Could you share with them how their brain or their life might change based on what you are about to teach them today?

Yeah. So one of the things we're going to be speaking about is neuroplasticity, which is the fact that the brain can grow and change throughout life. Unlike the fact that we used to think that by the time you physically stop growing around the age of 18, that your brain is fixed, that your personality is fixed, your IQ is fixed. We now know that those things are very fluid depending on what you do. But I want to bring that down to the here and now just to make it feel really real, which is that by the end of our conversation, because the brain is being molded and shaped constantly by what you're listening to, who you're meeting, what you're recalling in your memory, the emotions that you're feeling, our listeners' brains are actually going to be different at the end of this podcast than they are right now.

How does that happen?

Well, so neuroplasticity means that the brain is taking in information through the five senses. So everything we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and in real-time thinking, How do I need to be to survive in this world? It usually comes down to survival. And what I think I'd love to do today is help people move from the brain reacting for basic survival to what else can you make your brain do to thrive in this world?

I know we're going to go deep on this, but can you just, at a high level, tick off a couple of things that you can train your brain to do that you might not know that you can train your brain to do?

Yeah. So things like manifestation, visualization, looking at vision boards, which I actually call action boards, but we'll come to that, affirmations. These are all things that prime the brain more towards thriving than just surviving, because if you leave your brain to its own devices, all it wants you to do is live long enough to reproduce. So what's it going to do to make that happen? Make sure you put food on the table. That means pretty much that you need to turn up to your job daily and not get fired. You need to keep a good relationship with your boss. You need to keep a good relationship with the person that you'll potentially reproduce with. That's not enough for most people. We want more than that out of life. So if your brain is taking care of that anyway, what do you want to put front of mind to make your brain look out for opportunities for the things that you dream of that you really, really want with what I call magnetic desire?

Magnetic? Desire. How do you define magnetic desire?

Well, the way that neuroplasticity works in the brain is through repetition and emotional intensity. So let me take it back to the survival things we were just speaking about. If you think, I want to get married and have a family because that's what all my friends are doing, there may not be a huge emotional intensity behind that. That may be more to do with societal, parental, peer group expectation. If when you were a kid, you dreamt of being an actor, then if you actually try to start doing that, even if it's hard, that was your dream. That was what you feel you were put on this Earth to do. You will endure barriers and obstacles and refusals and difficulty and keep going. Whereas for other things, you might not. We know that idea of giving up just before you dig up the gold, right? If When you've got magnetic desire, you won't give up. That's where the motivation piece comes in. All of these are the science behind what contributes to manifesting what you want.

Let's talk about manifesting. Have you always believed in manifesting?

Looking back, I actually think I did it as a kid naturally. It's so chicken and egg for me whether I got drawn to neuroscience and manifestation because that was innate in me from a child, or whether I now live my life in that way because I've done so much research on it. I honestly don't know the answer to that. The more I do the research, the more I consciously bring these things into my life, I look back and think, that's what I was like as a kid. That's what I was interested in as a kid. But I would say that once I studied the sciences in high school and then went to medical school, it worked slightly differently in the UK, and did my PhD in neuroscience, and certainly by the time I When I got my faculty position at MIT, I was a complete skeptic about manifestation. Those two things could not exist in the same world as far as I was concerned. That's partly down to how I had to live my life as a child because my parents were first-generation immigrants from India to the UK. I went to school in London, and I just wanted to be like all my friends and do the same things as them.

But I would come home, my mother would be in a headstand, and there would be incense in the house. There was meditation and chanting and things like that. So I thought, Okay, that happens at home, this happens at school. And I learned very well to separate those things. So then I became a medical doctor specializing in psychiatry. And you were diagnosing people with magical thinking and delusions and hallucinations. So you couldn't really say, Oh, but I believe in manifestation. So again, I had to keep those things really separate. And it wasn't really until I started doing my research to write the source that I I realized how together these things could be.

Was there a moment where you remember going, Oh, my gosh, this is real?

Yeah, there are a few because I think these things build up, don't they? In 2017, I was the world's first neuroscientist in residence at a five-star hotel in London. So I was already doing quirky things with my career. And because it was unusual, there was a lot of press, and I was approached by Penguin Random House to write a book. They said, We've had really amazing books, one on meditation, one on diet, one on sleep, one on exercise. We think as a neuroscientist, you could bring all of those together. Without thinking, I said, I could do that, but I've got an idea about the cognitive science behind manifestation and vision boards. They just said yes straight away. I think their response made me think that could be a thing, but I wasn't convinced myself. Before I started writing, I went on a summer vacation with my laptop, which is unusual for me. I just started looking into the laws of attraction and trying to figure out, is there cognitive science that can explain these things.

For somebody listening who does not know what the law of attraction or manifestation is, could you give us your definition?

They're basically all about the fact that if there's something that you really want in in your life, then if you think positively about it, or you believe in certain vibrations of attraction in the universe, then you can bring that thing into your life. Manifestation is bringing into reality something that you want. But until I started looking into the cognitive science behind it, all the explanations so far had been to do with quantum physics. For me, as an empirical scientist, scientist. That wasn't enough for me to believe in those things. And equally, I felt very disempowered by the fact that it was happening because of something outside of me. I wanted to feel like it was happening because of my brainpower and that I had some autonomy over it.

And do you believe, based on the research that you've done, that you attract things into your life because of your brainpower?

I believe 100 %. When the book came out, people that I knew personally who were not scientists at all said, I've always been interested in this, but I've never actually acted upon it because I couldn't understand how it worked. But now that you've explained the science, I'm actually doing the steps that I've heard of before, actually, but that you've repeated in your book. The writing process did bring it together for me quite a lot, but it was actually the response from other people. It started with people I knew, and then it started on social media, just being thousands of people that I will probably never meet in my in life saying, Because you've put the science to it, it's completely changed my view of these topics.

What are the steps to manifesting based on the research so you attract what you want in life?

It starts with abundance. Now, in the brain, we have the strongest gearing that we have in our brain is called loss aversion or loss avoidance. That was the survival mechanism from when we lived in the cave, which was that if you saw a juicy apple on a tree and you really wanted it, but you ignored the fact that there was a sabre-tooth tiger standing next to you, you would die. We had to want to avoid loss more than we wanted to get reward.

You've got to avoid the tiger more than wanting the apple. Exactly. We're wired toward, as you mentioned earlier, survival.

Absolutely.

Through manifesting, you're about to teach us how to rewire our brain and train it toward abundance and thriving.

I'm not going to completely wire it the other way because we still need to be safe. Even in the modern world where the threats aren't so much physical predators, there are psychological threats to our safety, like job loss, relationship loss, et cetera. But it doesn't serve us to be that strongly geared to loss avoidance. What we want to do is balance that out a bit more or in a safe situation, understand that we absolutely can take healthy risks and believe that there's enough for everyone and not live from that scarcity mindset. That's the first piece. The second piece is magnetic desire, which we've already somewhat discussed. But once you're feeling abundant, then if you can be really aligned in your head, your heart, and your gut about what it is that you want, then that desire, that motivation will keep you going and help you get the things that you want that you might have given up on. There is an of patience required because this process of neuroplasticity involves neurons wiring together to form new strong pathways that are stronger than the pathways that you had before. That means that it feels like a lot of hard work is going on.

