Rewire Your Mind with Dr Shauna Shapiro

very warm welcome to you wherever you are around the world right now this is another live action for happiness event and it's fantastic to see you joining us as ever from so many different countries around the world this active happiness Community is all about building a happier and Kinder world together and I'm so excited that we're joined today by Dr Shawna Shapiro for this theme of rewire your mind um Shauna are you there are you with us I'm hoping Shawna is going to be joining me on screen hi welcome Sean and lovely to see you you're muted unfortunately at the moment thank you I'm delighted to be here sorry I thought there was an introduction but here I am welcome um well by way of introduction uh many of you here in this community are uh regulars and so it's lovely to have you here we're going to be um looking forward to your comments in the chat as always and we'll be keeping it kind and supportive and relevant as I know you always do if you're new to one of these action for happiness events thank you for being here seanu and I are going to have a conversation together where I'm going to try and help bring to life and and help Shauna share some of the Fantastic work that she does um as a clinical psychologist she's a renowned author she has a TED Talk that's been viewed three million times an expert in neuroscience and also Mindful and compassionate practices some of which will have a chance to learn about and try out hopefully together at today's event and then after we've had a conversation you'll have a chance to put your questions to Shauna so please do use the Q a function as well as a chat and we'll be able to answer some of those a bit later on so rewire your mind is the theme and Shauna maybe to lead us into the conversation perhaps you could say a little bit for people who aren't familiar with you about your own background and professional experience but also maybe personally what's brought you to this topic yeah well thank you for that introduction and I'm delighted to be here and um yeah for me even though this has been kind of a academic and professional Pursuit it really started as a personal one um when I was 17 years old I had spinal fusion surgery so I had a metal rod put in my spine and I went from this healthy active teenager I was star of the volleyball team I had just signed a play in in University um to overnight lying in a hospital bed unable to walk and I was in the hospital bed for about six months and it was a very difficult time and as a teenager I just didn't have the tools to cope I was in a lot of physical pain which was hard but what was really challenging was my own mind right this this kind of fear would I ever walk normally again would I always be in pain a lot of fears about the future and also a lot of regrets like I wish I had done that or if only I'd done this and I started getting really anxious really depressed and it was during that time my father who was a long lifelong meditator gave me a book Dr John Kevin's book wherever you go there you are and I'll never forget I opened the book and the first line says whatever has happened to you it's already happened the only thing that matters is now what and it was as if this kind of whole path opened up for me this possibility that I didn't have to stay stuck and that this wasn't you know my life forever and so I started reading everything I could about mindfulness and trying to practice on my own which I have to say I wasn't very good at um and a few years later when I had recovered enough I went to Thailand to begin really studying meditation and it was my experiences there at the monastery that kind of set me on this path for kind of a lifelong both personal and professional kind of career and mindfulness well that's lovely to hear and I I love that idea of whatever's happened has happened and I know you're you talk a lot about that the sort of hope that comes with that that there is a possibility of change and we'll come on to talk about that but perhaps we could actually begin as we mean to go on in this event today and actually practice a little bit of mindfulness so I'd love to invite you to sort of take us through a little exercise but maybe you could just remind us about some of the or some of how you would describe the you know the both the art of mindfulness and and why it matters yeah I think it's really important to take a moment and Define mindfulness it's become so popular um and yet the term is kind of thrown around and we often don't have a shared understanding and so from from my perspective um first it's important to differentiate mindfulness from meditation so mindfulness is really this way of being present moment by moment so right now we're practicing mindfulness as we're speaking as we're listening um meditation is kind of the exercise right it's as we said the practice it's like going to the gym and it's um really you know the only point to meditation really is to cultivate this ability to be present and so mindfulness is really about attention like at the most basic level it's the art of paying attention and yet it's a bit more nuanced than that because if you think about it you know just paying attention there's lots of people a sniper could you know be the most mindful person in the world they know how to pay attention so it's also about why you pay attention and this is your intention right what's important to you what do you care about and then how you pay attention and this is your attitude this has to do with paying attention with kindness with curiosity with an open mind and so mindfulness is really all three of these it's kind of the awareness that arises when we pay attention on purpose intentionally in a kind and compassionate way and I'll I'll take you through just a brief three-minute practice in a moment with each of those but one thing I really want to say about intention because I've been studying it quite a lot lately and I I think it's such an important part of this practice is that our intentions set the stage for what is possible they remind us Moment by moment of what's actually important and what's fascinating about intentions is that they're not just kind of these vague mystical Concepts they're also neural chemicals and so when you set an intention it releases this whole Cascade of neurochemistry that helps motivate you to reach your goal so when you set an intention it releases the neural modulator of dopamine and dopamine is this you know molecule of motivation and then dopamine turns into acetylcholine which helps