally and it's not like you're watching a scary movie every single night right before bed no um but even though I don't look at news and obviously mostly bad news just before bed I have this practice that I do in the morning because when you first wake up you don't really know what you're suddenly going to think of like there might be something on your mind that you have to do that day or something that you're worried about and I'm not saying that you don't come to those things and deal with them at some point in the morning but before I even have time to think the first thing that I do when I become aware that I'm awake and I'm still lying in bed is I say I love my pillow I love my pillowcase I've got the best mattress in the world I love my mattress topper I love my silk duvet and all of my bedding so that before I even have a chance to think the first thing I've done is like talked about love and gratitude you're setting the stage you're priming your space and your brain I love it that's beautiful you know going back to that you had mentioned looking at your action board right or at least some positive imagery that reminds you of the life that you want to create right or even as we mentioned at the beginning of the podcast the the beautiful things that you already have family friends other things like that things that a lot of us take it you know advantage of and you'll forget like it's natural the brain adapts and it gets used to it okay for granted take for granted sorry that Advantage um what is before we go through a few of the things that might be supercharging our ability to set goals and Achieve them in our life we're calling that manifestation here what is an action board and why did you give it that name whereas most people identify it as a as a vision board yeah tangibly it's the same thing as a vision board in that it's a collage made up of images that represent either literally or metaphorically the things that you want in your life or how you want your life to look or feel and that can actually be physically by hand with like paper and card or it can be digitally these days people do them a lot more um do you have a preference over one or the other I would say a little bit like how we've described our meditation Journeys that if you're starting the practice I would recommend doing it by hand yeah but if you've been doing it for years then it's probably okay to do it digitally although so my current one is digital it's on my phone but the one next to my bed is my like most precious successful important one because I use that more to remind myself of what I'm capable of so and some of the things are themes that you know I would still want recurring in my life so it's not like it's old things that I don't want anymore but when you say you're most successful one meaning that at when you were making this shift from being identified as you know just to use loose terms like I'm just a psychiatrist I have to be in medicine I'm in Neuroscience you know I'm not creative this was the board that got you shifted in a different direction this was a bit later than that so so this one I was already in my in the business that I'm in now okay great um it was more personal got it it has a special meaning for you yeah okay um and but but whether it's personal or business it represents the biggest change that I made in the 15 or so years that I've been doing action boards yeah I love that yeah um so where were we so why did I call them action boards yeah yeah okay so so the board itself is very similar to what people would recognize as a vision board I do like the fact that it can be metaphorical not just literal representation so for example if you looked at mine now you might not understand exactly what the images mean to me but I know exactly what they mean to me some of them are literal but some of them aren't so it's about the feeling that it creates for you as well as what you're seeing the reason I call them action boards instead of vision boards comes right back to what you were asking about at the start of the interview which is you know why people might be skeptical about manifestation at all and certainly about a scientist speaking about it it's because I feel that prior to me using that different terminology there was definitely a sense that you can create these images or create a fantasy in your mind and do nothing but sit at home and wait for it to come true and it's all going to come to me yeah and I don't believe that at all um I would go as far as to say that if you create a vision board and you don't do anything to try to make it come true through your own hard work it will never come true it might even create a negative reinforcement because you feel like well this is all but you have to take the visioning and combine it with the action and actually take a step forward which takes courage sometimes yeah which is why we're trying to Prime the brain because the brain is reminding you like hey you've done this in the past or somebody else has done this in the past and yes you're stretching or yes you have to take a little bit of a leap but it's possible because you're seeing that imagery every single day there's two things so there's that you're absolutely right the priming is the is the key between the visioning and the outcome manifesting in the real world but it's it's exactly what you said plus the fact that which I've already explained which is that we're automated to do certain things that we need to do to survive like go to work eat you know look after our families have shelter but we're not automated to get all the things on our vision board necessarily so the priming is also to bring it to the front of your mind so that it doesn't just get ignored in in a busy day we're also busy you know a lot of people will say I don't have time to manifest um or there are other things that are more important in the short term that I need to do and that's why my manifestations always just you know are in the background and never quite get the priority that they need but if you prime your brain then the first step is that you'll be more aware of these are the things I'm looking for oh you know that's a book that's relevant something that I want to manifest so I should read it um and then the second step is what you've said that you then have the courage and you go out and you do some things that you might not have done that are likely to bring you closer to that outcome there's a quote I heard a few years ago I can't remember where I got it from so I'll have to look at the end of the episode and we'll put in the show notes but I'd love to hear your take on it and the quote I'll paraphrase it is the universe which can mean a lot of different things to People Source we could be talking about your book is titled Source you could replace it with God if that's your belief system but the universe is constantly conspiring for your greater good the only question is if you're noticing does that fit within the idea of taking the different worlds that you're bringing together manifestation neuroplasticity and a little bit of your own spiritual tradition I mean if I'm being the scientist then I would say we can't currently prove that that's a natural fact that maybe goes more into the quantum physics which is not a conversation we're having right now no but but I'm not against it because what I feel like it's really saying is that we're not starting from you know like you said if people watch bad news till late at night to me the message that they're really giving to themselves is the world is not a safe place that is the most basic belief that you are carrying around if you're constantly bombarded with news of violence and death and unfairness and poverty so if you hear this beautiful