#1 Neuroscientist: Do This To Trick Your Brain Into Manifesting Goals & Dreams | Dr. Tara Swart

Here is a summary of the key points from the transcript: - Manifestation requires aligning your thoughts and actions to attract what you want. Gratitude is an important first step to cultivate an abundant mindset. - Visualization primes your brain by imagining your desires as already true. Create a vision/action board with images of your goals and view it daily. - Patience and consistency are key as neuroplasticity takes time to create new neural pathways and thought patterns. Don't give up after a few months if goals aren't achieved yet. - Replace negative thoughts with positive affirmations that counter the underlying belief driving the negativity. This helps rewire unhelpful brain pathways. - When life is difficult, focus on controlling your mindset. Staying positive and optimistic builds resilience to overcome adversity. - Getting enough sleep, nutrition, exercise and mindfulness helps optimize your brain to do the work required for manifestation and changing habits. - Asking for help from others is important when struggling with major setbacks or mental health issues. You don't have to navigate alone.

Speaker A: I want to get right into it. So my first question for you is, if somebody's listening to this and they want more abundance in their life, they want their life to get better, how can people begin to attract the life that they want?

Speaker B: Wow, that's a big question, Doug, but I'm going to start with one of the parts of what I believe makes it happen, and that's gratitude. To bring abundance into your life, you have to be cultivating an abundant mindset. And so a really easy way to start is to list the things that you're grateful for that you already have. And as part of attracting things into your life or manifestation, there are various techniques like visualization or vision boards, but part of it is, you know, imagine it being true. Imagine what it would look like, feel like, smell like. And then when you have that vision in your mind, give gratitude for it becoming true. So then it sets you on a path of, I'm grateful for the things that I've got. These are the things that I want. And you're staying positive and abundant and grateful, and that's much more likely to attract those good things into your life.

Speaker A: So from a scientific perspective, I know you're a neuroscientist, and that's what your background is in. What is it about gratitude and focusing on the things that you have accomplished and how far you have come? How does that impact the brain in a way where it gets you into this abundant mindset?

Speaker B: Yeah. So if you think of it as a series of see saws, then abundance and lack are at the opposite ends of that spectrum. And that also correlates with certain emotions and neurotransmitters and hormones in the brain. So when you're in lac mindset, it's kind of like survival mode in the brain. You're stressed. You might be feeling things like fear, anger, shame, sadness. And that correlates with the stress hormone cortisol. And when you've got cortisol flowing around the blood in your brain and body, it actually, if it's at a high level all the time, the brain kind of will rearrange the blood flow so that you're not wasting your resources on things that aren't crucial to your survival. But that means that your brain isn't working at its best. At the other end of the spectrum, if you cultivate gratitude, then you're more likely to be operating in trust and with excitement for life. And that correlates with the hormone oxytocin. And that helps to make you feel more warm, to lower your guard to take some healthy risks. And I'm sure you can tell just from those two states, which are correlated with hormones, you're much more likely to notice good things or people are more likely to help you. If you're in that state of abundance and warmth and you've got the good hormones pumping around your brain and your.

Speaker A: Body diving more into gratitude. Much like the law of attraction, much like manifestation, gratitude has become a buzzword over the last several years, and people have emphasized the importance of it. And you just talked about why it's so important from a scientific perspective. But, um, is there a specific type of pra, of gratitude practice that you recommend to help people get into that brain state that you were just talking about? Meaning, you know, is it writing something down they're grateful for? Is it writing something down followed by an action for that thing? Like, what is your, um, recommendation for, for people going through that process?

Speaker B: So my recommendation is, the simplest thing is that, you know, each day or most days, you could just write down 3510 things that you're grateful for, because it sort of just brings it to the front of your mind and then it's easier to not forget to do it. The other thing is that the language that you use in life. So I actually went on a bit of a neuroplasticity journey, which. Neuroplasticity is overwriting thoughts or behaviors that you don't desire with ones that you do. And I was in this habit when good things happened to me of saying, I can't believe that's happened, you know, in a really positive way. But I actually began to change that to, I'm so grateful that that's happened, so that it was more part of my narrative to remember to be grateful for those things and not just express my kind of amazement at them happening. So those are the two things that I do even when speaking with others. You know, you can say thank you, and I'm grateful more. So it's just, you know, kind of really, it's just a practice, like anything else that you might be learning to do.