you focus and pay attention and the kind of Hallmark of neuroplasticity it doesn't happen unless you focused and paying attention and so by setting an intention you basically are you know guiding yourself in the direction you want to head so as I guide you through this practice what I want you to do is take a moment let your eyes close or just lower your gaze whatever feels comfortable and begin by just listening for your intention which is why are you here what's important why are you paying attention and you don't need to come up with an answer I just want you to practice listening feeling your body and maybe you're here to learn right or maybe you're here to find more peace or ease in your life or maybe you're here for more clarity right you have some struggle or confusion that you'd like more clarity with just kind of listening for your intention what's important right now feeling your breath feeling your body and just choosing a word or a phrase to guide you could just be presents and if you haven't thought of something don't worry your intention can be simply to keep listening with kindness and then just letting that go and Gathering your attention here in the present moment into your body so go ahead and wiggle your fingers and toes just to kind of help anchor your attention maybe roll out your shoulders go ahead and soften your jaw soften your eyes just let the face rest and notice that you're breathing and then see if you can Infuse this attention with an attitude of kindness of curiosity of of Wonder like I wonder what's going to happen noticing how you feel how you feel in your body are you tired are you interested are you hungry resting with your breath and we'll just rest here for another 30 seconds beginning again right here at the very end and begin fresh paying attention with kindness and curiosity and when you're ready slowly gently you can let some light back in through the eyes go ahead and just stretch your arms above your head if that feels good I always like to do it okay good and what I most want you to notice is that even as the meditation ends the mindfulness continues that we're still paying attention with our kindness with our curiosity and the goal is really to have this seamless continuity of mindfulness that there's no like huge break between the meditation and the mindfulness great thank you Shona um one thing I particularly love about that was we always have such an active chat in the community in these events and actually people really paused then to connect with what you're doing so thank you everyone for really being part of that and obviously seeing a lot of um uh you know love for you in the chat afterwards as well Shawna um I oh that desire to find an intention was really interesting for me because I as well as discovering what I would expect which is like the intention to perhaps be present and to feel calmer I discovered that my intention in doing that was also to to ensure that I can post this event in a way that both helps bring out your wonderful work and helps everyone in the community feel that they've learned something and I and I recognize that that was a sort of a compassionate Instinct that I hadn't seen before that that was part of why I was there so I think that idea of intention actually changed how I experienced that so thank you yeah yeah I love that you brought that up actually because whenever I'm doing this and I'm teaching my intention is always may this be a benefit and what I find is when I anchor into that intention it kind of relaxes my anxiety like it helps me let go of my agenda I don't have to have it Go perfectly I don't have to make sure we cover this I just have to in some way have this be a benefit and it really reminds me of what's truly important and well talking about what's truly important we've rather ambitiously called this event rewire your mind and I know that's a phrase you've used a lot we've talked about mindfulness already I guess the idea of rewiring in mind is that we can change but of course we tend to associate that more maybe we'll talk about this a bit later perhaps with young people remember children we can change a lot but as adults we sort of often have the impression that we are fixed in our ways and I think you can bring a sort of hopeful message to us but maybe we could start with this idea of change whether it really is possible yeah yeah I think one of the most hopeful and important scientific discoveries in the last 400 years of brain science is really neuroplasticity this discovery that change is possible throughout our entire lifetime that even into our 90s right into our ninth decade we're seeing neurogenesis so this understanding of really our miraculous brain and how malleable it is I think is the most hopeful message science can give you because for me as a clinical psychologist what we were always taught by remembering graduate school it was called the doctrine of the unchanging brain and it was this belief that the brain was static and that it was fixed and after age 25 it was like this is who you are and that's not such good news because most of the people I was working with were clinically depressed or anxious or stuck in some way in their life and what has been so hopeful about this new research is it shows that no matter what your past no matter what mistakes you've made no matter what your current circumstances all of us have the capacity to change now I want to be clear it's not like flipping a switch right where you instantly light up the good and shut down the bad it takes practice and I think that's why I've become so interested in this whole notion of rewiring the mind that it's over time that we can carve out new pathways and I kind of like to think of it as you know we have these super highways of habit it's how we've been practicing our life for decades and a lot of times those are unhealthy habit patterns both in the way that we behave but also in the way that we think in our World Views and with mindfulness practice with compassion practice with all these different practices we start to carve out these new Pathways and I like to call them Country Roads right they're they're not as fast they're not as like slick as the super highway but as we start to go down these new Pathways they start to become their own Super highways and they lead somewhere new right if we want to go somewhere new we have to take a different path mmm I love that I well I love that the optimism that's sort of built into that that change possible and I think I've heard you say the phrase that it's never too late