phrase the universe is constantly um you know working to help you get the things that you want then what that's really saying to you is the world is a safe place so now you go and do what you can to make your life better but because it's taking away the view that well I can't risk going to do those things because look at all the bad things that are happening in the world and if I you know if I put myself out there then something bad could happen it's taking that away and I think that's really important and I you know I of course I'm an out of curve the you know comfort that spirituality can get you I'm just also saying as a scientist that you you have to do something you know you can't just rely on that so yeah and the thing that I think of that lines perfectly with action is the question the second part of that you know first part is the universe is constantly conspiring to your greater good right again that's not a scientific statement right it could be a spiritual statement for some people the second part being the only question is are you willing to notice it and the noticing goes right into the action that you're looking at your action board at night and you want to build a business you want to write a book you want to do something and then you're having a conversation with a friend and a coffee shop and they go up to go to the bathroom and you see somebody in the corner and they're reading a book that's like right on the topic that's there and it's like you could try to strike up a conversation it's like what's that book what is it meant for you what is this so many beautiful things in my life have come from just these little tiny happenstances that have been the magical Serendipity or intersection but I had to still take action towards it and say hi to somebody or pick up this book or order this thing or whatever it might be and that took me down a whole rabbit hole that led to momentum more action and eventually some outward version of success in that particular project yeah and it might not even be that you see someone reading that book so you go and have a conversation with them I I definitely believe in signs but for me if I see if I notice signs it's because my brain is primed for something that I know I want and then it's like okay why what is it that you keep noticing and why are you noticing that and what does it mean that you actually want to manifest so then it could mean that I go and have a different conversation with somebody else but that's the fact that I've noticed that book title for some particular reason or yeah and would you have noticed it if you didn't have that priming the night before the action steps I want to ask you a little bit more about any other best practices around action boarding if somebody wanted to create one action board for let's say you know one area of their life for this one's for business this one's for love this one's for that are there any best practices you know people have a lot of things that they want to attract a lot of things that they want to create in their life are there any do's and don'ts best practices that you have when it comes to this General topic yeah um so I don't do it like that but I do know people who've done separate action boards and had great success so like you said it's it's what's right for different people because I think because I'm a neuroscientist but also because I'm a real people person I'm all about interconnection so for me I like to have everything on one board and I even like to think about oh I do have sections so it's not completely random it is in sections like work and you know family and health and stuff like that but sometimes I might make sure that they touch each other because to me there's a connection between pattern recognition yeah and even like the order that they are like arranged in next to each other and where they are on the board so again it doesn't have to make sense to to anyone else particularly but like for me like top left is usually about love because your heart's on your left hand side and and to me like love is the most important thing in the world so I'm always going to put it on the top um Central is usually obviously an important place and then then it sounds like oh no or whatever you're putting on the bottom obviously isn't very important but I always think of that as foundational so to me that's usually about home um but you know that's like one year I did it like that in other years I might change around but it will always make sense to me so it's not everything on it makes sense to me that's really important and then I used to and I said well I I didn't ever like crowd my board up too much but it used to be fairly full but I see people really really crowding their boards up and I often say I always say if I see that is that what you want your life to look like because to me that's really hectic like I would like to have some space in my life so I usually leave some space just because when I look at my board I want to feel calm I want to Exhale I don't want to look at it and think oh my God there's so many things on there um I feel like it's just like overwhelming so that's a feeling but equally what I've come to realize over the years is that I don't know everything and there might be things that could happen to me that I haven't imagined yet and I want to be open to those things as well so one of the reasons I now justify leaving space is that I'm allowing room for magic to happen that I can't even envisage yet I love that yeah that's beautiful what are some of the things that you see that get in the way of people actually taking action on creating an action board right I think one that I'll just acknowledge that we talked about before is that people feel which is why you're on this podcast today that it's like this is kind of bogus it's not going to make a difference I think another one that I'll toss in before I pass it over to you that I've definitely felt early on when I first heard of this work early on in my sort of personal development Journey is some version of feeling kind of vulnerable wanting to put out there the things that you want to ask for in your life right yeah it can be very vulnerable and I know there's different schools of thoughts some people are like hey I want to show people my vision board action board and some people are like no I want to be more protective I definitely in the early journey of mine was more like hey this is kind of for me so I'm just kind of holding space for it but part of that was I didn't feel at that time ready to be able to say like well why is that thing on there and what does that mean I didn't want a lot of questions especially from people who I was kind of the first in my friend group and family to really go down this you know path of personal development spirituality visioning you know all that sort of World um so I would have been more I would have felt more vulnerable yeah you know and I would I would wanted to protect my goals and Visions in life uh I didn't want people saying like oh that's crazy why do you think that you could achieve that right which I think is a real thing right you don't want that negative sort of thing no I'm laughing with you because I know that that happened tonight I'm imagining that you know for the amount of time that you've been in this area that it was probably harder as a guy to be open about things like that I think you know when I started being open about it and I started being open about it when I started and I maybe kind of went the other way a bit and that like as time's gone on I'm a bit more private about my boards but I think that or you know along with the skepticism that comes with it is that that you know it is a thing more that women do than men for example maybe