Speaker A: You think that it's important for people's actions to reflect what they're grateful for. Like, if somebody writes down, I'm grateful for my health every day for two weeks, and they don't exercise. I mean, I think that would create some level of distrust in your mind. What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker B: I would say that just writing down the things you're grateful for does have some positive effect on its own. But yes, of course, like with anything in manifestation, if the actions align with the. The thoughts, then it's just more powerful. And specifically, if you're talking about things like health, then don't take it for granted. Yeah, do the things and eat the right food, do the exercise, take the supplements, whatever. And then you can even add that to your list. You can say, I'm grateful that I'm doing these things to keep my health good, because then it becomes more about what you're doing than just what you have.

Speaker A: That makes sense. And before we go further, and I wanna definitely continue the process of how to attract what you want in life and how to manifest things. But I think it's important for us to define what manifestation is in your words. Cause I think that there's a lot of meanings out there. I think some, in my opinion, can be misleading, while others I strongly agree with. Like, what is your definition of manifestation?

Speaker B: So, my definition comes from the cognitive sciences, which is neuroscience and psychology. And it's basically about making sure that your thoughts, which are underpinned by your beliefs and your actions, are in line with getting the things that you want in life. So, first of all, you have to be clear on what you want to bring into your life, and then you have to keep that abundant mindset, but also start to think about the things that you say, the way that you behave, the thoughts that you have are those aligning with bringing that into your life. And then the action part is that you also actually have to go out and notice the opportunities and grasp them and do the things that you can to bring these things into your life. And when you set a goal and you take certain actions towards creating that into reality, when you know that you have done the things that drawn that into your life, it's much more empowering. And then it kind of. It's almost like a muscle. It builds your trust and your ability to manifest through action, not just creating a fantasy ideal life and then sitting at home and waiting for it to come true.

Speaker A: And where do you think a lot of these misconceptions about manifestation have come from, given that you just touched on what the science of manifestation is and how it's vastly different from a lot of these modern things you might read.

Speaker B: About regarding it, I think that since we've been able to scan brains, we understand much more about what happens when we think certain thoughts or experience certain emotions. And our brain, it's like the CEO of the body. So the actions that you take actually come from your thought processes prior to the science, knowing more about how the brain works when it's functioning normally or at its best, rather than when there's a disease or an accident. Manifestation was largely explained by quantum science and often by people who weren't scientists themselves. And very frequently I hear people saying that they don't really understand what it is or how it works. So there's two things there. One is that if you don't understand how something works, or certainly for me, then it's harder to make it work for you. And also if it's something external, like particles or vibrations, and you don't know how to influence that, then it can be quite disempowering. Whereas if it's your own thoughts and the things that you go out and do in the world, you actually feel more like you're in the driving seat of your life. And that's obviously it means you have to take responsibility. But then when you see good things happening, you know that you created them. And so it kind of has this cumulative effect.

Speaker A: Going back to the beginning of our conversation where I talked about, like, how can we attract more abundance? How can we attract the life that we want? We talked about, obviously, the definition of manifestation and what that actually means. And we talked about, like, this big first step in gratitude. Like, where does somebody go from there? Let's just say somebody's, they have their gratitude practice in place, or they're going to start tomorrow. Where do they go from there to be able to identify what they want in their life and then be able to attract it.

Speaker B: Okay, so, yeah, so let's say you've got your gratitude practice. Maybe you're writing into a journal, and you may be writing other things into the journal as well. And so you start to get to know your thought patterns better. And some people have quite a good idea of what they want. But I do often have people saying my issue is that I don't really know what I want. And so to those people, I say, think about the feeling that you'd like to have in your life. So writing it down. You know, a lot of people make a list of the things that they want, but I'm more in favor of creating a vision board, but I call them action boards for all the reasons that we've just discussed, which is that you have to then do things to bring those things into your life. Because the effect of, you know, visual imagery is very strong on the brain, particularly the subconscious part of the brain. When we're writing, it tends to be more the logical part of the brain or systems of the brain. So I recommend that people look through magazines or you can do it digitally as well and find images of things that you're drawn to or that you know that you want. The good thing about doing the images like that is that you might spot something that you didn't know that you wanted, but you might be drawn to a certain image so it doesn't limit you through what you're capable of thinking. And then create the board, place it somewhere that you can see it at least once or twice a day. So by your bed is an obvious one. And particularly if it's the thing that you look at last thing at night, then it has more of an impression on the subconscious part of the brain. So to look at it daily, to visualize the feeling of that all being true, that being in your life, and then also giving gratitude for that. So it's a constant process. You're looking at it, you're imagining it, you're giving gratitude for it. And then of course, the most important part is that you go out into the world and make it happen. But the visualization is priming that in your brain because we're so busy, we're so distracted, we have a list of tasks that we have to do during the day. These dreams and desires can kind of go to the bottom of the list if we're not keeping them at the top of our mind. So that whole process just means that you don't forget that that's what you're looking for. And therefore you're more likely to notice things in real life that could lead you to the objects that you've put on your action board.