Psychological work is physical work going on in the pathways in your brain, but that nothing's changing in the real world. There's a real tipping point where there's enough neurons in a pathway that certain new habits and behaviors or being patient becomes easier. It feels like nothing, nothing, nothing, and then suddenly, oh, things are happening, things are changing. I'm getting the things that I want. So if you put those three behind manifestation, then that is about priming your brain to notice and grasp opportunities in the real world that can bring you closer to the things that you want. It's exactly the same process as if you buy a a new car, you suddenly notice that car all over. It's the same. So it's a brain priming process.

Oh, well, that makes sense. It's why you suddenly see Jeeps everywhere when you are looking at buying a Jeep. Can you explain the Neuroscientific, I don't even know what the right word is. What is the scientific explanation for why you see cars when you're interested in buying a car or how the new neuropathways are changing your brain in real-time? What is actually happening when you tap into magnetic desire?

Basically, we're overloaded with information constantly, and the brain has a natural filtering mechanism called selective filtering. This relates back to what I was saying about, if you leave your brain to its job of just making sure you survive, it will filter out all those other things that you actually really want, but that are not essential to your survival. That's why you have to make a list or make the vision board or remind yourself every day of what it is that you truly, magnetically desire to put that to the top of the list for your brain. Because after selective filtering, it does selective attention, and that is noticing the red car or the Tesla or whatever it is that you're noticing. So once you've filtered out the things that you don't want to notice, then you narrow it down to the things that you do want to notice. And then the third part is called value tagging, which is the brain actually It tags those things in order of importance. And it does that in two lists. It does it in a logical list, and it does it in a logical list, and it does it in an emotional list, and that's where the magnetic desire is important.

That's where you say, No brain. I don't want it in that logical order. I want it in this order. This is what is really important to me. This is what makes me feel alive. This is what makes me understand that I have a purpose for my life. It's not just put food on the table, stay in your job, stay in your relationship. It's so much more than that. A classic example is, I really want to find a partner and settle down and get pregnant. Yes.

How could you go through the steps of manifestation to help you achieve that?

I would explain the process of manifestation that's underpinned by neuroplasticity, which is a four-step process. Raise your awareness, focus your attention, do your deliberate practice, and hold yourself accountable. It starts with raised awareness. I always say that's 50% of the battle because sometimes we don't really know why we're not doing the things we know we should be doing or why we're potentially we're self-sabotaging those behaviors. But instead of taking the supplement compliments that would set my body up for good fertility, I'm going out partying because that's the way I think I'll meet a new partner. The awareness piece comes very much from journaling or not so much speaking with friends sometimes, Because if they're in the same place or everyone has an agenda for your single friends might want you to say single, that thing. But maybe talking to a therapist or a coach or doing some proper soul searching and trying to understand why you're not doing the things that you could be doing, why some of the things that you're doing really easily, why are they so easy, how do they fit into your lifestyle so well, and really what it is that you actually want.

Do you actually You want to settle down and have a family? Or fine, if you actually want to be out partying, fine, just say that and do it and be aligned and don't do the thing that you want, but pretend that you want something else. It's all about that.

So that's step one. So step one, and let's just stay with your example. Somebody who is single, who really wants to meet a life partner and be in a committed relationship and start a family. That the first step is for you to take the time to get very clear with yourself about what you want and why.

A wonderful exercise for that is to place your hands on your forehead and ask yourself, Logically, is this what I really want and why? Then write that down. Then take five deep breaths and put your hands on your heart and ask yourself, Emotionally, why do I really want this? And then write down the answers. Another five deep breaths and then hands on your belly. Intuitively, do I really want this? And again, write the answers down. If they're all aligned, happy days. If they're not, we might have a little bit of rethinking to do. When I've done this with clients, one of the things that's come up is, I really, really want a baby, but actually, I don't really need a partner to get there. So that could change the, I need to meet someone and be in a loving relationship and have a baby. Could just be, actually, what I've always really wanted as a child. I'm getting to a certain age where waiting to have a partner be part of that might mean that I don't end up with what I really want. Got it. So that's the most important step.

Okay, so let's say you've gone through step one and your mind, your heart, and your gut, your soul, your intuition is all aligned. Yes, I want this.

The second step is focused attention. So that is at least a month of just noticing what you're doing, what you're not doing in regards to moving in that direction.

What are you noticing?

Depending Depending on what your goal is, it might be yourself, it might be your interaction with others, it might be feedback from others. But it's a data collection period because what won't work very well in a manifestation underpinned by neuroplasticity is just jumping into doing without being first. Raising that awareness might have brought up things that you've never consciously known in the past. You can't suddenly then say, Okay, I'm on all the dating apps. You need to sit and see what is it? Are there patterns of behavior that I'm doing that are leading to a bad result? Is there something that's holding me back from taking the first step that I really need to take? So taking longer than a month if you need to get to the point where you feel like I have enough data about myself that when I act now, I'll be able to give myself really good feedback. So the third part is deliberate practice, and that is doing the things that you know you need to do to bring Getting the goal into your life. Whether that's taking certain supplements, whether that's going to sleep earlier than you usually do, whether it's being more socially active than you used to be, and then practicing.

That's an experimental phase. You might still make mistakes in that phase, but course-correcting as you go on, because at this third stage, this is where people could give up.

Yes.

The fourth part isn't really a stage. It's something like a theme or an umbrella over all of this, which is accountability. How are you going to hold yourself accountable that you will actually see this through? Now, the easiest way to do that is with an external party, like a coach or a therapist. But ways to do that yourself are by recording it in your journal and reading back over your journal and continually reinforcing why I did this, why I didn't do it, what happened when it went wrong. I use an app called Habit Share because what I learned for myself, and this won't be for everyone, but it's quite a good for a lot of people is that it's easier to build up microhabits than to start the year or your birthday or whatever it is with one big, this year, I'm going to meet the person that I'm going to get married to. I set out 12 microhabits at the beginning of the year, and I pick three to focus on for the first quarter of the year. I track them on this app until they become so habitual that I don't need them on the app anymore, and then I move to the next three.

When I've done that, instead of setting big goals at the start of the year, I've come to the end of the year and found that I have 10 habits that I'm no longer even conscious of that I'm doing all the time that are leading me towards that bigger goal or those bigger goals that I really want.

Why are there only 10 if you start with 12?

Well, they don't all stick. I find that along the way, I just didn't actually make one or two of them into a habit. It's still a bit of a struggle. I either decide that I'm going to drop it or I'll carry it on into next year.

How would you recommend you make microhabits, or where would you start? Because I know we're going to get flooded with questions about this.

So I'm going to talk really directly to you like I would as if you were my client. Great. Which is that The habit that you're working on is not the other person and the relationship, it's yourself. So if the goal is a partnership with someone else, the habits are all around your self-worth, your deservingness, what you have to offer in a relationship, what boundaries you will have about somebody treating you in a certain way, and I'm sure a lot more, but those are the first ones that come to mind. For example, a lot of people cast a list of what they want in a partner, and there's two things around that. One is make a list of what you have to offer in a relationship, compare it to the list of what you want in a partner, and where all the gaps are, make those your microhabits.

Okay, we got to stop right here and highlight because we've all been in that situation where we have a friend and we keep seeing this person that we love dating people that we do not believe are up to their level. Yeah. And you do make the list of what you want in somebody else. I've never made a list of what I have to offer.

No, neither had I until someone told me about that.