um more that it's a feminine sort of thing that people have it's quite practice scene is quite feminine certainly seen as more spiritual than scientific um like I guess there's many ways that it's seen but let me address your first question which is that it's bogus well okay maybe it is bogus but try it once because because if it doesn't work it's not going to harm you if somebody's gonna give it a real shot how long should they try the process for and I even say that with if you go in thinking like okay let's see if this thing works and your hands are crossed for those people who can't see me on YouTube you're already coming in with a little bit of negativity yeah you know to that component but if somebody's like no I want to do this I want to pay attention I want to kind of follow the methodology that's there in the book Link in the show notes for anybody who wants check it out the source what is a good amount what is some time you're saying try it what is an appropriate amount of time to give this a shot well I do my boards and I recommend that people do an annual one because it's not too short-term these things do need time and the only reason they need time is that manifestation is based on neuroplasticity and that means that you have to change a neural pathway in your brain and that takes time it depends what it is so usually I say that if there are some what look like quick wins on your board do everything that you can to make them come true because then you're giving yourself evidence that it works it's cumulative um and some things will naturally take longer but if you're still staring at the sport and there's absolutely nothing on it that's happening then that's can be quite demotivating and it's really important to stay motivated but I do want to say as well that although I'm a huge advocate of action boards it isn't the only way that you can manifest and there are some ways that may be more appealing to people with more masculine energy or who are less spiritual and so an obvious one is is a list so a list of things that you want you know that I think seems less bogus right so and there'll be a lot of people who will say well I'm not going to do a vision board but they might already have a list and they but they don't talk about it yeah oh they have a list and they do talk about it and then there are actually there's a small group of people who neurologically cannot visualize so for them I've suggested creating a soundtrack of success so you can basically choose song titles or music that you know make you feel that same way like that you've achieved something that you want um you can even create a smell of success so you can have a particular essential oil or combination that represents to you that you've achieved you know whatever it is that might be on your your manifestation list or board so there are other ways of doing it um and the amount of time really does depend what it is like it's to me it's similar to that question how long does it take to form a habit it really depends what it is you know if it's I'd like to be doing some form of exercise three times a week then you could probably you know get that going in a few weeks but if it's I need to like completely change how emotionally intelligent I am that's going to take 9 10 12 months um but both are achievable I the the simplest analogy for me is how long would it take you to learn a language and basically what what languages do you speak I speak Gujarati and English okay yeah so you're bilingual so let's say you want so so you probably would find it easier than somebody that's not to learn another language let's say you decide to learn Spanish okay so you could either use Duolingo and be self-motivated with no particular end goal and you can imagine like how well that might go or you could go to a Spanish class every week and you could book a vacation to Mexico in six months time and it's likely that you would be much better at Spanish if you did that than if you did the first way so it's like that with with a habit or and with your manifestations which is that it it depends how difficult the thing is and it also depends how much effort you put in to to make it come true and I would say I think this is kind of what you were asking before as well is there's also an element of self-sabotaging behaviors and the first thing I see is not so much people who don't do action boards because they wouldn't really be talking to me so people who talk to me want to do an action board but I've seen quite a few people who find the images but do not glue them down oh interesting yeah what do you think is going on there and actually we have a friend in common who's done that I'm not going to say who it is on the podcast um it was I was actually on her podcast when she shared that though but it was years ago and I said to her on the podcast from my experience there's only one reason that you are not gluing them down and that's because you don't believe that you deserve them wow wow and that really resonated for her so I think there's the desire to do it and the you know the knowledge of what it is that you might want but then there's that the deservingness you know I mentioned that at the start it's it's really important if you don't believe that you deserve those things you're not you know not gluing them down is really what's going on inside is I don't I don't really think that's going to happen so if I put it there it's going to lead to failure similar with sharing I mean I think people are different levels of private right so I'm not saying that everybody has to share their their vision board at all but if you feel confident enough about it like when I my first one I had a I had a small apartment with like one bathroom and it was on the wall in the bathroom so if anybody came to my apartment and used the bathroom they would see it but obviously the only people that were coming to my apartment and using the bathroom were like close friends so that was okay and what I experienced from that was that it was very inspiring for people and they were genuinely interested and Not only was it inspiring in terms of they might do something similar but because it was my closest friends I would literally get text messages and phone calls saying oh you know that thing on your vision board well I know somebody who's doing blah blah blah yeah exactly that's beautiful I love that and I think that I think it's all about who is that because because this is an extension of Your Action board is who are the people you're surrounding yourself right I can imagine in certain situations things depending on the age that people are at especially if people are feeling like they're doing this living in their parents home immigrant parents other things like that is like what you want to be a writer dancer creative person or whatever but as you get older and you are able to curate your friend group you know I have a weekly men's group that has met for the last seven years here in Los Angeles it's an incredible group of Highly evolved caring thoughtful men wow who all just happen to have a business as well too so they're very driven in that side yeah and we get together every week you you know rain or shine you know pretty much out of like 52 weeks in a year it's like 30 weeks we get together wow as long as there's like three people that are in town we get together and with that group I can I do regularly share all sorts of different things in fact one of the questions that we prompt uh the group that makes on a weekly basis when we don't have a question of the day that's really designed to sort of open up conversation and we do this walking by the way which is like a whole big part right I don't know if you know any of the research around EMDR and that