Speaker A: How specific and how big should these goals and thoughts be on the action board? Because I think in my experience, when people are looking to bring something into their life, it's normally like this big goal. It's like I want to completely transform my body. I want this fabulous relationship, I want all this money, I want this house, all these things. And I think sometimes that can set people up for failure because they're not doing the things in between that are necessary. What are your thoughts on specifics when it comes to this action board?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, the more specific the better. Just because if you think about it as the process of priming your brain, then the more detail that you give to your brain, the more likely it is to notice even the smallest or tangential thing that could help to lead you there. I really love the fact that you've asked about how big should these goals be, because it's kind of easy in manifestation to say dream big, why not? But I think we have to be careful with that. I personally started sort of not small, but let's say realistic goals, because what you don't want to do is set such big ideals that at the end of the year you feel like, oh, I didn't achieve any of those, because then the whole process becomes demotivating. So you could have a range of things, you know, some things that would be considered more like quick wins and then maybe some bigger things that might take longer. So let's say, you know, relationship is something that has so many variables involved in it that you can't necessarily control all of them. So that could be like a bigger, longer term goal that's happening throughout the year, let's say. And then in the meantime, if you had some work goals or some fitness goals and you managed to make them come true, then you start to think, okay, this is working. There's a few things that have already happened, and some things just take longer. So in answer to that two part question, I would say specifics are important. Although later on, because I've been doing these boards for about 15 years now. Later I kind of could make things more metaphorical because I knew what it meant to me. And to me, that then opens up opportunities that I might not have thought of. So if you're very specific, you know, this amount of money, this job, this relationship, then that's great. But once you feel like you're really good at manifesting, you can also do what I call leave a little space for magic. So, you know, allow maybe things that you haven't even thought of yet to come in. So it's a process, and I would say start off specific and realistic. And then later it can, you know, the goals can become bigger and bigger. If you feel like you've done, done it successfully for a few years, and then it can also become less literal. So it's more just like, this is how I'd like my life to feel or be. And, you know, it could be, for example, it could be things like saying, I specifically want to travel to a certain country this year. And then later it could become, you know, I just really want to, like, travel a lot and see the world and experience different cultures.

Speaker A: I think a lot of times when people are looking to do things like this, it's because something negative, like, transpired in their life and they're trying to, you know, bring things, they're trying to swing the pendulum the other way. And I think with that, and with that said, I think just given that the times that we're in, people are just, we're used to, like, instant gratification. We're used to just getting things right away. And that can deter people when sometimes things aren't happening as quickly as. As they might seem. So what do you think? Maybe a timeframe that you use for yourself is like a general rule of thumb for people to use, for people to use so that they commit to seeing it through for that amount of time before changing what's on their board, before quitting. What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker B: So I do them annually, and that's what I recommend to people. But I do say that some of the things, like we said, some of the bigger long term goals, they might slip into the next year, so they might not have been fully achieved, and you can keep them on your board, move them across to a new one, but within a year that you know that some of those sort of quicker wins or things that you have more influence over, you should be able to see them coming true in a matter of, I would say months rather than weeks. Because the process that's going on in the brain is that to bring new and different things into your life, it's essentially a change. And for that change to happen in the outside world, things need to be changing in your brain pathways, in your thought processes, in your confidence, in your willingness to take action. And that process is called neuroplasticity. And it can happen in various ways. It can be that brain pathways that already exist in your brain become more efficient. It can be that new connections are made through synapses between neurons that already exist in your brain, or it can be that you actually grow new neural cells and they become new pathways. And that process takes time, and it's hard work. And again, going back to the brain scanning, before we knew more about how the physical brain actually works, that was always thought of as psychological work, and therefore that it's happening in a mental way, but not a physical way. But what we know now is that that process of connecting up neurons, of building new pathways, it's physically tiring. You need to be like fueling yourself with enough good food to help that to happen. You need to be sleeping well enough to allow that process to happen overnight as well. So in terms of the sort of factors that contribute to manifestation, I call that one patience. But what's actually happening is that when you feel like, oh, I am trying, but I'm not seeing any results, it's because this work is going on in the background of connecting up neurons and making pathways, and there's a critical tipping point where there's enough neurons in a new pathway that you've actually changed the way that you think you've changed the way that your willingness to take action, and then suddenly it feels like everything starts happening. So that period before there's enough neurons that you've actually changed your brain, it can be a little demotivating, and it does require patience. But again, I feel like if you understand that, then it can help you to stay motivated where you might have otherwise said, oh, you know, I've tried this for a few months and it's not working, so I'll give up.