It doesn't even occur to me that I would make a list about what I have to offer. How does just making the list of what you have to offer change the way you view yourself?

There's two things. One is it might highlight gaps between what you think, what you want. But if you're not there, why would that person want you? If you've got self-work to do, let's start with that. That's why I said, I will speak to you really directly like I would to a client, which is that we need to start here if you want to get there. The other one is that the focus can be so outward and external that you actually are not always aware of how much you have to offer. And that's why when, unfortunately, in this day and age, the behaviors that I'm hearing about on the dating apps, you could succumb to those. But if you have a very strong idea of what you have to offer, you're more likely to say no to bad behavior, right?

Yes, it's true. I just think about this from my own life, that in periods of my life where I was in distress or disassociated or in peak toxic Mel mode in the past, College and law school come to mind. I had no clue what I had to offer, which is why I kept finding myself engaged in toxic behavior patterns and with people that I was perpetuating them with. It makes a lot of sense that if you're not even aware of what your value is, how could you possibly attract something that's of a higher value?

Or equal value.

Or equal value.

One of the things you speak about, Mel, is the fact that we love our friends and family and children and pets more than we show that same care to ourselves. If a habit that you have with your partner is writing them a little post-it note of 10 Things I Love About You, well, obviously, if you're in partnership and they're doing that back to you, that's great. But if you're single, write down 10 Things that you love about yourself or say to a friend, I'm going to send you a list of 10 things I love about you. Could you please send me a list so I can see how I'm viewed by another person that I know cares for me? Obviously, there are affirmations, but you can also bring your tribe into saying, Don't forget, this This is what you have to offer. This is how lucky someone's going to be to get you. And I don't think we do that enough either.

I'm just having to think about this because it's sad that we don't do this. And how common is it that your working with somebody in your practice and you ask them to make the list of 10 things and they can't do it?

I feel like we all have some angel inside us. And if you start, you'll be surprised that things will come out. And that is such a good feeling. Something. They can be really tiny things, and they can be physical attributes, or they can be your kindness and your creativity, but they can also be your vulnerability or the fact that you maybe didn't used to be good at asking for help, but that's something that you've learned to do. There's so many things it can be. I would love to think that people would go and do it, and I would love to think that people would be pleasantly surprised. And if not, then reach out to your tribe, because I'm sure you'll get inundated with things that people could say about you.

So whether you're going to use manifesting to look for a job or look for a committed partnership, or to, I guess I shouldn't even say look for, whether you're going to use manifesting to land a job or to land funding, or to fall in love and be in a committed partnership, or to achieve a health goal. Step one is the self-awareness that comes from you doing the work to get very clear about what you want. And you gave us that beautiful meditation of going from your head to your heart to your gut and asking yourself if you really want this. And you say we should saturate ourselves in the self-awareness of it by journaling and talking to a therapist or a coach or a friend that you trust about it. And then the second one was noticing yourself. Are you acting consistently? What is happening? What's appearing around you? The third one is take actions that are consistent with somebody who is landing their dream job or who is attracting a committed relationship or becoming a parent. And then the fourth is patience. Did I get it?

The fourth is accountability. Accountability.

That's right. I don't want that one. That's why I forgot it. I want it to just happen like magic. It's fantastic. Accountability meaning what?

Accountability meaning that you don't give up, that you are still doing the consistent behaviors that you need to to bring the thing that you want into your life, and that either you find a way of doing that yourself with technology or your journaling or an external party, you know that they'll be asking you in a month's time, did you go on the number of dates that you said you would, or did you send your resume out to as many places as you said you would? In my work, I always say, if not, why not? If you didn't, there's a learning opportunity there. But if you did, great. What else can we do in the next month? Kind of thing.

I love this topic so much. Dr. Tara, I could just keep on going on and on and on, but I want to take a quick pause, hear a word from our sponsors. We have so much more to cover. Don't you dare go anywhere, because when we come back, we're digging deeper into manifestation. And of course, you're going to learn the mistake that you're making. It has to do with vision boards and using glue. All of that and so much more coming up when we return. Stay with us. Hey, it's your friend Mel, and I've been thinking it's time that you and I take our relationship to the next level, that we get off social media and do something a little bit more serious together. I have this gift that I've been wanting to get you. Maybe a little forward, but whatever. I'm going to shoot my shot. I have created a brand new free two-part training called Make It Happen, just for you. It is a video training. It's got two different lectures in it. It is so freaking cool. I made this for you because I want you to stop wasting so much time on social media.

I want you to stop thinking about what you want to do, and I want to support you in taking action and making something amazing happen. The next six months of your life could be extraordinary, but it's not going to happen by accident. It'll happen because you decided to make it happen. And because I want to take our relationship to the next level, I thought I'd invite you to jump in this training. Just go to melrobbins. Com/makeithappen to get this free gift from me, and let's take our relationship and your life to the next level. Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins. I'm thrilled that you're here today. We're learning all about the science of manifestation and intuition and how to wire your brain to thrive and be more successful with neuroscientist Dr. Tara Swart-Beaver. So what are the three ways that this changes your brain, or you can change your brain?

So the three mechanisms for neuroplasticity are myelination, synaptic connection, and neurogenesis. Now, myelination, people who do repeated weight training will be quite familiar with that. Myelin is a fatty substance that coats some neural pathways, making them fast conducting pathways. There's a reason that we have fast conducting pathways and slow conducting pathways. For instance, if there was a fire on the table here between us and you put your hand into the fire, your reflex to physically snatch your hand out of the fire is a fast pathway for obvious reasons, so you don't burn. But your pain pathways are slow pathways, because if you became so incapacitated by the pain of the fire that you couldn't move, you wouldn't survive. That works for many different types of pathways as well. But to make a pathway more efficient, we want it to be myelinated. If we're working on a manifestation, obviously, we want the pathways for the behavior that will lead us to that goal to be more efficient. Just basically repetitive practice leads to more myelination of pathways. That's relatively easy to do. The middle one in terms of difficulty is synaptic connection. That's where neurons that we already have in our brain, but that aren't necessarily connected to each other.

At the end of every neuron, there's a bulb called a synapse. Neurons communicate with each other because chemicals flow in the gap between those bulbs and form new pathways. Making new synaptic connections is a step up in terms of difficulty. My favorite analogy for this is learning a language. I think when we talk about manifestation or other psychological behaviors, it It was very intangible, but the process is exactly the same as learning a language. You go from not being able to speak this language at all, to picking up the basics, to becoming semi-fluent, to potentially becoming completely fluent in a language. Everything that we have spoken about so far, it's exactly the same process in the brain. The myelination is when you start listening and you pick up the alphabet or a very basic vocabulary like my name is. Then the synaptic connection is when you can say some sentences that's maybe enough for you to travel to that country on vacation and at least make an effort. Then the hardest one in the adult brain is neurogenesis. And that's because genesis means growth. So this is growth of baby nerve cells into fully formed nerve cells that then have to make synaptic connection with other nerve cells, and potentially those pathways get myelinated.

So you can see how it's a building up process. Yes.

And you had said magnetic energy.

Magnetic desire.

Magnetic desire is one of the fastest ways to change the brain, or it's a required way. Talk to me about how that stimulates one of these processes happening.

Yeah. Okay, let me put it like this. If you and I both wanted to learn Spanish, and you wanted to learn it because you were planning a vacation to Mexico, but I wanted to learn it because I had a Spanish boyfriend. Who do you think is likely to learn it more or better?