sort of space but um a question that we often ask uh as a default is tell me what you're celebrating today right because men in particular are not really good at celebrating like what did you achieve recently even if it was Tiny that might have been you hadn't called your parents in a while and you called them and that made them feel really happy it could be something as basic as that and then also like what are you navigating what's something that's important to you in your life that's that's that's you're something you're trying to make progress on maybe a new workout routine maybe there's a few authors in the group so you're trying to write a particular section in your next book but it's a little sticky you know and get it off your chest right not that we're here to complain about anything and nothing wrong with that either just here's a open place to be able to share whatever's on your mind right I can imagine with that group being like hey like here's my action board here's what this means here's what that means you know because you feel that even if people have questions it's going to be brought up in a way that's going to be supportive for you and and and design for your greater good so I think this idea of an action board is also a reflection of people thinking about that sort of old adage you know you're the average of the five people that you surround yourself with so there might be some people you go more in depth with and there might be other people that you can be a little bit protective on until you know things change totally and can I just say and really like congratulate and celebrate I think that is amazing what you do I wish more people but you know particularly men would do that such a healthy positive productive like lovely thing I I feel like thank you for having me on your podcast but actually that's the one thing that everyone should take away from this episode well it can stack along with everything else that you're saying because the thing that I feel is that you know the bigger your goals and dreams the more you need supportive people in your life to make it happen like I look at all these worlds that intersect right and shout out to my mother-in-law who's here also listening who is the first person to tell me about your work nilu thank you so much and you know all the people that we know in common and all the people that are also have been supportive of you hey you should talk to this person on their podcast oh check this out or check out this speaking event or have you thought about this or this could be a good idea for you know the new TV show whatever it might be totally it's our friends it's our community it's the people that we surround ourselves with that are there to encourage us especially when times get tough yeah right have you seen your friend group evolve over the years that has changed according to kind of what's important to you so I am extremely fortunate in that regard um but probably not non-consciously if you know what I mean so I probably can't just see I mean you worked on it and you crafted and created a really positive group yeah and like my my I don't want to say best actually I have to say now like my core or like oldest group of friends are people that I've known for like 30 35 years since we were children so I think that is just I'm so lucky to have those people you know still in my life and then when I changed career that was definitely an opportunity for me to choose some new people that could come into my life and um it's just interesting I think who what kind of friends you make at you know in adulthood that's different to the ones that you make in childhood but the ones in childhood have very similar values and you have lots of memories with them but they may be doing like very very different things to you and the ones that you meet later especially after a significant career change might have just more in common with the person that you are now but for me it's really really important that they are you know that we're all people that support each other that absolutely want the best for each other that like would do anything for each other and that I could tell anything too um another reminder your friends and your core group is a reminder that the world is safe you know kind of goes back to that Albert Einstein quote which I'll paraphrase here but I think he said that the most important question that a human being can ask himself is that is the world the universe a Force for good yeah right or is it a force for evil yeah yeah now I think not only do I personally think that is so important but when we look at you know you're asking me what are the factors that contribute to manifestation let's just because they're similar but in a way kind of more vital are the factors that contribute to successful aging and Longevity um and like in a healthy you know the best possible way and those are sleep like I mentioned already um and I'm gonna say hydration quite sort of higher up than I normally would just because for the chemical and electrical signals to pass along the neural Pathways you've got to be adequately hydrated so it's just such a basic one um and then obviously exercise because oxygenation of the brain so these are factors that contribute to manifestation but also successful aging and then diet and for diet like let's just assume that people know the basics that you eat a healthy diverse mostly plant-based diet above that you need to focus on eating as many dark Foods as you can so the dark-skinned foods and that includes coffee for your mother-in-law who I know but just not at the wrong times um so you know dark berries dark chocolate purple sprouting broccoli um eggplant the polyphenols in that skin contributes to neurogenesis which is the growth of new nerve cells so not not just the connection of existing ones um and then the factor that is up there for you know people staying healthy in old age is positive meaningful social relationships and so that must not be underestimated and and you've just reminded me through this conversation how vital that is to manifestation because if everywhere that I looked or spoke people said don't be silly Tara that's not going to work why are you doing that um and a lot of people live in that reality then you know I might stop doing it I might be ashamed to talk about it I might not want to share my accomplishments um I think it's really important to be humble but you know part of the joy of life for yourself is to be able to give that inspiration to other people of like look I said this is what I was going to do and it's happened and I'm so grateful I think one important point because I would tell you that that core aspect of loneliness that the world is suffering from right now there's an increasing number every year of people who feel that even if they have a lot of friends or people that they know a lot of family there's people that feel I don't have people in my life that truly understand and get who I am right that number's kind of see at least from the data that I've been seeing kind of ticked up and has been ticking up and I think that for those people in that category just one thing I'd like to add is that if you've ever had somebody in your life even when you were younger or maybe it was in university or maybe um you know just somebody it might take a little bit of work depending on what age that you met them in but see if you can get back in touch with that person and even on the topic of manifestation can you set up I literally call it with friends I'll say you know what I missed you right and by the way how good does it feel when somebody tells you like I missed you especially if they haven't talked to in a little while and by the way guys who are listening guys can