Speaker A: We've talked about how in order for manifestation to actually work, our thoughts and our actions need to align, right? And then we just covered how we need to practice patience when we're starting out on this path of trying to attract what we want in our lives and the importance of understanding neuroplasticity, bringing this all together, I would imagine that what really keeps people stuck and not changing is negative thought loops, negative thought patterns. As a neuroscientist, as somebody who studies the brain while also studying the spirituality side of things which we've been talking about, what are some steps that somebody can take to begin to rewire some of these negative thought patterns? Whether it's I'm not enough, this is never going to happen, I'm not good enough, so that they can have their actions aligned with their thoughts.

Speaker B: Great question. And there is a lot of that negative self talk around, and it's important to understand for a start that that's normal, that everybody has that kind of thought or like periods of time where they may have more of those types of thoughts. And it's quite hard when you're already in that negative spiral to really try to turn it around. I do want to get back to resilience in a while because your podcast is called the adversity advantageous. Should also speak about what to do when it feels like nothing's happening or things have gone wrong. But let's say it's a regular day, and sometimes it crosses your mind that that kind of goal is not going to happen for you. It doesn't happen to people like me, or that's for kind of other people. So when you have a recurring negative thought, there's usually a very firmly held belief underneath it that drives that thought. So it could be to do with worthiness, deservingness. And so it's important for people to kind of dig underneath the recurring negative thought and ask themselves, what is it that I must believe about myself to keep having that thought? And often it's very non conscious because it may come from childhood, and that pathway has been there for so long that you're not even aware of it. If you can do the journaling or the therapy or the self reflection to understand what the belief is that's driving your thought, then you can create a positive affirmation or a mantra that's the opposite statement to that belief, and you can repeat that every time you have the thought. So that you're basically trying to overwrite that pathway in your brain with this new, more positive thought. And that's an interesting one, because in the brain, you can't undo what's already wired in there. You have to overwrite it or replace it with something that you'd prefer. And so that's the science. And then from Buddhism, there's a teaching that says, replace every negative thought with a positive thought. And, you know, that's been around for thousands of years, but it's now kind of backed up by the neuroscience. So it's nice to understand that that's kind of, you know, a spiritual philosophy, and it's aligned with how things work in the brain.

Speaker A: So what would be an example of, like, replacing a positive thought? And what would be an example of replacing a negative thought with a positive one based on science and based on your research?

Speaker B: So if we use some of the examples that you gave, like, you know, I'm not enough or that's not going to happen for me, then it could be very, very simply, it could be I'm more than enough. I deserve good things to happen in my life. I can take agency over my life and make this happen for me. I remember for myself when I first changed career, when I stopped being a doctor and I was moving into business, I went for a sort of job interview. And I remember thinking, I've got no experience in the business world, and I just don't think they're going to want to employ me. And so I thought about that really carefully, and I thought, what can I say to myself that's authentic? Because I can't say. I have lots of experience in this area that's going to help me to turn up as the best version of myself to that interview and just see what opportunities could arise from it. And for me with that one, and I was doing a lot of self reflection at the time. So it may be that not that easy for people to come up with a phrase that really works like this, but for me, it waslet your true self shine through. And I just kept repeating that, and I said it to myself just before I walked into the room. And then my behavior in the interview was based on letting my true self shine through rather than trying to be somebody that I wasn't. So that worked for me.