You.

Yeah. Magnetic desire. A real deep reason reason for wanting to be able to speak that language.

What I love about this example is that I now understand why manifestation works.

Good.

So magnetic desire, which you are helping us tap into by asking ourselves, by putting our hands on our head and our heart and our gut, what do I really want? You're tapping into the deep-seated magnetic desire behind any change that you want. With that, you are fueling the change Change in your brain to help you both see more opportunities around you and also to help you stay motivated to do the actions. So it's like training for your brain to be doing the work to make something happen in the future and to help you do it.

All of that, and I would just add, even when you feel like giving up, even when it feels like it's not going to happen. That's the difference between someone that will manifest and someone that will continually take it this far but never actually manifest.

Is there a trick that you teach people that are very negative or resigned or have a difficult background where they just have a very hard time believing things are going to work out. Is there something that added that you would suggest to somebody who's like, Well, that's never going to work for me. I've tried that. That your resignation stands in your way of the patience?

Yeah. I actually always struggled with that because I felt like it was such a privilege and a luxury to be manifesting in your life. The first time I was challenged on that, it was when I had my friend Shannelle Haynes on season one of my podcast. She played Tina Turner in London's West End. I asked her the same question, and she said, Manifestation isn't a luxury. It's an essential. She came from parts of New Orleans that people would be scared to go to, and When she built herself up through manifestation to having the career that she had and being the oldest person that ever played Tina Turner in London. I think finding success stories like that, there's another piece of science that says, if you are trying to achieve something that you've never achieved before, find an example of a person that you resonate with who's achieved the thing that you're trying to achieve. Anything from playing Tina Turner in the West End all the way down to to where you were saying somebody who's got a lot of adversity, who's had difficulty in their life, breaking out of that. There are examples of that in the world.

Of course. Interestingly, because you've already mentioned this, the third part of that is changing your negative self-talk.

How do you do that when that is part of the wiring in your brain?

You cannot undo wiring that's already in the brain. Before we understood about neuroplasticity, say that once your brain was in adulthood and certain pathways were set up as they were, like things about low self-esteem or things never working out for you, that it was impossible to change it because it's impossible to change your height once you've stopped growing, right? But we know that's not true in the brain anymore. We know that there's an opportunity for rewiring, but it's not through undoing wiring that's already in the brain, it's through overwriting it, which means repeating a new thought or behavior so many times with such such emotional intensity that it becomes a more energy-efficient pathway for your brain than the one that you've had until now.

How do you do that?

So one of the ways of doing it is through positive affirmations. So it can't just be a random one that you make up. The way that I help people to find their affirmation is if you have a recurring negative thought, it's not your thought that is wired into your neural pathways. It's the belief that underlies that thought.

Can you give us an example?

That's never going to happen for me. That's a classic one. Things like that don't happen to people like me. The answer to this will be different for different people. It could be different for you and I and anyone who's listening. But you need to, either through therapy or by sitting down and really meditating on it, say, what is the evidence that things like this do not happen to people like me? Keep asking yourself that question until Will you come up with the answer. If the answer is because I'm a woman or because I come from a lower socioeconomic background or because I'm a person of color or because it's never happened to anyone in my family before, let's say, going to college. No one in my family has ever been to college before, so what are the chances that I'm going to go? Once you've understood that it's because it's never happened to anyone in my family, then what you need to do is create a mantra or an affirmation that says, I could be the first. That's just one that came into my mind, but in to my heart, actually, I really felt it there.

But it'll be very different for different people. That emotional intensity is important, and that's why I can't give the answer to you because it has to be your answer.

When you said could, I deeply I felt that because for me, it allowed the possibility that it might not, but there was something about the possibility of I could be the first to that opens the door to then wanting to try.

We'll try, yeah. Yeah, wanting to try and then trying.

And then if you keep saying something that has that magnetic desire, that's how you start to, what did you call it? Reprogram?

Re Wire or just overwrite the wiring. Overwrite.

I love this affirmation. I could be the first because it makes me believe that it's possible because of course it's possible. Of course it's possible. I'll just share quickly. I delayed starting this podcast for so long because I just felt like there were already so many out there. If I had had this affirmation, but I could be the first or I could be successful, even though there's already all these podcasts. If I had had that, I probably would have started this sooner. So what do you do once you create this affirmation for yourself. And let's just run with this one, I could be, and then fill in the blank.

What's the step? I have one for you that really came up in my mind that you could have had, which was, I could create a unique niche. Because even though there were so many out there, I think your affirmation would have been, I could create something that's not out there yet. I think for a woman, you're just such an icon in this space. Anyway, regardless of what it is.

I love that because I also do think my husband right now is finishing a master's and working on his first book. And what he battles every day is this has already been written. This has already been written. And so many of you listening have something that you want to do. And you're like, but there's already a bakery. But there's so many real estate agents. But But there's YouTube. There's this. That if you start to take this one, I could do something unique. I could fill a gap. I could do something different. I love this. So what do we do once we have something that feels like, Oh, yeah, that's it. I could be.

So remember, we based this on an underlying belief to do with lack of deserving this. Every time you have the thought that that belief underlies, so I shouldn't bother applying for that job, or that's not going to happen for me, or that's already been done. Every time you have a thought like that, you replace it with your affirmation.

And you just say it to yourself?

You can say it in your head, you can say it out loud, you can write it out and have it on your bathroom mirror. The one time I remember it got quite... I was glad I'd been practicing it, was someone openly, verbally challenged me. I actually burst into tears, but then I said, I think I can.

Wow. That makes a lot of sense. I want that for everybody. I want you listening to us to believe that you could be the first whatever or that you could do whatever. I think it is really important that you tap into and find the right sentence that has that door open for you when you say it.

For season two of my podcast, Reinvent Yourself with Dr. Tara, I've actually focused on the new science of ancient wisdom. Yes. What's What's exciting to me about this one is that Buddhist have known forever, replace every negative thought with a positive thought. That is part of Buddhism. Now, fast forward tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, neuroscience says, You can overwrite a negative thought or belief with a positive affirmation.

I mean, hello. As long as you have magnetic desire attached to it. I think that's the piece that is really important here, that there is this charge in the feeling around it that is really important for you to do the work to figure out for yourself. I'm going to teach you three steps to create more synchronicity, to tap into this extraordinary power that you have, to create more success, to experience more meaning. And so let's just start with what is synchronicity? Well, synchronicity is basically one of those moments that you just can't explain. They're magical, but you immediately have Have a moment of synchronicity, and it gives you this sense that, wow, I'm being guided. Like the universe got its hand on my back. And I describe these moments like a holy shit moment, where you're thinking of your friend from 20 years ago, and a minute later, oh my gosh, there they are. They're texting or calling you, or you're in a business meeting. Have you ever had this happen? You're pitching a new client and you find out that they're from your same hometown. Don't you love that stuff? In fact, That actually happened to me recently, too.