and clearly if you can change in your 90s then then there's a chance wherever we are in our journey uh there's super highways of habit is really interesting so I I often think we forget how helpful habits are in a way because they sort of the fact that somebody wears are stuck on autopilot is in some ways a good thing because there's so many decisions and so much information all around us the fact that we can get ourselves up and to work and eat and all these things without having to think about it too much is a helpful response to a really complicated life it takes out some of the variables the fact also that we can then find these country lanes and take a different path is exciting but how how can we maybe identify the super highways of habit we'd like to get off as opposed to the ones that are perhaps serving Us in helpful ways well I think for most people it's relatively obvious which are their super highways of habits that are not serving them that are not skillful um so I can say for me one of my my main ones is impatience and that you can speak with my husband and my four teenagers and they will reinforce that notion that that's something I'm working on and and so I think all of us know kind of what our areas of growth maybe are and so for me every time I start going down that well practiced very Speedy impatient pathway if I can pause and I can just for a moment go down this one what happens which is so exciting what happens in my brain is something called neuronal pruning so it starts to prune away my superhighway and it starts to grow this other pathway and you know habits I think you're right in the sense that we don't think of we think of habits often as bad right that their their negative but actually when we can create really healthy habits and the reason the word habit is so important is that it's automatic and so there's this interesting Paradox with mindfulness where on one level you want to wake up from your automatic you know way of living this autopilot like you said and then on the other hand you want to start to create healthy habits where you stack them in with other habits and you minimize limbic friction so limbic friction is kind of it's like when you're trying to start a new exercise program and you're thinking about going to work out but you're not sure you want to and you're like hemming and high that's limbic friction it's difficult but if you just set the time and you know you're going to work out and you have to work out because you're going to work out next door to where you pick your kids up and you're gonna do it at this time it it minimizes limbic friction because the decision is already made and so the key really to creating these new Pathways is to as best we can eliminate the decision to make these choices part of our daily life and that's why yeah go ahead well no I just um it helps remind me of some of the biggest changes I've made whether it's about no longer drinking alcohol or building activity into my daily life or my meditation practice in the morning it's become almost a binary thing for me is like this is this is something I do as opposed to something I'm trying to do uh actually that was quite interesting but I wonder maybe on your point about waking up and bringing awareness maybe we could just turn to the community for a second and actually ask people what what's one super highway of habit that you would love to sort of nudge in a different direction maybe we could just see some examples you've shared one about um you know your your own perspective my one I guess is I can be quite judgmental to myself and potentially to others and I'd like to let go of some of that maybe people just share in the chat I'm going to read a few of these out procrastination quick sugar get out of my head um I'm anticipating the worst I have political rage rumination negativity apologizing for myself you were worried you wouldn't know their their habits yeah I mean they know who doesn't escape living in the future feeling not good enough overthinking not making enough plans feeling impatient in action um wow I mean this is an amazing list and actually quite diverse quite a range of different sort of super highways it's not that everyone's saying the same thing someone saying judgmental and impatient negative judgment having a thin skin to criticism feeling lazy so thank you everyone that's really insightful I think uh what are you thinking yeah and I want to say something yes so I'm thinking so many things so first of all thank you so much for the participation I love hearing those and I relate to so many of them and what it brings up for me is this kind of universality of our own self-judgment and so I want to be really clear right now because this for me has been the most important part of transformation and the most important part of my work with my patients but really in my work with myself is as we see these super highways of habit that we want to change we have to be really careful not to spiral into self-judgment that we're seeing them with this pure intention of you know um may may I change this five percent more not a hundred percent not Perfection Perfection isn't possible in fact Perfection is the antithesis of evolution so my goal is not Perfection it's growth it's change it's transformation and so as you you know we're writing in the chat and saying what you want to change it's really important then to bring compassion to yourself right to not judge yourself oh God you're such a terrible and patient mother but to say oh sweetheart you you really want to be more patient with your kids and with your husband and with the world so how can I take one small step in this direction and what I find is that this mindfulness is about seeing things clearly right to see them clearly without shame without self-judgment and this is so important because when we shame and judge ourselves it shuts down the Learning Centers of the brain it literally Keeps Us stuck in the very super highway of habit that we want to change and so the the real kind of Secret Sauce of of transformation is actually compassion is seeing things clearly with kindness instead of judgment and what's interesting about kindness and compassion is they release both dopamine which we talked about this neuromodulator of motivation so they give you energy to change and oxytocin which makes you feel safe you're like oh I'm not going to beat myself up if I see this clearly I'm actually going to use the little bit of pain I feel at seeing it to motivate me so it's a really important distinction I I also think