Speaker A: So how can people then push through when their life may seem like it's completely falling apart and that they don't have anything going for them, and then they're trying to tell themselves these positive affirmations, but yet the reality just doesn't necessarily reflect that. How can somebody begin to transcend that? Begin to transcend that?

Speaker B: I really like that you said that, because if I. These statements don't feel authentic. If you keep saying I deserve great things and you don't believe that, it's not actually going to work, and also, when everything's going wrong, when life feels like it's terrible. Another thing from the science that can be helpful is that in that moment or that period of time, the one thing that you still have control over is your mindset. How you think, how you wake up in the morning, how you show up every day. And I'm not saying it's easy, but if you understand that regardless of what's going on around you, you can make the choice to keep yourself positive, to keep yourself optimistic and hopeful and grateful, then that's down to you. And it's absolutely okay to have days where you just, you know, feel negative about the reality of your situation. But you can't let that go on for too long because that's not going to help you, but, you know, starting to build up your resilience. Be resourceful, see that you can turn around your mindset in a few days if, you know, if you need to. That's the start of changing your life. And once you can make that more the way that you think and act, it's much more likely that those good things that you want will come into your life than if you consistently focus on everything that's going wrong and what you don't have and, you know, allow your mind to. To be so negative that it's going to increase your cortisol levels, it's going to erode your immunity. It's going to stop you from accessing all the brainpower that you have available to you. So, you know, I was really, when you asked me to be on the podcast, it's the. Your story and the fact that it's adversity advantage was definitely appealing to me because it really aligns with how to train your mindset to overcome adversity and show yourself that you're more resilient. And then there's even a further step than that. So resilience is bouncing back as quickly as you can when something's gone wrong. And then there's antifragile, which is basically always learning and becoming better through adversity. So it's not just about getting back to how you were when things were going better, but it's coming out of adversity and proving to yourself that you are actually now even better than you were before.

Speaker A: And then you work that adversity muscle. And then the next time you're faced it, and the next time you're faced with it, your mind understands that you can get through this, you've gotten through this before. Let's go. We can do this. And then you just keep building that muscle to be, you keep building that muscle to help make it stronger and stronger and stronger. I'm curious about the law of attraction specifically. I mean, you hear a lot that, you know, our thoughts impact our words and our words impact our actions and so on and so forth. And we talk about, like, in order to attract, like, the partner you want, you have to become that person, right? What do, what do you believe about the law of attraction? Like, if you're feeling crappy about yourself, does that mean that your life is going to be crappy because of that? And then does the opposite also apply?

Speaker B: Yeah, so I mean, there are lots of definitions of the law of attraction, but if we just keep it super simple, then it's basically bringing into your life the things that you want. And therefore, if you consistently think that you're not worthy and good things don't happen to you and that the future that you desire is unlikely, then, you know, I mean, I love that Henry Ford quote, which is, if you think you can or you think you can't, you're probably right, because our whole view of the world comes from our internal narrative. So if we really believe that we don't deserve those things, or if we consistently tell ourselves that we're not going to get those things, that's statistically more likely to come true. If we learn to essentially change our mind, learn to think differently, then we will act differently in the world and take those risks that we might not have if we weren't in that better mindset. So it really always comes down to if you want things to change in the world around you, then you need to start by changing what's going on in your brain.