There's a caterer that I use all the time up here in Southern Vermont. His name is Paul. He works with his wife, Julia. They're absolutely amazing. And he was setting up lunch for our team on a production day. My sister-in-law, who happens to be my Chief Operating Officer for 143 Studios, she had flown in from the week. We were here in Southern Vermont. We're filming a bunch of stuff for you. We are all together. Paul and Julie are catering the lunch, and we're all downstairs in the kitchen. And Paul and Christine start chatting. It turns out, check this out, that Paul and Christine and Julia, they all went to Naperville High School in Illinois and graduated the same year. What are the odds? And it's such a huge high school that they didn't know each other. But now they're standing here in Southern Vermont and we're all all working and vibing together. I mean, is that a coincidence? Or is that life telling you something? See, I say it's not a coincidence. It's not a coincidence at all. I say it's happening for a reason, that there is deep meaning in the fact that Christine and Julia and Paul all went to high school together, and they just figured it out while they were standing in the kitchen on a our workday while we were producing amazing content.

Now, if you're someone who's cynical, you might hear this example about Christine and Julia and Paul, and you might shrug your shoulders and say, It's just a coincidence. Well, after Today, you're not going to do that. The reason why you're not going to do that is because I'm going to teach you something using research. It's this, that you will never tap into the success that you desire or the deeper your meaning in your life if you don't learn how to see the deeply personal meaning and things that are happening around you. Simply saying, meh, it's a coincidence, is you declaring, that means nothing. There's no magic in my life. There's no reason for this. But calling it a sign of something greater is what gives your life meaning. And these moments matter, and they happen in your life all the time. And when you start to see deeply personal reasons for random things happening in your life, you begin to unlock the power of your mind. And you tap into something deeper that is available to you right now. See, I could see that Christine, Julia, and Paul, as a sign, that even the caterer is supporting this decision, that we're not just sister-in-laws, that we're supposed to work together.

And here's the cool thing about learning this superpower of seeing life working for you, of brainwashing your sofa success and for deeper meaning, is that you get to choose what things mean when they're happening in your life. Why wouldn't you want that for yourself? Why go through life questioning whether or not you've made the right decision? Why go through life just shrugging off things as a coincidence? Just a coincidence. I'm just going through the motions in my life. There's nothing here to see. Why not see the fact that it stopped raining and all of a sudden the sun came out? Right before your first Zoom interview for this job that you really want. Why not see that as a really good sign that it's going to go well, that you're on the right track, that you're doing the right thing by putting yourself out there? Why not see the fact that the song playing in the restaurant, which happened to be the song that your parents dance to, the first dance song at their wedding. Why not see the fact that the song is playing in the restaurant as a sign that the person that you're dating right now is actually a good person?

When the house that you really want to buy has an address, 508, and that just happens to be the same area code as the state you're moving from, how is that not a sign? This is your new home? That even if it's not, that things are working out for you and just looking at this house as a marker on the right path of you finding the right home? Imagine. Imagine how different it would feel if you brainwashed yourself to believe that life is supporting you, guiding you, that you're not alone at all, that you can see signs that you're on the right path or on the wrong path. I mean, you felt this sense at moments in your life, right? That there's something larger for you to experience, some deeper dimension of life that you could tap into? I'm here to tell you, there is. There's this new study that I love that has proven that simply just having the awareness that synchronicities exist increases your life satisfaction. The study I'm talking about was published in Frontiers in Psychology, and just check out the What's the title of this research? An Unexplored Pathway to Life Satisfaction.

I freaking love that. An Unexplored Pathway to Life Satisfaction. Here is how this superpower is going to help you. Number one, when things are really challenging, you can tap into this ability to see synchronicities as a way to bolster your resilience and keep you moving forward when you feel like giving up. I do it all the time. Being Being able to spot signs and synchronicities and meaning in life, and life is really hard, it's like the ultimate hack to continue the fight, to continue believing that things will work out for you. I mean, even the example that's dumb of Paul and Julia and Christine standing in my kitchen. When I moved here and I freaking hated it, everywhere I looked, I saw reasons for why this was a dumb decision. Brainwashing yourself in a positive way allows you to see the positive signs. Even something as crazy as three people standing in your kitchen that went to the same high school. Why not call that out as a sign that you're on the right path? It helps you keep going. It helps you stay optimistic. It helps you with your resilience. And the second reason why you're going to want to know how to use this, and this is a way that it's made a huge difference in my life, is that everything that I experience is so much more profound.

Because I know that it wasn't just hard work or luck that got me the results that I wanted or the moments of magic that I've had. I know that there is something deeper going on that I'm tapping into in my day-to-day life, because I don't believe in coincidences. I believe that things are happening for a reason. And when you tap into that and you find evidence in your day-to-day life, I don't even know how to describe it. I just want it for you. Do you know that there are 150 million podcast episodes that have been published, and you chose this one? And I'm going to tell you why. Because you were meant to. And if someone that you love sent you this episode, and you made the decision to just click on it and listen to it, it's because you were meant to. So from this point forward, I want you to listen with a level of intention. Listen knowing that there is something that you're going to hear that is exactly what you need to hear at this exact moment in your life. There are no coincidences. Let my voice be the sign that you needed, because I'm on a mission to empower and inspire to open your heart and your mind so that you can achieve all the success that you deserve and experience a much more meaningful life.

And there are three steps that I'm going to teach you that you can start doing as soon as I teach them to you. And these three steps are based on the research of Dr. Bernard Byteman. He is a professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He's a medical doctor who's trained at Yale and Stanford, and he is the number number one researcher in the science of synchronicities, which you know is the pathway to a more meaningful life, according to research. And in his research, he has looked at the patterns of people who experience a tremendous number of synchronicities. I consider myself to be somebody who experiences synchronicities every single day. So I've translated his research into three specific actions that you can start practicing, because I'm serious. I want you to brainwash yourself in a positive way because this is so freaking cool. Number one, the first skill that I want you to master is state it and claim it. The second skill we're going to talk about is mastering your energy and how to use it to your advantage. And the third skill we're going to talk about is finding a bigger meaning.

And look, I know these three don't quite make a whole lot of sense right now, but when I unpack them in detail and I I give you specific examples of how you're going to use it, and then I tell you stories from my life about the crazy success and even the miracles that I've been creating by using these three skills, you are going to be It's stoppable. So here's what we're going to do. Let's take a brief break. And while you do, think about something for me, okay? I want you to think to yourself. If Mel is right, And if what she's about to teach me actually works, if I could tap into greater success and more meaning in my life, and if I could see a sign, some confirmation today, that I'm on the right track or that I've made the right decision, what would that sign be? And begin to open up the space for something more meaningful to happen to you today. I We want to talk about what people experience when they try to implement the high five habit in their lives. So we've talked about the fact that I believe every single human being has this habit of self-rejection.

You practice it every morning without even realizing it in this moment in the mirror in your bathroom, and then it gets carried throughout your entire day as you beat yourself up, as you focus on what's going wrong, as you point out the negative, as you pick yourself apart, as you hide in the back of group photos, as you stay silent. These are all habits of self-rejection. And so What we know for sure is that when... And I ask people, just please give us five days. Just do this for five days because something extraordinary happens within five days. We have 126,000 people from from 91 countries going through a five-day challenge that I call the high five challenge. They have completed the challenge. We have not had a single person out of 126,000 people report that it didn't work. And so what you need to know is that when you stand in front of the bathroom here, you put your toothbrush down, and you stand with your sofa a second, it will feel weird. And that's good. It should feel weird because, in my opinion, That is evidence that your brain is now plowing a new neuro response instead of operating the habit loop of rejecting yourself.