the fact that you focus on the intention almost more than the outcome to start with at least it feels helpful because I know that sometimes I let's say I have an intention to be a good father and I've got teenage kids and it's you know hard work and I feel like I make the wrong judgments and say the wrong things and make mistakes and I find it really helpful to be able to say well that maybe maybe that didn't go quite as well as I'd hoped but my intention was good I was trying to connect or help or pass a message on and I can learn from that so instead of it becoming like a I failed in my aim it's become a okay well I'm bringing the right intention to this and I'm you know my I'm still trying to be a good me a good father a good parent and I'm learning and so it feels like more like an evolution rather than a Perfection as you were saying yeah that people and I that has been so important in my own work is is always coming back to my good heart like I wasn't trying to be you know this or I wasn't trying to make a mistake none of us want to you know do these things and and to have compassion for myself but not let the compassion let me off the hook and I want to be really clear about that it's like the the coming back to the truth right but that still means we see clearly and that's why I love integrating mindfulness and compassion so much that mindfulness is really about this scene clearly but then I find what I'm seeing clearly that little judgmental voice can get in there if I don't explicitly bring in compassion so what can we just build on I mean people were so generous in sharing one of their super highways let's let's go to the let's say what you know you said earlier whatever's happens now what so what what's the beginning of someone let's say someone said that they are procrastinating or feeling lazy or feeling whatever it was that we were shared Where Do We Begin in that sort of you know the general kind but but not letting yourself off the hook approach to change yeah yeah so uh the first step I think is really seeing things clearly as I've said and really looking um and that's where for me the compassion comes in because sometimes it's just too painful to look to acknowledge those parts of ourselves right they're so shameful and so what happens is compassion brings the kind of the courage and this light of awareness even to our darkest places and so that's the the first step can I paraphrase are we sort of saying like it's kind of understandable that we're in this situation we're not berating ourselves what it is what it is almost before you can move on so so the first step and you know I actually like to use Kristin neff's not model um very much in terms of of using compassion because the first part of self-compassion is mindfulness that that's the first step of the model and so the first step is just seeing things clearly you can't you can't change if you don't see it so the first step is seeing it and what I love about this step too is there's wonderful research out of UCLA that shows that when you name an emotion it actually starts to calm down your physiology so we affectionately call it name it to tame it and this is a wonderful study where they had um they had people look at very difficult slides photographs and half the people had to name the emotion that they felt when they saw it and the other half had to name whether it was a male or female in the slide so it was like people on accidents or people who are starving or you know terrible things and so the group that was like ooh fear or disgust or shame or overwhelm they were hooked up to all these EEG EKG monitors all these physiological monitors and what they found is naming your emotion started to calm your physiology immediately and so the first step I think in any difficult situation is just to name it just to say this is a moment of suffering or I'm afraid or I'm angry or I'm embarrassed whatever it is the Second Step then is not to go about trying to fix it yet right which is what we normally try to do we're like I made a mistake I got to fix it is to pause and bring compassion to yourself bring kindness to yourself and to really treat yourself like you would treat a dear friend right what would I say if if Mark messed up how would I comfort you and to bring that same compassion to myself and I want to be clear with this step because when I was first practicing self-compassion I would imagine what someone who loves me would say so I'd imagine like my best friend Annie what would she say or my mom and that didn't really work because I'd be like oh yeah well she loves me so of course she's just being nice what actually shifted my perspective is when I imagine what would I say to Annie and then all my love and compassion for her naturally arose and it shifted my entire experience and then the final step which is is really I think um the most important is what's called common humanity and this is where you reflect on all the other people in the world that are struggling with something similar so when you were reading the list from the chat section and people were talking about their self-judgment and they're not being good enough and they're you know they're they're laziness and all these different things I was like ah I relate and then all of a sudden I realized there's all these hundreds of people right now that are struggling with something similar and so in my practice what I do is I'll send out my compassion to all these people who are struggling so maybe someone's struggling with their teenagers like you mentioned yeah say may all parents struggling with teenagers may you find compassion for yourself and may this pass quickly may this stage you know be useful and then I'll breathe in that those same wishes to myself so I'm sending my compassion out but I'm not leaving myself out I'm also breathing it back in for myself and you know I've worked a lot with women with breast cancer I worked at the Cancer Center for a long time and this step this final step was the most transformational is we'd start by you know being mindful of our emotions and our fear and our you know anger and whatnot and then we bring kindness to ourselves but it was when they thought of all the other women who are facing breast cancer or facing chemotherapy or the radiation or the surgery and they sent their compassion out to them and they breathed it and for themselves there was this sense of community and that's where you could really see the healing start to happen Sean I think the self-compassion is so important and so you've I'm just going to