Speaker A: And so what you're saying is that it's not necessarily because your brain is just thinking a thought. Then all of a sudden there's somebody that's listening to that and they're like, all right, you're thinking this thought, I'm not going to give you anything in life. You're not going to succeed. It's more or less that youre thinking that thought. And then if its a negative thought, its preventing you from taking the actions that you know you need to take in order to better yourself. Am I understanding that correctly?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Youve understood that correctly. But if you also think about the way that we communicate with each other, because most of these goals are going to depend on interactions with other people or, you know, things that are going on in life, we communicate with each other through articulated speech, and thats the main thing that we notice, although we would notice things like body language and facial expression, but we also communicate with each other through some of the hormones in our bodies actually leak out of our skin through our sweat. And if you are physically close enough to someone or in contact with someone, then there's an interaction between the two people based on that. So, for example, women who live together or work closely together tend to synchronize their menstrual cycles because of affecting each other's estrogen levels. And it works in a similar way with cortisol, the stress hormone. It doesn't matter if you're male or female, but if I'm super stressed, then likely my posture's not going to be as good. I won't be smiling, I wouldn't be making as much eye contact. And if we were in physical proximity with each other, you would actually feel stressed because I've got high levels of cortisol circulating in my body. So then let's say if we were on a date or in a job interview, some of it's conscious, but also subconsciously, you'll just feel like that person isn't right for you. So it's kind of like a self fulfilling prophecy. If you think that you're not going to meet a really nice guy on a date, then there's so many complex things about you that will make that outcome more likely to become true. And there's another thing I'd like to add, which is we've talked about abundance and manifestation and patience, but another one of the factors that I write about is what I call magnetic desire. And that is that you truly, deep down in your emotions, in your gut, in your mind aligned, want the things that you have put onto your action board. If it's coming from a place of well, that's what my friends are doing, so I should do it too, or this is what society tells us will make us happy, then, because that's not strongly aligned in your beliefs, your thoughts, your actions, you're more likely to either give up or not really make the necessary effort for that to come true. It has to be a really strong, true desire, because that feeds the whole process of being able to change your pathways and taking risks to make those things come true.

Speaker A: You talked about rewiring our thoughts in order to attract what we want and become a more magnetic person and be able to communicate better in relationships so that things can start to really happen and progress in our lives. What else can people do if they're looking to become a more magnetic person? If they're looking to become a more of a person that people want to be around, what are some other things they can do besides working on their thoughts?

Speaker B: Let's start with the basics, just so that I have covered that. You know, if. If you're sleeping for 8 hours every night, if you're eating nutritious food, you're keeping yourself hydrated. Hydration is essential to the communication between neurons. You're not sedentary, you're doing some deep breathing, you're oxygenating your brain and body, and you're doing things to make sure that your stress levels are kept under control. So mindfulness type activities or self care activities. So start with those. Because if your body isn't in an optimal state, then it's much harder for your brain to do that extra work that it needs to, you know, to be abundant and magnetic. And then there's the action board. What tends to happen with that sometimes is that people either hide it somewhere, or what I've heard a few times with people is they find the images, but they don't actually stick them to the board. And that very often, so they're not sticking it to the board comes down to not really fully believing that you deserve those things. And the hiding it and not talking about it may also be because you feel like you're asking for too much, you're embarrassed for other people to know what are the things that you really want. So again, there would be psychological work to do to find out why that's the case. But if you're comfortable too, then having the board on display or telling people what you're actually looking for, because then people could potentially help you and yeah. Again, everything that we've said about changing your mindset, being grateful, being abundant, showing people that, demonstrating that in your real life, saying thank you to people, offering to help people, coming up with ideas for other people as well. So I guess that's another form of the law of attraction, which is that if you're out there making people feel good, helping them, giving them ideas, then it's obviously much more likely that people will do the same for you.

Speaker A: I'm curious, given your background in science as a neuroscientist working at MIT, what led you to begin exploring and talking about things like spirituality?