say that to other guys right and you'd have to be worried about that say you know what I really missed talking with you we had some really incredible times how do you feel about putting a monthly check-in on the calendar and we can just check in on each other's goals and dreams and what we're working on in life if you've ever had one person but you don't feel like you have that personnel reach out to that old person and see if a monthly check-in or something can be a way to at least keep some of that energy in your life and then before you know it you'll probably add in a second third fourth person and now you're surrounded by people who are rooting for your success yeah I think that's a really good idea and funnily enough some like people from way back have come back into my life recently and when I look at the messages it's just it's interesting because you don't know how much people have changed over that time but the messages just are just all like I'm so happy you're back in my life I love you so much I've thought of you over the years and um of course I'll pass the message on to that friend that I'm still in touch with and it's just like you know it's it's oxytocin boosting and I just would like to add to this as a human not just a neuroscientist that you don't have to check in on your monthly goals you can just check in and like shut up about something silly you know yeah no thank you for adding that in that's very important it could just be an opportunity to say hi hello tell me what's going on in your life right give me the latest tell me like something really embarrassing that you did so I can just laugh at you you know whatever way you guys connect yeah right whatever you guys connect you know I want to go back to this idea of I think a lot of people would be surprised that from a manifestation standpoint that you were listing a lot of things that were about taking better care of the body right I often like to ask the opposite version of that question just to really drive that point home what happens when we don't take care of our body how does that impact manifestation so you already went into a little bit of a deep dive on sleep but if we are not taking care of our diet and getting you know adequate levels of protein in our diet adequate levels of diversity of the rainbow and fiber that comes from eating a lot of fruits and vegetables you know how does that affect our ability to manifest and create our goals and dreams in life yeah it's a very simple answer so manifestation is a higher function it's not a survival function it's a you know I have actually been challenged on it by people saying isn't that a luxury for people that have you know the basics that they need in life so um and to that you would say yes so no what I've said there is being very respectful of the fact that some people have much harder lives than others I still hope and believe that everybody could make their life a little bit better if there was a little room for manifestation on top of the basics and I've always tried to be very diplomatic about that because I realized you know there's a whole spectrum of lives that people have I had a guest on my podcast who when I said that to her actually it was like paused for dramatic effect and said manifestation is not a luxury it's a necessity and that changed it for me you know so that was great to have someone be so bold about that but so given that it is a higher function what I would say is that if you're compromised in any way tired hungry dehydrated inflamed at stress sedentary anything like that then that's the priority for your brain and your body to heal that it's not going to be manifesting if it's got all that to deal with so if the Gap is is there any compromise in your body if there's compromise in your brain or your body that's what your body is going to focus on once you're just at least neutral then you can do manifestation that's a powerful answer thank you for driving that home I really think that like that connects the dots for a lot of people yeah I want to ask you a question that I hear often that comes up in the topic of manifestation and it's a question that people say well what if I don't know what I want I'm sure you've heard this before somebody who's listening today who's like I believe in this I think it's amazing my challenge is not coming up with an action board my challenge is not sort of doing the work I want to put in the work I want to take care of my body and I'm doing good at that I just don't know what I want in life in fact I feel confused and maybe even a little bit conflicted as to what I should be going for how do you help that person navigate I do get that question on DM sometimes not too often but sometimes enough that I've had to think about it so what I usually say at first to the person is maybe tackle it by thinking how would I like my life to feel and then what I like add in that's more specific than that is two specific two kinds of things in the book I actually started by saying has your life panned out exactly how you always dreamed it would and if not then manifestation is you know a potential channel for you the other thing is at What stages in your life did you know what you wanted or what were the things that you wanted when there were times of more certainty and then if that's not enough to kind of start the thought process going then just journaling in general is the way to start untangling that confusion and conflict and lack of knowing could it also be that people can just get started with what they have right now and they can always add to it later on I'll give you an example in my life is that when I got clear a big driver for me in my life has been okay how do I figure out to create a situation that I can work with my family and friends that was a big motivator okay right and then I found out that okay if you get a traditional job you can't necessarily be hiring your family and friends in fact that's looked upon let's look down upon us even if you're especially if you're a manager you've got to pursue the path of Entrepreneurship and I said okay well I have no idea about business I have no idea what I want to do I've been studying computer science over here you know following that sort of Indian Path of you know a secure job and profession I said okay I don't know what I want to do but I know the feeling that I want I want to be with my family and friends working on interesting projects okay what is the feeling literally my first vision board was like this okay we're we're traveling together we're a small team that's working on interesting projects what projects I don't know yet right I don't know what we're going to be doing right we are having interesting conversation but our world is a little bit of a blend of profession but also personal so if we want to you know take off in the middle of the day because we're going to go celebrate somebody's birthday or you know talk about some big win in our lives or whatever I saw that blending in and I would have different imagery sometimes I would write on different words onto my vision board of what I would what I would want but I still didn't know what I wanted to do but I think the unique thing was I didn't put too much pressure on myself of needing to know what I wanted to do yeah I'm really glad you said that because it kind of validates what I've been saying to people about how would you want your life to feel because I don't always get to know the end result of those stories of you know people that DM me so the fact that you went with a Feeling and that's been really positive it's great for me to hear and I'll also share that you know I I do a action board annually but I have always really struggled to do like a five-year plan or a 10-year plan