recap we said mindfulness compassion and common Humanity I think I've got a really strong sort of intellectual understanding of how you've described those things but I wondered if maybe we can now practice it together maybe you could actually take us through another of your fantastic mindful exercises and perhaps each of us could bring to mind something we're really working on or struggling with and actually really really not just hear this in our heads but actually feel this in our hearts as well absolutely and I so appreciate that Mark because to rewire our mind which remember that's the name of the talk that's what we're doing here you can't just hear about it and even having an Insight like oh that makes sense that doesn't translate into learning and long-term change what actually translates is practice that's why one of my favorite phrases is what you practice grows stronger and it's true so we need to practice so again you can close your eyes or just lower your gaze and just like Mark invited just call it a mind something you're struggling with something maybe that you listed in the chat or something else and I want you to notice first just how it feels to think about this thing so probably doesn't feel great so that's okay that's natural and just kind of being mindful of the pain or the suffering or the fear or the confusion see if you can soften the body create space for whatever you're feeling and just gently naming it sadness fear anger confusion whatever it is just naming it see if you can feel it in your body this kind of signature of emotion you don't have to think about the problem too much I just want you to be aware of it s impact feeling your breath let the breath anchor you and I want you to imagine what you would say to a dear friend who is facing something similar so a dear friend who is feeling afraid or scared or sad what would you say to them how would you support and comfort them I want you just really to imagine silently in your mind's eye what you would say how you would approach them maybe you would hug them put your arm around them and I want you to see if you can bring the same kindness to yourself for me it's helpful just about my hand on my heart and just say sweetheart this is hard I'm here I care about your pain let's see if you can offer yourself those phrases or whatever feels right and again this isn't about perfect it's about practice so five percent more kindness towards yourself feel your breath feel your body see if you can receive this a little bit and then you can place your hand back in your lap or leave it there and I want us to shift now to reflecting on everyone else in the world right now who might be facing something similar of course it's not the exact same but there's probably other people who feel lonely right now or who feel scared or who's struggling financially or with their health so just reflecting on all the other people who are facing something similar to you and send them your kindness your compassion may your suffering pass care about your suffering and as you send this out with each exhale breathing it back in with each inhale sending your compassion out with each exhale breathing it in with each inhale and recognizing that you're part of a larger Humanity that we're never alone in our suffering we're part of this Web of Life from which we can never fall and so take one more breath in and out take a moment just to feel your body and notice what's happened in just a few minutes as you're ready you can slowly gently let your eyes open and again you can just stretch your arms if that feels good okay good thank you Shawna I I don't think I've ever called myself sweetheart before that opportunity um I want to come on to the idea of you know bringing this to the Next Generation I know you've written a fantastic book um sort of bringing some of your ideas to to young people but just I guess because it's linked to it I just wanted to pause for a moment a bit more on this idea of practice we've just done a practice I found that really wonderful and hearing about the fear was great but then feeling it was an experiencing was different um you know obviously lots of us would love to spend you know time every day doing mindfulness and you know I'm I feel fortunate I've managed to build a practice that doesn't always go to plan but has become a routine I love that quote that says you should meditate for our whatever it is half an hour a day except on stressful days when you should make it an hour right um but of course we don't all have that much time so do you have any tips on how we can make practice something that fits in our days yeah absolutely and it's something that I have really thought a lot about um I was a single mom for 10 years and um it was a very stressful very busy time where I did not have a lot of my own free time and so I was very interested in like how many minutes a day to get to a threshold effect in the science behind it and here's what I'll say um one you have to do what works in your life and I know that's cliche and that's what everyone says but it's true and so the best time to practice is when it actually works into your life now having said that there's some interesting research so in terms of when to practice uh there's some great research from UC San Francisco my dear friend and colleague Alyssa eppel um has found that your mood in the morning and your mood in the evening predict the length of your telomeres which are the little caps at the end of our DNA that predict really are overall Health and Longevity and also the health of our mitochondria which is the body's kind of battery or Energy System and what they found is that your mood in the morning and your mood in the evening these kind of book ends time of day predict these really important health indicators and so what I take from that is that meditating in the morning and in the evening are these really potent times that can support your health and so I've made that my practice now to meditate for short periods in the morning and short periods in the evening um in terms of length of time you know I came from the tradition I studied with John kavitson you know back in gosh my really early 20s um and we were you know 45 minutes a day was was the the thing and I have put thousands of my patients through that um regimen and if you can do what you practice grow stronger it's wonderful for you but newer research is showing that there is a threshold effect originally we found between 7 and 12 minutes a day where we are seeing changes in the brain changes in immune function