Speaker B: Yeah, somebody did actually say to me when my book came out in 2019, like, wasn't it a risk for you to write that book, considering that you're faculty at Mitz? And as with many things in life, I always believe that the biggest risk would have been not doing it because I felt like it doesn't fit with the Persona of a scientist or an MIT professor. So it goes quite way back. I mean, I was brought up in an indian hindu household, so I've always had elements of spirituality in my life. I did think of them as very separate to the science and the medicine until I had my first major crisis in my life, which was when I got divorced in my mid thirties. And at that time, I naturally turned to both jungian psychology, but also buddhist kind of beliefs and philosophies. And a short time after that is when I first read the book the master key system, which was very inspiring for me. I'd actually read it before, but my life was fine, so I didn't do any of the exercises. But then I came back to it, and I spent six months going through each chapter and doing all the exercises till I got to the end. And it's essentially about manifestation, but through gaining greater clarity and control of your thought processes. And then I started doing so. Then I also changed career at the same time. And that was my main reason for starting to do these vision boards. And the first one that I did did have a sum of money on it that I wanted to earn because I just started up a business. I no longer had my medical salary, and a friend encouraged me to make that number higher than I wanted to. I had a number that was, this is how much I need to earn to just live my life. And she said, well, you know, you should double it. And I didn't think I could make double, but I sort of thought, well, why not? Yeah, okay, let's not make it just what I need. Let's make it better than that. And it came true. And that was quite a wake up call for me because I thought, I didn't think that I could do that, but I was bold. I put that number on the board. I had it in my bathroom so people that came to my house could see it. They knew the things that I wanted. They were coming up with ideas to help me. And I just really felt for myself that this really works. And of course, I'd worked incredibly hard doing lots of networking and trying to get the sort of clients that I needed. And so I kept doing them, and it sort of kept working better and better. And then I. I became the world's first neuroscientist in residence at a five star hotel in London. And it got a lot of press. And I was contacted by my publisher, and I met up with them and they said, you know, we've had really good books on one on exercise, one on diet, one on mindfulness, one on sleep, but we think that you, as a neuroscientist, could write one book that brings all of those things together. And I just said I could do that, but I'd love to write a book about vision boards and visualization and the laws of attraction. And it just went from there. But even me saying that was because I built up my confidence. I felt bold enough to say it. I knew that there was a risk to doing it, but I just felt very strongly that that was aligned for me. That was the book that I wanted to write. And so in writing it, obviously, I did the research to see if the cognitive sciences could back up the laws of attraction, and I was very pleasantly surprised to see how aligned those were. So then my belief in merging science and spirituality became stronger. But it was really the reaction to the book after it came out that just had such a positive effect on me. Yeah. So I think it's kind of a life's journey of having kept these elements of my life separate and then really understanding and believing that they could actually be together and work together. That made sense and had a positive impact on other people. So it was just a very good circle of abundance.

Speaker A: That's incredible. And it definitely is super inspiring to hear that you were able to blend these two things together. Blend together. Spirituality, manifestation, law of attraction, abundance. With the science and your neuroscience background, I'm curious. There's a lot of talk right now on when it comes to manifestation, and the law of attraction is there's a lot of talk out there when it comes to the law of attraction. When it comes to manifestation about just putting it out into the universe and just seeing what happens in your understanding, based on your research, what is the universe and what isn't the universe?

Speaker B: Yeah. Wow. I'm not sure if I can answer that, but I think when people say put it out into the universe, what they're really saying is identify what it is that you want and acknowledge that. Maybe tell people, but at least make it clear that that's what you want. And then I think there are words like source or God or the universe that are related to a belief in a higher power that can also help, that's bigger than you, that can help you. Obviously, that is some people's belief, but we don't have proof of that. So although it's okay to put things into the universe, I believe that by doing that, we're essentially saying, I'm sitting in the passenger seat of the car, and I don't know where the car's going, and I can't control its speed or its direction. Whereas if you say I have a brain with the ability to do certain things, and I'm going to identify what I want and I'm going to do everything I can to make those things happen, then it feels more like you're in the driver's seat of the car. So I think you can do both. I'm not against putting things into the universe, but I am against not taking any responsibility or agency for yourself to facilitate that process.

Speaker A: So do you see the universe as being like, this spiritual, being higher power, like this universal thing? Or do you think it's just a combination of everything? You think it's a combination of the way you treat other people, your relationships, your ability to persevere? How do you see, how do you identify what the universe actually looks like?

Speaker B: So, again, as one of the parts of how I broke down manifestation in the book, I do talk about universal connection. And so if we want to bring it down to really simple and literal, then the universe is. It's the world, the world that we operate in. And I'm saying that these are the things that I want in that world, how I want my life to be. But I very strongly believe that we're not operating in this world alone. And that I'm mindful that everything I do is obviously because it's relevant to me in my life and potentially beneficial, but that it's also good for other people. And I'm also mindful of the effect that we have on the planet. So if you live in that way, then you feel very connected to everything. You know, it's things like, do you recycle? Do you, what do you do with your food waste? When you're conscious of those things, then you know that you're part of something that's, that's, you know, bigger than your life and it's important. And that will show up in, you know, everything to do with how you operate and how other people see you and, and what happens to you. Obviously, you know, there are good people who do good things and life can throw a curveball at them. But that's why I would say, you know, bringing it back to what you can do through the power of your mind to bounce back from that as much as possible is really important. And understanding that the things that you do have consequences for other people and the planet. I can't answer that question of what the universe is more than that from the cognitive science point of view, and I guess there's astronomy could answer that question.