Just like I'm a right-hand or if I lost my hand today and I had to write with my left hand, it would feel weird. That's a sign that I'm learning something new. So if it's weird, good. What we notice is that there's only two reactions that people have to doing it the first time, raising up their hand. The first reaction is positive. So either a lot of people laugh, that I believe is the cortisol. A lot of people cry in a very positive way. And the crying is really good because the way that everybody describes it is it's like a decade or decades of emotional release of finally getting it. You just woke up and you have come home to yourself. And you realize how long you have been longing for that connection and acceptance and seeing from yourself. Is there something that you want to add to that positive thing before we go negative?

Can I show you some models? It's going to make it super easy. He has a brain and a skull. And here is another model of the brain and body. My audience is very familiar with what I'm going to say, but there's always new audiences watching, so I'm going to explain it again. Now, as you've explained that to me, as you said those words to us, that was a sound wave, electromagnetic light waves. Our mind receives that energy, and then the psychological part of our mind does a think, feel, choose, think, feel, choose, think, feel, choose at 400 billion actions per second, which is a lot to process what you've just said. Now, because it's coming from your place of total love and kindness and absolute passion to share this with people, so everything about you, all the photons you're generating, as Einstein would talk about it, are coming from a place of absolute love. They're coming from your wired for love nature. So that whole message is being received by all of us in this incredibly healthy way. So it comes in, but now this is what happens. It comes in your words into the brain, show up in the brain, the brain responds on a neurophysiological level, a neurochemical level, an electromagnetic level, a quantum level, and a genetic level.

Your words at the speed of 10 to the 27 are busy converting into little amino acids that group together to form proteins and our vibrations inside of those proteins, vibrating in the region of 528 hertz and above, which is super healthy. Every concept you're giving us is vibrating in its own unique way. It's your own unique protein. By the end of this however long conversation, people are going to have 2,000 or 3,000 plus concepts that they would have taken away from you. Each of those would have grown into a tree like this. In your brain, You're literally growing trees that I call thoughts. Thoughts look like trees. As neuroscientists, we talk about the thoughts in the brain having an arbor-like structure, tree-like structure. All of us at this moment are taking your and my words and growing this into these trees. But notice a tree, and I'm going to use this little pot here. A tree is planted first with the seed and then roots. Our words are the root system. It's the same thing, proteins and whatever. This is a thought tree about the conversation with Mel about the high five. The tree is called the high five.

The detail is the conversation. Now, what you and I are saying is the source. The memories of this thought tree, there's source memories and there's interpretation memories. You'll see the significance of this now relating, and I'm I'm leaving the point because this is why the high five is just so important. I'm using this conversation as an example. The thought is made of memories, root memories, and branch memories. Memories are not the same as thoughts. Exactly like a mind, mind is not the same as brain. Mind is It's the action, it's the processing, it's the electromagnetic, it's the gravitational field. You have your own gravitational field around you and through you. An electromagnetic field is different to mine. I can't take yours, you can't take mine. But when we interact, we enhance each other. If we are in conflict, we don't enhance each other. We cause brain damage in each other. As humans, we are wired to enhance. We're wired for love, which is what the high five is helping yourself do personally. But the collective response that you're creating is an enhancement process. But coming back to this, what's actually happening in the brain is that we are all building this root system of the source, which is what you're saying and my responses to you.

But every single listener and viewer is interpreting this immediately in a parallel... It happens immediately, simultaneously The root above the ground, the memories above the ground, the branch, memories, and leaves, and trees, whatever you want, whatever shape it is, are the interpretation of what you're saying. Every person is hearing the same thing, but he's seeing it in their own different way. They applying it to their life in their own different way. Now, they are busy building an insurance policy in their brain. This high five content is a neural structural change. I studied neuroplasticity. I was one of the first in my field in the '80s when they told us that you can't change the brain. Now it's accepted fact. We are being neuroplasticians. We've been brain surgeons, neuroplasticians, historians, archeologist, all that to build this conversation. In other words, this conversation has created a structural change in your brain that is a healthy structural change That if people go get your book, if they get into, or to follow you, whatever, they are then going to stabilize this. But they will lose everything that we are saying if they don't stabilize this and turn it into a habit.

And a habit takes 63 days minimum, not 21. Most people think that it's 21. So I'm just seeing the whole audience, if you want to benefit from what Mel and I are talking about now, you need to take this. You need to actually get the book, get my neurocycle app in my book, and learn how to apply this over the 63 days. Because There's very little research showing how long it takes to create a neural network like this that is sustainable. We're doing this now. But if you don't apply this within 24 hours to 48 hours, most of this beautiful tree would denature and become heat energy. What a waste. Then they know, I heard something that Mel spoke about, something about high-fiving, but it's something good for me. Then they won't really apply it and they won't get the benefit that you're desperate for people and passionately desperate for people to get. Because when humans are functioning as themselves, we won't see what we see in the that we have today. We won't see this mess and conflict, et cetera, et cetera. So that's getting super philosophical. Now, that's healthy. When you spoke about the complaining habit, I have to grab my toxic tree.

Give me one second.

Yeah, let me see it. I'm imagining like a dead... Like, yes. Okay, great. Yes. This is so good. You know what I love about this? Is that I love the high five because it's a physical thing that's so simple, that has this profound shift throughout your mind mind, body, spirit, and that think, feel, choose, loop. I love the visuals that you're bringing to the table because the second that you said, I got to get my toxic or negative, I can't remember what word you're, I'm like, I imagine a dead tree.

There you go. There it is, Mel. There's the... And these are built into neurons on the brain. So this is what... These are the dendrites. Everyone's seeing what a neuron looks like. And I think if you don't just Google it, if you don't know what a neuron looks like, these branches here are where memory is stored, not in the synapses. Synapses are short-term memory. So as we're speaking, you get synaptic action, and then the actual memory is stored here. And so these are the dendrites. So they look like trees. So now here, this is a healthy conversation. It's a healthy tree. The proteins fall correctly, the quantum energy is correct, the neurochemicals are correct, your whole neurophysiology, endocrine system, immune system, everything's happy. But this is a toxic reaction. When we have this wake up in the morning and you talk about the patterns that most people are waking up and saying, I hate myself, I'm not good enough, the FOMO, the FOPO, all those people pleasing, all that, I can't do this. You see the saggy boobs.

It's all the same thing, by the way.

There you go. It's this thing. The statements that we're making about ourself are this part of the tree, the interpretation. If we look at our interpretation, we can then track the interpretation of why am I saying this about myself? That's the root system. Like the root system of this conversation is our words. There's a source. There's also a source to the complaint. Why are you looking at yourself like that? This causes brain damage because as you said in the beginning about how we've got, you said very beautifully about our neural network and our brain and body are designed to celebrate. That's the wide for love concept I spoke about. So this, sweetens survival. This causes brain damage. This I hate myself stuff, activates the immune system in the same way that COVID does. In other words, there's an immune response to this. Tv lymphocytes, B lymphocytes, macrophages, all going to that site, creating inflammation. And if you keep on 63 days later, nine weeks later, 18 weeks later, a year later, you're still doing this. This thing, whatever you think about the most, has grown. This is enormous, and it's in your non-conscious mind. Your subconscious mind is a bridge between the conscious and the non-conscious.