changes in health and well-being um Andrew huberman who's another dear colleague of mine at Stanford um recently published a study showing that five minutes a day five days a week um was enough to see change so what I do with my patients is we always start with just one or two minutes a day because what's most important of getting back to this idea of habit formation is to build the habit is to start to interrupt your automatic pilot to interrupt your patterning and so what we do is we stack the meditation habit onto a habit that you already do so I usually choose brushing my teeth right something that I really don't ever Miss and so in the morning before I brush my teeth or right after that's my cue oh it's time to meditate and before bed so there's this again I talked about limbic friction there's less limbic friction because you don't have to decide when am I going to meditate it's right now it's while you know right after I brush my teeth and it helps to start to build that practice and if you're just doing two minutes no one can say I don't have two minutes right and so as you start to link that practice then after 30 days you can say oh I want to do five minutes or I want to do seven minutes but the most important thing is to get that pathway established and so that's usually where I start I really love that solution in the teeth cleaning other ones I've heard are while the kettle's boiling that might be a uniquely British thing perhaps um when I first when I first wake up I will put the meditation app on my phone before I do any other connectivity in the morning um I've also got a thing where I set an alarm at midday every day that just goes off and only I know what it is but I know it's my reminder just to take a mindful minute at midday wherever I am and you know no one else needs to even know that that's going on for me I also love what my colleague does which is every time he hears somebody else's phone ping which of course happens all around us these days instead of being annoyed by it my colleague Alex has treat it like it's a meditation Bell and someone else's phone has reminded me to take a breath but that I do yeah bundling an intention to something you already do is is really powerful are there any other examples like brushing teeth what else would you share as little ideas so for me the what I do every single morning is before I even get out of bed so I I leave my phone there's no phones in the bedroom this was this was definitely a fight in the family but there's no phones in anyone even the children's bedrooms no one's allowed to have a phone in the bedroom so we have a place for phones um so when I first wake up in the morning before I get out of bed I always put my hand on my heart my it releases oxytocin it's good for you and I always start with the practice of just greeting myself with kindness setting my intention for the day and just having it while I'm still in that kind of hypnagogic state right when you're when you're first waking up your brain is in an alpha Theta state which is very suggestible and very trainable this is this beautiful time to imprint and so instead of taking your phone or instead of looking at the news or even thinking about your agenda what you have to do that day to just take a moment to greet yourself with kindness to set your intention for the day and it can really kind of set the whole course of your day so I really encourage people before they get out of bed to do something it's you know just for 30 seconds yeah and I saw someone else to this in the chat the mindful walking you know do something where you're outside Physically Active that could be a great habit I walk the dog in the morning so I often I often have podcasts on but I'll take a pause and just sort of notice the beautiful surroundings I mean that I would otherwise have potentially being taken for granted and do some breathing um let's come on though to perhaps an even better way of building habits which is to start young you know our adult brains can change but I think we all know that our children's Minds can be rewired and are rewired and wired for the first time really powerfully what you've written a book intended for the Next Generation if you like what tell us a bit about that and why it's important yeah I'm so excited about it and I love the way you freezed it is it really about forming habits young because why why not right wouldn't all of us as parents want to teach our children these you know neural Pathways of compassion and of kindness towards our self and of connection with Greater Community and so as I've been studying neuroplasticity I got really interested in brain development especially in the early years of life that's when you know children don't even have to try they just absorb language they absorb information and so I've written a children's book it's called good morning I love you Violet and it's about a little girl's journey into self-kindness and it was interesting when you were reading in the chat all these habits what really stood out to me is this judgmentalness and especially of ourselves and I think so many of us as adults have grown into just it's the norm to judge and berate and shame yourself and yet it's so unhelpful and so unhealthy and so if I had a wish for every child in the world it's that they were kind to themselves that that it was natural to be on your own team to be your own Ally instead of your own inner enemy and so that's what the book is about and I'm very excited about it and really hope that every child can can have a copy yeah it's got a beautiful cover design which I've seen I've not actually seen inside it yet and of course good morning I love you I think was the name of the viewer or book for adults as well isn't it so this is a building on that so we'll we'll send around tomorrow to everyone who's part of this event including those that signed up but couldn't actually be with us live a link to this conversation and also to your website your fantastic Ted talk but also to both the books including this one for for young people I think it's a really hopeful message I feel as a parent I I could and should be doing so much more to help cultivate this um these skills in in my children but I hope that they also pick up on it a little bit through um you know they say that children do what you copy what you do not what you say it's fine tried to practice um let's um let's come to questions because um there are lots of people who want to ask you things and so if you would like to post a question use the Q a function and if you like