Speaker A: Well, I appreciate your honesty and I appreciate your ability to articulate all of this in the way that you do that makes it easily digestible and understandable for people to grasp. As far as neuroplasticity goes and as far as changing our mind and changing our brains, how long do you think it typically takes to change a habit, to rewire a thought pattern? Is there any science on that?

Speaker B: Yeah, it depends what it is. Like we were saying, sometimes there are quick wins and sometimes there are things that are deeper or more complex. So if it's something like getting into a particular fitness routine, then you could actually see that some people could get into that within a matter of weeks and hopefully sustain it. If it's something more complicated like building up your emotional intelligence or changing your relationship patterns, then in my experience as a coach, working with people who are working on changing those more complex things, I would say it takes 910 months to a year to change something that's multifactorial and perhaps has been a way of operating for a long time. So to overwrite that will also take a long time.

Speaker A: So I guess the main takeaway from that is to just, no matter what, just be patient and that just keep going. And that if you continue that, if you continue to do the right things every single day towards whatever goal you're trying to achieve, towards whatever pattern you're trying to change, like eventually over time, things will start to swing in the other direction. If you pursue it long enough and if you're patient long enough with it. As far as, like when somebody is like, listen, if somebody's listening to this right now, and they're in one of these times where their life is just super dark and they see no light, and maybe they just got out of a bad relationship. Maybe they're recovering from addiction and their brain and their mindset is completely hijacked from their circumstances in life. What are some, like, initial, like, steps that you think somebody could take in the situation like this to be able to, like, optimize their brain and their mindset, to become more resilient and to become more optimistic about where their life is headed?

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm going to answer that, but I just want to connect it to what we were saying before, slightly, by saying that when you were talking about patience and consistency is key to changing and growing, but people have setbacks, or they, they default to their old ways of behaving. And it's also important to say that that's normal. And if that happens, that doesn't mean you should give up, but it just means you have to start again. So instead of wasting time beating yourself up about the fact that you didn't go to the gym or do the thing that you were going to do, just give yourself a bit of a break and then start over again with whatever that process is. And so you've now asked a question about something bigger than that, which is that know someone's really in a bad place. Life is not good. And the feeling I got when you were talking, you know, giving examples of that situation is one of the worst feelings in the world. When you feel like you can't trust yourself anymore, you know, you can't trust your intuition or you can't trust your ability to get yourself out of these difficult situations. So just connecting that back to some other things that we mentioned in my gratitude lists, I actually write about my internal resources that I'm grateful for. So things like my creativity, my vulnerability, my ability to ask for help. And so because I repeat those a lot, I'm very aware of what they are. So when I'm in a dark place, I can reach out for those sorts of things and think, okay, how can I think outside the box in this situation? Is it important that I tell somebody that I'm really struggling at the moment and ask them for help or ask them to just be a sounding board for me? So with the situation that you've just described, I would say that it's very difficult to navigate that alone. And so getting some help, whether it's a friend or family member or, you know, a qualified therapist, that's probably what I would say for people who are in that difficult of a situation and really struggling to see how they can get out of it themselves.

Speaker A: Trey, ask for help and know that you're not alone and know that you're not meant to go through this alone. I love that. Tara. I think this conversation is going to help so many people. I wanted to thank you for your time and for coming on. If people want to connect with you, if they want to learn more about your work, if they want to listen to your podcast, if they want to buy your books, where's the best place to do that?

Speaker B: Thank you so much. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to reach more people. So I am most active on Instagram out of all of the social media, and there's a lot of free resources on there to help people with mental health issues and manifestation. My books available on Amazon or at all bookstores. And my podcast, I've had season one, so that's available anywhere that you listen to. Podcasts, Apple, Spotify, Google. And as you know, I'm working on starting for season two. So if people follow me on Instagram, then that's the best way to know when that launches.

Speaker A: Incredible. Well, make sure to include the links to that stuff in the show notes. And for those listening, what I invite you to do is to share a takeaway. We covered so much in this episode. We talked a lot about manifestation, the law of attraction, abundance, changing your brain, rewiring your thoughts. We covered so much. So share your biggest takeaway. Tag Tara, tag myself because we'd love to hear your feedback. And we once again, thank you for listening to this episode of the adversity advantage. I'm your host, Doug Bobst, and we'll see you next time.