I've never done that and I always used to think I just I can't for some reason but at some point I realized that if you and I you know I am a planner I'm not that spontaneous I'd like everything to be in order I think you make your way to uh MIT and and uh and make it to some of these other schools and lecturing at uh Stanford if there's not a little bit of planning that's in the mix honestly I see that really randomly okay yeah yeah and I can tell you the story of that but I think it's bit it's a bit over like not necessary for this particular episode of the podcast but um it was actually a complete mistake that I ended up where I did and got found by those people wow um so where was sorry I threw you off Target so you were saying that uh oh yeah yeah um having not been able to do that and kind of thought is there's like something wrong with me that I can't envisage like that Five-Year Plan yep would I kind of learn you know with maturity was that things can come from Left Field like life can throw things at you that you had no idea would come that were coming and so I actually now prefer the fact that I don't have such a fixed plan so I'm able to be a bit more flexible to what happens and yes you've got to be resilient because sometimes like bad things happen but it also means that when an opportunity like becoming a senior lecturer at MIT comes up that I had never planned I could take it I mean I basically so I will share a very like summary of how that happened there was there there's a conference called unicorn where all the heads of business schools around the world meet and my co-author from my second book was invited to speak at that and he's like you know like an older male mad Professor type and he had moved to Asia so he couldn't do it so he recommended me I promise you when they saw me I was not their idea of like a professor that they wanted to speak at this conference and so and you know it was like it was far out of London and it was a really small honorarium and I was like it's gonna cost me more to go there than I'm gonna get paid and but my friend said look like you should do it it'll be good for you and you'll be doing me a favor too because obviously I can't do it um so I went and and did it and I was literally I remember just having all these people standing towering over me saying do you ever come to Boston do you ever come to like California do you come here I I just put my hand out and got this stack of business cards they all wanted a piece of you um I flew to Stanford three weeks later and I just thought no I remember saying to my friend I'm so bad with jet lag I don't want to go and he was like are you stupid you have to go so I did um so yeah that would have been quite a hard relationship for me to have regularly because it you know coming to LA from London or San Francisco from London is is a lot of jet lag and I'm not good at jet lag um so then a while later I went out to um Cambridge Massachusetts for a week and I attended some classes and I met some professors and then you know what happened happened of it I promise you there was no plan to go back into Academia yeah and that's a little bit of the magic that you talk about yeah yeah how do your spiritual beliefs if you feel comfortable getting into it so you know we all wear different hats you're a neuroscientist you're a psychiatrist you know these are all different labels that we have talking to you as the person um not even saying that this has to be backed up by any particular science that's out there how do your spiritual beliefs layer on top of the message that you share with the world so I was brought up in a Hindu household so I you know have that cultural heritage in my background so things like yoga and meditation and spirituality have been a part of my life since I can remember there was a time as a teenager and perhaps into my 20s that I rejected a lot of that stuff because I just wanted to be like my friends um and funnily enough it was yoga that kind of brought me back into into the fold because it you know became very popular with my my peers and and I was just such a natural at it it was kind of like oh wow okay there is something to this which is that you know my Heritage is obviously having like an impact here and and it's and it's also like a popular thing and then about five years after that I got divorced from my first marriage and in trying to heal from that journey I got really interested in um Carl Jung's psychology and some Buddhist teachings so that was the first time and I wasn't conscious of it at the time that sort of cognitive science and spirituality came and helped me together and it could not have just been one or the other um then I would say the next time was when I was writing the source and I was doing the research of in the into the cognitive science and visualization and manifestation um that was quite a risk for me at the time I don't think I was aware of how much of a risk it was for an MIT professor and you know and my business was really like Consulting to hedge funds to write a book on manifestation it was a bold first book to put out by itself yeah exactly and but I just didn't I wasn't I think I just did it because I didn't really think of that as a potential potentially an issue it was good you didn't overthink it yeah you just put it out there yeah that's quite a theme for me sometimes I've just got away with things because I just haven't thought about it too carefully um and you know I for me it was definitely a journey of bridging those things closer science and spirituality but actually it was the response to it when it came out was was quite life-changing for me so how much it was not just accepted but like you know how successful it was it's now translated into 38 languages incredible yeah um congratulations thank you and I love travel and languages and you know understanding different cultures and I speak quite a few languages but um my friend Alyssa who's in La who I've got another story about her to share she said to me it's like you're now speaking to people in 38 languages and that was just like a wow moment for me um and then you know I guess through social media people know a lot more about you than they ever would have you know before that was a thing and I've always been very private and considered my social media to be you know a professional Channel but I had dinner with my friend Alyssa in La last night and she said you know I look at your Instagram and I think has she got an MD or a PhD she might even have both I mean my friends they don't care about my qualifications or anything at all and she said but now I look at your Instagram and I see restorative yoga and you know you're you're like you've got Beauty endorsements you're getting sent clothes to wear to show people and and you're like really like bringing out your spiritual side and and she said it's just wonderful to see and and I said it's for the first time in my life I'm really like showing all aspects of me that I've never really shown shared before um and that massively includes spirituality and and you know I'd even go as far as to say it doesn't always have to be backed up by science so um I remember when I was on Dave asprey's podcast and I said that he was like wow you're going to lose your position at MIT he was saying not everything has to be backed up by science but no it's been a really really great journey for me and um you know having had a lot of Parental in societal and educational expectation on me that I felt like you know under the weight of as a young person um I feel like very free to express kind of all facets of me now and I love being a neuroscientist as you can probably tell I can talk about Neuroscience for hours but um yeah I think I've always treated