someone else's question please do upvote them because you can make sure that the most popular questions are the ones that we get put to Shawna so Claire's asking about something I think came up quite a bit in the sort of Reflections from the audience any advice on how to interrupt rumination especially yes absolutely so first I'm going to recommend a book my one of my favorite books is mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression and I feel like zindel Siegel um to that you know who else wrote that book anyways the number of amazing amazing scientists and clinicians and that's the best book I've personally read as a clinical psychologist and what if it talks about is is how to interrupt ruminations and I think the first step is really just to start to see them just to notice them to that that is an interruption to instead of getting lost in them to just name it right oh there's a ruminative thought there's a negative thinking there my mind goes into its Super Highway which they tend to become and just picking yourself up and bringing yourself back is an intervention okay so I think that's one of the first steps the second step is really to acknowledge the pain that these thoughts cause right and to imagine again a dear friend right what would you say to a dear friend who is having that thought how would you support her the other thing I would say and I use the the image of a hot burning coal and I imagine whenever I'm reaching for a judgmental thought or a ruminative thought it's like I'm reaching for this hot call and I just say no that will burn you and I even imagine like what would I say to my child like if they were doing I'd say no like there's a certain level of discipline right discipline in the healthiest sense of the word where it's educating it's caring for and I think once we realize that these thoughts are are harmful um you know sometimes we think that self-judgment or having these negative thoughts can some way motivate us or some way make us better but what the research shows is they don't and so once we're clear on that I think really having this like compassionate discipline where we say no that will hurt you thank you I'm I'm touched to see lots of names I recognize in the questions from people who I see regularly using the action for happiness act where we have a lovely community of people sort of keeping these kind of conversations going day in day out and supporting each other one of those is devika who has just asked a question that's been voted by lots of other people uh says Sean I love your teaching what when you said what you practice grows stronger um but do you have any guidance around how to manage the internal conflict discomfort and fear that when we're trying to grow new newer Pathways while the old ones are still there yes change is hard I guess isn't it change is hard and change is scary right and change is a process and so I think the most important thing again is to be on your own team and to not have this ideal of perfection but to to celebrate little micro changes to celebrate baby steps and that also helps you know calm the fear because you're not doing these huge things it's like can I do five percent more today and how does that feel and and for me that's been kind of a radical shift is that I tend to be someone maybe goes with my impatience super highway but of like all or none and I want it to be perfect and I want to go hard and just realizing even doing a little bit is significant right one of my favorite teachers uh shinsen young he says subtle is significant and I love that because it's true [Music] um Henrietta has asked how do you manage hopelessness and you feel that you're sort of self-judgment and shame and pain uh will never change so when you're feeling like you're sort of trying to change but it's not really going the way you'd hoped and yeah as you said maybe it's a bit like this idea of spiraling a bit um how can we get beyond that yeah it's it's hopelessness is hard and I've definitely been there and I think for me that's why the science is so compelling is is seeing these brains change seeing the brain scans and realizing that it's never too late because I think so many of us feel like well it might not be too late for her but it's too late for me I think we have this sense of like I'm the lost cause maybe everyone else neuroplasticity works and from the scientific lens it's just not true it's just you know it's just a fact that all of us can rewire our mind and I take a lot of Hope in that I think that's why I became a scientist and a professor is because I didn't want to just say to people have faith in me um I wanted to be able to show them the science and and have that be the source of Hope and related to Hope is a question on motivation from Zoe he says I know what I need to do and I know how to do it but I still really struggle to find my motivation so this can relate to that so you talked earlier on about this dopamine and this intention being a motivator which I thought I'd really heard before I tend to think of it as like a reward you get when you've done something but actually you're you're sort of suggesting that you threw our intention we can create a bit of that motivation but can you say a bit more about application yeah so dopamine has been often kind of villainized and misunderstood especially because it's so um involved in the addiction pathways but dopamine just at the most basic level is about motivation and when we release dopamine so if I think about something I care about I I loved Mark you said I I should I should really be teaching this more toward my children and and so you could feel a little self-judgment in there when you said it and what I wanted to say to you is like the clinician part of me is like well why why what's motivating you and then you would shift into because I love them and I know this is powerful and I want them to have this and there would be almost like a joy in it instead of the should you would be like I want to teach my children this because this is gonna help them Thrive when you set an intention with kindness with um something about you care instead of the shame and judgment it releases dopamine and all of a sudden you can feel that uplift that like yes I'm gonna do this and so when I'm working with people we start with the motivation we start with intention we don't go into action until there's this energy and like I said before there's this Cascade of neural chemistry that helps you and it pulls you out of your hopelessness and it drives you and what's beautiful about