The non-conscious is where everything is stored. In the non-conscious mind, it's gravitational fields. In the brain, it's trees. In the body, it's a change in your gene code. This is how powerful this stuff is. When you high five, you are actually drawing up this toxic thing that's I've been there for 9 weeks, 18 weeks, 5 years, 25 years, 40 years. From neuroscience, we know that as soon as you draw something up and you become aware of it, you weaken it. It becomes malleable and changeable. If I don't change it and I walk away from the bathroom mirror thinking, Oh, gosh, I hate myself, boom, it goes back stronger. So tomorrow it comes back even stronger. This is in the non-conscious mind, which works 24/7. It's the most powerful and intelligent part of you, and it's driving everything that you do. So how I see the high five, and I don't want to take any of your time because we want to hear you, not me, is the high five is breaking that. It's pulling this non-conscious view of myself out. You know what it is?

You gave me an idea. Okay, go for it. It's an ax.

It's an ax. There we go. It's an ax. It's an ax. It's an ax that's not only chopping it down, but it's got to dig the soil out because you've got to get the root system. When you take a weed out of the garden, you can't chop off the head. You have to get the whole weed upend it. So the high five is preparing you to do the work of actually getting it out. It's putting that spade or ax in your hand. Love it. That's exactly what it is. Every day when you do this, you are allowing yourself to bring your identity to the surface, which then drives every other part of your mind, which then drives your brain and your body, which then changes your lifestyle. So this is a step into reversing that terrible statistic of people dying younger. Yeah.

And one of the reasons why it's so powerful is because it does not require you to say anything. Programming. The positive programming is already associated with the physical action. Because you've never high-fived somebody and thought, I hate you and you're worthless, your brain cannot actually Neurologically, it is impossible to think that thought as you high five yourself. Impossible.

That's so true. So scientifically, to back you up there, it's the wide for love nature. So that's built in. I spoke about an insurance policy earlier on. A wide for love nature is our insurance It's a why. I talk about it as a wise mind. So in the depths of the middle of this forest of all these trees and some of that look at this, some look like that, there is this beautiful green forest, and that's where the high five resides in that forest, in that gravitational field. As as a resilience network in your brain and in your genes. So it's all over the place. So it's a recognition of truth.

Yeah. I think that's why people cry, is because you, by high five yourself, you are reconnecting with your true nature. And that is a powerful spiritual experience.

Speak more about that. That is so true, because I want you to speak about that, and then I'll throw some science in afterwards because that is so huge.

I apologize for interrupting you. I get so excited about this, particularly since you and I are free styling. It's amazing. I can't wait to get together. We got to do an event for people or something and just really...

Yeah, that's it for sure. We can sit there with all of our little props and that we have to. We promise you people this is going to happen.

Yes. So it was interesting because the very first morning that I did this in April of 2020, during a very overwhelming moment in life. When I first did it, my immediate reaction was to laugh. And then I laughed. I realized now I laughed because of the dopamine. But I also laughed because on the surface, standing there in my underwear, high-fiving my... It just seems so stupid and pathetic when you just first hear it. But I will say Even though lightning didn't strike and heaven didn't open and the angels didn't sing that first morning, but I did feel this little flip. I felt almost like the high five had almost turned a light switch on. Because I noticed my mood went from feeling energetically down, defeated, overwhelmed to all of a sudden this shift in energy. I didn't even think these thoughts, but I would describe the thoughts like, Okay, come on now. You got a roof over your head. You can handle this. You've been in way worse places. It was like that, here we go, energy. But I'll tell you, it was the second morning where it went from this funny thing that I did to something profound and deeply moving.

And so I woke up the second morning, and you talked about cortisol levels, and I believe that you'll have to tell me if this is true or not, that your cortisol levels tend to be higher in the morning. A lot of us experience a higher level of anxiety in the morning since we're anticipating that the day is going to bad. So a lot of us already, whether it's because of past trauma or it's because of just what's going on in your life, or because it's a habit to wake up and feel this level of anxiousness, I woke up feeling overwhelmed, feeling defeated. I use the five-second rule, five, four, three, two, one. I get out of bed. I start walking to the bathroom. And this is when the high five habit became something bigger. I realized as I was walking to the bathroom, that I was feeling something that I hadn't ever felt in my entire adult life. And this is what I was feeling. You know how when you are going to meet a really dear friend that you just adore, and you're about to walk into the cafe, what do you feel in that moment when you're about to walk in and see somebody you really adore.

Anticipation, peace.

Yeah.

Excitement.

Exactly. I realized I was feeling that about seeing myself.

Wow. That's beautiful.

I've been excited to see an outfit or a haircut. I don't ever recall as an adult feeling excited about seeing the human being, Mel Robbins.

Oh, wow. This is amazing. This is core to who we are as humans, and we've forgotten to see that in ourselves in this very fast technological, physically-based world where you got to get something from outside in to make you feel better, which is how we've been almost programmed. What you're saying is the absolute opposite of that.

Yeah.

That is profound.

It was a profound feeling. And as I turned the corner and stepped into the bathroom, the profound nature of what was unfolding was hitting me. And it was that second morning realizing that I was excited to see the human being, Mel Robbins, that I realized, oh, my gosh, all this time, it never occurred to me that there's another human being in the bathroom standing there in the mirror. And I believe that represents your soul and your spirit and who you are.wise mind. Yes, your wise mind. And as I stood there, and I had this moment of really just being with the human being Mel Robbins, it was profound. And I had... That was the second morning was the morning that I cried when I high-fived myself. And it was as if years and years of feeling isolated or feeling not good enough or feeling invisible or feeling whatever, the pain that we all feel at times in the human experience, that the high five became a recognition of just how much I have lived through and how much I needed and deserved support and encouragement, just like every human being does. And so that's when it really started to crack open.

And it's also something that when I notice something, and that is this, you can stand there and be with your sofa a minute. And when you first start to do it, particularly if you're somebody who has a hard time looking at yourself or you hate so much about where you're at in life right now or what's happened to you or whatever it may be, you can be thinking and feeling all those things. But I noticed in that the second morning that the second you go to raise your arm, your mind actually goes silent. What exactly is this eating protocol? What are the lifestyle changes? What do I need to do? Why is this working? And so as we drop back into this conversation, you're going to hear Dr. Palmer explain the science of why he believes mental illness is a metabolic issue. I'm about to ask him, how the heck can you tie together metabolism and mental health?

We have long known that there are biopsychosocial causes for mental illness. That means neurotransmitters, hormones, genetics play a role, stress and trauma play a role, loneliness, addiction. All of these things can play a role in mental illness. But to date, nobody has been able to put them all together in one coherent way. And what I am arguing is that cutting-edge research over the last 20 years, once and for all, helps us connect those dots. And in the simplest way to put it is that what I am saying is that people who have brain disorders, their brains are either doing something that they're not supposed to be doing or failing to do something that they should be doing. Those people with brain disorders have a metabolic problem affecting their brain. And that is how we can tie together neurotransmitter imbalances, hormone imbalances, stress, trauma, loneliness, all of it, and put it together in one clear way.

You now call this the brain energy theory.

I do.

And explain that so that anybody listening can understand what the brain energy theory is.

So in a nutshell, it says that mental disorders are metabolic disorders affecting the brain.

What does metabolic mean?

Most people think of metabolism in this really simplistic way. They think that it's burning calories and it affects our weight. I don't want to take away from that. There is no doubt that metabolism does influence how much you weigh, does influence your body weight, it affects your athletic performance. Those things are true. But the reality is metabolism is so much more that. Metabolism is a fundamental part of all living organisms. So in the simplest terms, I would say metabolism is taking food and oxygen and some other things like vitamins and nutrients, and turning those things into energy or building blocks that are used to maintain or grow cells. It's humans eating and drinking and breathing breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide. Those are foundational to metabolism. But in fact, they play a role in every cell within our body. They play a role in the way our cells develop, the way they function or don't function properly, whether those cells live or die.