my patients and my clients holistically and I feel like I'm able to be like that more now as well and that's it's really nice you can pass on the next question but just curious as somebody who also comes from a similar background yeah in the Hindu tradition I come from the Hindu tradition on my dad's side my mom's side culturally Hindu but it's the Jane tradition okay yeah and uh the belief in reincarnation is something that both sides feel and people would ask me when I was younger and said okay you know Hindus believe that you know the soul is never created nor destroyed and that there are you know different life experiences on a soul in different aspects that could be in this Dimension another dimension whatever people have different visions of it when I was younger I would say yeah you know I believe in reincarnation just because I was toting the line of the things that were there interestingly enough as I get older as I got older and I had some pretty profound experiences with um psychedelics which I've talked about previously on this podcast in an assisted you know setting as well as just like deeply profound meditate meditative experiences or Oneness experiences being in nature and kind of looking up at the stars and just having a Feeling I've I more felt it than I believed it so I don't walk around with the belief of hey you know the reason you got to be good is because Karma's gonna come and bite you in the butt in the next Lifetime and that's why you should be good to everybody no you should just be good because it's the Golden Rule yeah how would you want to be treated but I do feel like there's some sense of energy is neither created nor destroyed and so people would ask me today I would say they say Do you believe in reincarnation I said I don't know if I believe in it but I feel it right I'm not saying that's right or that's wrong I've had some interesting guests on the podcast who are actually researchers at the University of Virginia who actually kind of study that whole world of it's interesting it's called validated past life experiences if you're ever interested in connecting with them but yeah I'm curious for you how do you think about that yeah so very similarly to you when for you know as far back as I can remember I was told by my parents that reincarnation is absolutely true and I obviously as a child didn't question that and I didn't really think of it in terms of you know karma's going to come back and bite you I thought of it in terms of it was comforting to me when I lost my grandparents for example um and my grandfather I was very very close to my grandfather and he always told me that we'd known each other in a past life and and actually my father always said that I was his mother reincarnated and I remember as a little girl saying but how do you know um and and he would say to me just like I know you've got big brown eyes and you know everything I know about you I I know and if that's what your father tells you you believe it you know so so I believed it like with a kind of not without question but I believed it um you grew up in it yeah and then obviously when you study Western medicine and Neuroscience it's it's kind of hard to put those two things together but like I said I find it very comforting so I I kind of like chose to keep that belief um you know recently as you get older and then and with covert and everything I had experienced a lot of grief like I've lost more than 10 people in the last few years yeah so sorry so I've started reading about it more out of this sort of feeling of like I have to know and so I read Dr Brian vice's work I've LED read um Only Love is Real but I know he's written other books as well and I've just like you know researched it on the internet and so he's an MD and a you know a therapist so that's kind of convincing to the scientific side of me that he's you know have has all these case studies but I would say like you know again similarly to you I felt it with the people that I love that it's not a random coincidence that they've come into my life so I feel like it from that point of view yeah thank you for answering that that wasn't on my list of questions it just felt like something inherently I wanted to ask you about and you know I appreciate you sure probably let's say a couple or a few years ago I wouldn't have been comfortable answering that yeah I can feel from somebody who's been taking in your content you know since having connected and discovered you uh through my friends and my mother-in-law again um I really feel grateful that you feel comfortable to put your whole self out there thank you all the different components you you had a post of the day that I really liked about five books that have been massively powerful in your life yeah and I just I loved it you know I'd love to just see what you were reading and doing and I think that that's the evolution of the the world you know people are realizing that human beings even neuroscientists are multifaceted and actually there's this deep push in the world of science um and I think that podcasts are a big part of it whether that's Andrew human or Lex Friedman who's from MIT as well there's a lot of scientists medical doctors is that those individuals realize that this paper that they spent you know two to four years working on maybe 800 people if they're lucky read this one you know yeah in in kind of the space but actually how can we take those the message from that paper some of the findings some of the realizations some of the studies that were covered and how do we get it to the people because the people are suffering the people are suffering and they're looking for answers or the people are doing okay in certain areas but they want to do better yeah and the more that we can take this knowledge to the people the more it's a justification of the whole reason that you got into this field in the first place completely I mean like I just got goosebumps and he said that because that is literally the reason that I do everything that I do is because I I I'm very attuned to human suffering and I just want to do everything that I can you know to try to make it better and and actually you heard it first here everyone um people have been asking about season two of my podcast and I've just been saying we're strategizing about it and we you know not quite sure yet but I think we're very close to confirming that the theme is going to be me getting to speak some incredible people from various indigenous cultures and and you know spiritual wisdoms and applying that to Modern mental health struggles um I think exciting yeah I think it's going to be really exciting so yeah um you know people are really really suffering at the moment I thought that would happen as soon as the first lockdown happened but I I just don't think we're aware of the consequences on them on people's mental health yeah absolutely um you know not I think it's gonna like pan out for a long time there'll be books written about it documentaries all we made but at least in the meantime as much as people can be helped that's really the mission and the goal and that's what you're doing with your work you know for my last question here as we wind down and then we share with followers so they can keep in touch with you I want to talk a little bit about grief and suffering right we were just chatting about that recently and you mentioned which again I'm so sorry about having lost some people in your life and even if you have an incredible life everybody will experience some form of loss yeah some constriction in their life even to people who love each other and care about each other might realize that they're not a fit and they don't want to continue building a life together and that they're better