dopamine is that you know the the brain and nervous system are not stupid so you can't lie to yourself you can't like fake an intention or you can't like do what you think is right it has to come from your heart it has to be something you actually care about and then the dopamine is right there so I hope that helps and what I would invite um I think it was Zoe is is to really reflect on why why do I want to do this what do I care about and let your body's neural chemistry help you so it's less about the what do I need to do well like why am I trying to do this yeah really really helpful thank you um I think I I think I've heard you already answered this partially but Sherry's just asked is it more difficult to rewire your mind the older you are yeah okay so here we go it is definitely easier when you're a child okay before age 25 not like on your birthday but you know sometime before age 25 the brain is pretty plastic and you don't even actually have to put a lot of effort in to learn things it's just naturally passively happening once you're 25 and older you have to engage neuroplasticity and what I mean by that is it doesn't just happen passively but the good news is the way to engage it is through setting an intention right you need to be motivated and you need to pay attention so intention and attention chart inherent in mindfulness they are the keys that unlock neuroplasticity the third key that unlocks it is sleep so when you learn a new Behavior the rewiring actually doesn't happen until later that night and the next night when you're sleeping so those are the keys for neuroflasticity and if you're using those keys as I said even into your 90s you can rewire it's really hopeful thank you I've just spotted in the chat rather in the Q a Amanda said asking you Sean do you run any meditation or my kind of sessions online this talk is amazing just to say one of the things we're going to share in the follow-up email is a link to your YouTube channel where I think you do have some practices that people can can find yeah so I have three meditations on my YouTube channel and I've been trying to make shorter meditations in this kind of five to seven minute window because that's what the research is saying is a threshold effect and I just want to get people going um I also do teach live retreats in the US and at esslin Institute in Big Sur California so the oops those are upcoming um and I you know also always respond so if you go to my website you have more questions and you forgot or you think of something later please send me a note and I promise you I will respond and I really love hearing from all of you um I want to end with a little wrap-up exercise with the audience and I know you want to finish a tiny bit early Sean because you've got to get to another important commitment but just briefly another valued member of our app Community Louisa has just asked a question about do you have any experience working with autistic clients I think we often have people talking about autism and how that relates to their mental health and practices like Mindless and so on any any thoughts on we talked about an Autism specifically yeah I don't have any personal experience but there's been a lot of research with mindfulness and autism and it's been really compelling um especially with children so I've been really inspired that a lot of um people at UCLA Susan Kaiser Greenland has done some research there so I would recommend exploring that I think it's a really important Avenue thank you so much um very briefly before we just wrap up uh I think you've shared so much and it'd be lovely if we could all as a community just perhaps play back to ourselves more than anybody else something we'd like to take away from this is all right a question you'd like to share to help us frame the Nuggets we're going to take away I love that so again I'm a professor and so I care about learning so I do a lot of studying about how people best learn and what we've discovered is that what you remember from every experience not just this is the peak and the end so you remember the most important thing like whatever touched you most and then the very end and so at the end of lectures and workshops what I like to do is have you just reflect on all the things we've talked about all the things we've practiced and learned and just choose one key takeaway I call them gold nuggets one thing that you really want to Anchor in and encode in your long-term memory so you might take a moment close your eyes and just kind of let all of this teachings all of this experience settle in and then maybe just reflecting on your one key takeaway and it could be what you practice grow stronger or it could be that shame shuts down the Learning Centers that kindness turns them on or could be the power of intention or the power of dopamine and motivation or it could just be to treat yourself like you would treat a dear friend so take one more breath in and out and just find your key takeaway when you're ready you can let your eyes open and I guess if you'd like you can write it in the chat so we can see a few of them that's always fun so I'm saying uh my key takeaway is self-compassion um that we have to ask ourselves why uh to name my feelings to take baby steps name it to tape it to tame it be on your own team um do more meditation there's always hope setting a daily intention five percent more um start with intention these are so good morning I love you whatever is done is done now what yeah morning time yeah no to self-judgment hand on heart relaxed building on other daily habits tell myself I'm here for you I'm really moved by seeing these nuggets that's lovely thank you everyone um Sean I know you have to get away thank you so much for your time it's been wonderful spending time with you learning from you keep up the amazing work is there a final thought you'd like to leave us with as we part one I just want to say I'm so grateful I feel just really honored to be part of this community it's obviously a very very engaged and and very touched and I really I think I want to just repeat what I've said before that it's never too late that it's never hopeless you're never stuck that that it's never too late to change so one baby step at a time thank you so much let's all keep changing and building a happier and Kinder world together thank you Shauna thanks everyone um thank you [Music]

Channel: Action for Happiness

Views: 8,579

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Id: FgS0D9kMJAE

Length: 57min 5sec (3425 seconds)

Published: Thu May 25 2023