And just so that I am staying with you, Doc, I I want to make sure I understand when you say metabolic. So do you have an analogy that would help someone like me that does not have a medical degree? I'm not a neuroscientist. I want to be able to leave this conversation and both explain it to my daughter who has anxiety or to my son or myself who has ADHD or my husband who has treatment-resistant depression. I want to be able to explain this. When you use that big word metabolic, what are you referring to in the body and how can we understand it at a simple way?

In many ways, metabolism is ridiculously complicated.

I was afraid you were going to say that.

No, it really is. I'm going to give you a few analogies, but for context, I need people to understand that I get as a scientist and as a researcher, I get it is very, very complicated.

Great. I appreciate you being willing to help those of of us that are not planning on getting a PhD in this to actually understand the word metabolic because it's input process and then how it changes your body. But I like visuals, and I know you have a really good one.

The easiest way to help people at least understand the complexity of metabolism is like traffic in the city. If I ask you what What controls traffic in the city? Or what are all of the factors that play a role in whether there are traffic jams or no traffic jams?

Number of cars, number of stoplights, patterns of the traffic flow, whether or not there's construction, accidents.

Everything you said is true. On one level, it's complex, right? It's really complicated. But if we really want to get to the heart of what causes traffic accidents and what causes traffic jams, we also want to think about what's controlling all of these cars. At the end of the day, it's the drivers inside of the cars. The drivers. If all of the drivers are doing exactly what they are supposed to do, traffic is going to flow optimally. If the drivers start messing up, if they're on their cell phone, if they're having a road rage day, if they're flipping people off, if they're slamming on the brakes for no good reason, if they're swerving into the other lane, traffic accidents, traffic jams begin to occur. So at the end of the day, the drivers are foundational to the flow of traffic.

Agree.

And with metabolism and human metabolism, it is equally It's complex. There are lots of things. There are biological, psychological, social things. Our diet, sunlight exposure, our sleep, the temperature of the room we're in, our age, all of those things play a role in metabolism. But if you really look foundationally in a scientific way, what's really at the heart of it? It's these tiny things in our cells called mitochondria. And they are actually foundational to metabolism. They are a part of the definition of metabolic problems or metabolic dysfunction. And the great news is that we can use cutting edge research about them over the last 20 years to once and for all start to piece together this complex mental health puzzle of what causes mental illness. Much more exciting news is if you then ask the question, Well, if there's a problem with mitochondria or metabolism, what can we do about it? Common sense lifestyle strategies like changes in diet, exercise, sleep, stress reduction, managing substance use. Those things can actually correct metabolic problems, so they can help people lose weight if they've got a metabolic problem, they can help type 2 diabetics reverse their diabetes.

They can help prevent heart attacks. What I am here to say is that those same strategies in the way that they can play a role in your blood glucose, in the way that they can play a role in your weight, in the way that they can play a role in preventing heart attacks, they can help restore your brain function and help your brain work better so that you no longer have what's called a mental illness.

Wow. I want to go back to the analogy because I was with you and I'm like, Okay, the drivers are the power, the The drivers. Okay, the drivers. And then if you now take that analogy and we talk about metabolism, are the drivers in your metabolism, your cells, or are they something else?

They're the mitochondria inside our cells.

And what is mitochondria?

So mitochondria, for people who've had high school biology, they probably remember mitochondria.

I had high school biology. You don't remember? I do not remember. That's okay.

That's Okay. Most people who have heard of them have heard that they are the powerhouse of the cell. And what that means is that they are taking food and oxygen and turning it into energy. So mitochondria They are controlling most of those processes in human cells. They are controlling our metabolism. But in many ways, the cutting-edge research part of it is that They're also playing a role in hormone production. Things like cortisol, estrogen, and testosterone, the first step in the synthesis of those hormones occurs within mitochondria. Mitochondria play a role in producing and regulating neurotransmitters like serotonin or dopamine. Mitochondria play a role in turning inflammation on and off. Mitochondria are affected by all of those lifestyle strategies. Diet, exercise, sleep, hormones, substances, substance abuse, like cigarette smoking, alcohol, marijuana. But here's the thing. They're also affected by psychological and social factors. Trauma and stress affect our mitochondrial function, which then ends It ends up affecting our metabolism, which then ends up making us or putting us at higher risk for developing a wide variety of mental illnesses, all the way from PTSD To depression, to anxiety, to ADHD, to bipolar, to schizophrenia. People with serious adverse childhood experiences, horrible childhoods, trauma abuse, They're at higher risk for developing essentially all of the mental illnesses.

But guess what else they are at higher risk of developing?

I have no idea.

Obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart attacks, and they are at very high risk of dying early deaths from those things.

You're here to say that if we focus on improving our metabolic health, which is food, sleep, lifestyle choices that are largely within our control at a cellular level, from the inside out, you can heal all of this and have profoundly better health outcomes.

Yes. I think for most people, that is 100% true. There are people who probably have rare genetic conditions or hormone imbalances or other or infections, chronic infections or other things that are also impacting their metabolism, they may need additional strategies. I'm not here to say that I've got the cure all for everyone with mental illness. The second thing that I want to say is that the devil is in the details. I don't want anybody to come away from this conversation thinking that Chris Palmer is saying that if people with schizophrenia just ate a little more broccoli, it would cure their schizophrenia, because that's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying that a dietary intervention as simple as just eat more vegetables is going to cure schizophrenia. What are you saying? What I am saying is that dietary interventions such as the ketogenic diet, which starts to get very science-oriented. But if we use science-informed dietary strategies like a ketogenic diet, I actually have been getting people with horrible lifelong schizophrenia better. Some of them are putting their horrible debilitating mental illnesses into remission, sometimes off of all psychiatric meds and living dramatically better lives.

I want to see if I can give this back to you because I am on a mission to make sure everyone listening can translate this extraordinary research of yours and these groundbreaking findings about the connection between food and your metabolism and every aspect of your health. But for this conversation, your brain functioning and you being mentally well. I think we all understand, generally, All right, if I'm a smoker, if I eat a lot of processed food, if I sit around on my couch all day and I'm playing video games, or I'm just looking at social media, that's not good for my heart. That you can predict based on people's habits who's likely to have a heart attack because their food that they're intaking, the way that their lifestyle choices are impacting their health, it's pretty evident that that could lead to a heart attack. But what you're basically saying is that after 30 years of research, those same lifestyle choices of food and sleep and exercise and breathing and how your body metabolizes this is changing the functioning and structure of your brain?

Absolutely. That is, in my mind, incontrovertible now. In the same way that diet and exercise can affect your heart and your liver and your kidneys and your ovaries, guess what? The brain isn't immune. I don't know who on Earth came up with a concept that the brain is somehow the only organ in the human body that is immune from all of those things. When every other organ system The brain is being affected. The brain is being affected. What are the symptoms? How do we know when the brain is being affected? It comes out as what we call mental illness. Some people might have symptoms of ADHD. Others might have symptoms of an anxiety disorders. Others might have chronic unrelenting depression. In extreme metabolic dysfunction, extreme cases, people might develop schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other debilitating conditions.

Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.