off going in different directions that's something that happens of course I think that sometimes when people think of the world of manifestation there can be the sense of like it's all Rosy glasses it's going to be fantastic and everything's gonna happen but you have been so transparent to share with people is that there can be bumps along the way and that doesn't have to be something that takes away from the stuff that you want to create so could you talk a little bit more about that yeah um on the topic of of of grief and the intersection of how that is still a part of our journey and and life even in the power of manifestation yeah so I'd like to reiterate a point that I made about something slightly different which is about all the work that you do when life is good and how that serves you when life is tough so we were talking we were speaking about mindfulness but um I you know that includes resilience building includes mindfulness but there's a lot of other things you can do to build your mental resilience and I I believe that it's helpful to have done that um you know there's a theory that throughout life we experience lots of micro stressors like on a daily basis or a regular basis and then at some points in our lives we will experience stressors that are so great that they could break you and if you have built up your resilience and you've just got a larger bucket to draw from you know when when that happens and and then I think how I would relate that to manifestation is that at any one point in time it looks like your life is going to go in a straight line and then suddenly there's just going to be a right or left turn or a Crossroads that you hadn't figured you know factored in um so of all the things that I've done to try to prove to myself that I'm creative the one I think that's like the cherry on the icing on the cake is that I co-wrote a song with a rock star last year I heard about this um and there's um a line in it where it says like I'm standing at a Crossroads and I don't know which way to go um and and that song you know in some ways was about grief but it's not necessarily like the death of a loved one it can be like the loss of oneself um it could be the loss of something um could just be like a change in your way of life like that's happened a lot for people since the pandemic so you know grief in its many forms is both about how you deal with it given your resilience but it's also an opportunity to change course and of course part of that the default can just be that you go downhill and you know you never recover but given everything that we've spoken about mental resilience manifestation friends support community the fact that you can evolve and grow your brain and change the best way to look at it is a you know an opportunity to grow and maybe do things that you wouldn't have done if you stayed on the path and nothing had changed I think there's also an element too that even if something's happened in your past it's like we're all human we all have had something that's happened maybe even something that we're not proud of how we treated somebody or some area where we were rightly maybe wronged or not cared for in the right way and a level of forgiveness for ourselves that we were doing the best that we knew how I think that's a big part of manifestation in my own life if I could just speak about myself is that under the circumstances under the situation and the Consciousness that I had at the time I did the best that I could and sure with you know we call it in America we call it um uh armchair quarterbacking right it's related to football okay so it's it's basically like it's easy to say how the game should have went uh okay yeah on Tuesday after the big Monday Night Football game yeah yeah everybody can look back at their past and say I should have done this or why did I do that or why did I get in this relationship or why you know I should have this thing or that thing whatever but a sense of gratitude that also the things that didn't go right in your life also are part of the things that make you who you are today and your potential right that's that's there's that quote there's just everything I'm not made me everything I am and I think that when we step into that power we can truly tap into again this is just me speaking for my own experience we double down on what we're best at and we don't hyper too much hyper Focus I'm not I I want people to get better at anything they want to get better at but I truly feel will get farther in life if we double and triple down on what we're best at and meant to do versus on the small few things that didn't go well or how we should have focused on it so Neuroscience completely backside up so that whole idea of like play to your strengths and it's not that you don't at all work on your development areas but in terms of the efficiency of the brain playing to your strengths is absolutely the best way to to move forward this has been a fantastic podcast thank you so much I'm glad that our friend Dr rupee connected us and we got a chance to have this conversation and just thank you for having the courage to go down the creative path thank you if it wasn't for that which for people who look on the outside and think what are you talking about you're a physician and you're a researcher you could have done anything you wanted but they may not know if they haven't grown up in those family structures and systems that just like anything you're taking a bold leap when you start to dabble and go direct to the audience and that takes a lot of Courage so thank you for having the courage to put out your message the world has benefited uh I feel like there's a lot of really interesting projects that are coming the future I've heard about a TV show that maybe is going to be there so I can't wait till you're ready one day to share about that yeah but in the meantime on projects that you are willing to share about season two is coming up with the podcast can you remind our audience uh what the podcast is called the podcast is called reinvent yourself with Dr Tara um there is going to be a bit of a break before season two comes out because I'm absolutely determined that if it's called reinvent yourself it can't just be a rerun of season one so there's going to be a Twist amazing um yeah we're still a kind of you know working on exactly how that's going to look and while they wait for season two of course they can follow you on social media and they can also get a chance to pick up a copy of your book which is now in you said 38 languages yeah so pick your choice whatever it is and get a chance to dive into it anywhere else you want to send our audience um I'm most active on Instagram so that's where I tend to like reply the most to people I'm at Dr Tara swart and Twitter Tara swart um and yeah the books available on Amazon and all bookstores beautiful all the links in the show notes everyone Dr Tara thank you so much for coming on the podcast thank you for making my mother-in-law's day and getting a chance to meet you you know we got to grab a selfie together with her too yeah definitely definitely and and again thank you for being here I truly appreciate it well thank you so much for having me I'm really pleased that we did it hey YouTube If you enjoyed what you just saw keep watching for more great content on how to improve your brain and your life just look at yourself how are you behaving are you showing up what is the impact of how you speak and how you act on other people what is the impact on yourself what is driving that behavior

Channel: Dhru Purohit

Views: 262,876

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Id: k48ieWKiudE

Length: 122min 5sec (7325 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 01 2023