Skip to content

By playing, you agree to uListen's Terms and Privacy Policy and YouTube's Terms of Service.

Deep Dive with Ali AbdaalDeep Dive with Ali Abdaal

Change Your Brain: The Power Of Neuroplasticity And Braincare - Dr Tara Swart

👉 [Free live masterclass, Sat 21 Nov] Launch your online business by Christmas and land your first high-paying client by January →

Dr. Tara SwartguestAli Abdaalhost
Oct 20, 20222h 1mWatch on YouTube

Summaries, chapters, transcripts, and FAQs on this page are made by uListen, not YouTube.

Great conversations run long. Their best ideas don't have to.

uListen is free on iPhone, iPad, Android, Chrome, and Claude.

See how

Transcript

  1. 0:00 – 2:48

    Intro

    1. TS

      It's actually really related to what I understand about neuroplasticity now, because there's a period of time where you make new connections in your brain, and you build up this new pathway, and it's almost like there's a tipping point where that pathway becomes the way that you think now, and your old ways of thinking get overwritten. So one of the analogies that I could use is if you came up to a field that was knee-high in grass, then the first time you walk across that field, you're gonna be pushing that grass down with your feet. But if you walk that same path every day for a week, you probably would have trodden a sort of pathway through the grass that you can walk through easily. If you then said, "Okay, I'm gonna lay down some wooden slabs to make it even easier to walk along there," and then you built that further and you maybe, like, cemented them in, then eventually you could make a path that's so easy to walk down that it takes no effort at all, and it's exactly the same in the brain when you learn something new. We're so bombarded with information in the modern day that what you would read in a newspaper in one day today is the amount of information that somebody would have received in their lifetime 100 years ago. The brain naturally filters out things that aren't vital to our survival. But if we do something like create a vision board or visualize something that we want, then we're training the brain more to be aware of the things that we really want. So then when it does the selective filtering, it doesn't filter out that person that could introduce you to somebody about your business or that person that could introduce you to somebody for a date. That means noticing and then grasping opportunities that can move you closer to your goal.

    2. AA

      Hey, friends. Welcome back to Deep Dive, the weekly podcast, where every week it is my immense privilege and pleasure to sit down with academics and authors and entrepreneurs and creators and other inspiring people, and we find out how they got to where they are and what we can learn from them to help apply to help live our own best lives. What you're about to hear is a discussion between me and Dr Tara Swart. Tara has a PhD in neuropharmacology. She also trained and worked as a psychiatrist in the UK's National Health Service for about seven years before leaving medicine and becoming an executive advice coach-type person, and then her career morphed into doing talks and exploring the world of neuroplasticity and the world of brain care and the world of how we can learn from neuroscience and psychology and endocrinology and, like, immunology and microbiology, and putting all these sciency things together to help improve the ways that our brains function. Oh, she's also chief science officer for Heights, which is a brain care supplement company, which I have also invested in. We had the founder of Heights on the podcast a couple of seasons ago. In the conversation, we talk about the somewhat circuitous path she took to get to the career that she is at now, and we spend most of the conversation talking about what are the practical things that we can learn from the world of neuroscience, from the field of neuroplasticity that we can apply to our own lives to help reduce our stress, to help increase our brain's performance, to help make it easier to learn stuff. Super int- interesting conversation. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

  2. 2:48 – 6:32

    How did we get here?

    1. AA

      All right, Tara, thank you so much for coming on. Um, I would love to sort of just get into a l- a little bit of the backstory. So you ha- were or have been a sort of a psychiatrist, a neuropharmacologist, neuroscientist PhD. You're now chief science officer at Heights. You have your own executive advice business where you kind of apply these insights and, and, and I guess coach other people. Wh- where did all this start? How did, how did we end up here?

    2. TS

      Yeah. So that does sound quite messy when you put it like that. So maybe-

    3. AA

      That's a lot of stuff, but it's pretty cool. Yeah

    4. TS

      [laughs] If we put it in date order, then, uh, like you, I guess, from school, I went to, um, medical school in London. Did two years of preclinical, did the intercalated BSC, um, and then from then got offered t- to stay on and do a PhD in neuropharmacology, which I did for three years. And then, uh, it was time to get out of London, so I went to Oxford to complete medical school, the clinical part. Um, did my first surgical job there, returned to London and did my medical job, and then started training in psychiatry at the Royal Free Hospital. And over the next, that, that sort of six years, I worked in the West London Mental Health Trust mostly, and I also worked abroad in Australia and Bermuda. Then in 2007, I quit medicine-

    5. AA

      Ooh

    6. TS

      [laughs] Um, moved back from Bermuda to the UK, did a six-month coaching course, and then in 2008... and worked in an office, um, really going from sort of being quite an experienced psychiatrist at that point to being the absolute bottom of the pile, no business contacts. Um, my PowerPoint skills apparently weren't up to scratch for what they were [laughs] needed at, at that point.

    7. AA

      Yeah.

    8. TS

      And then in 2008, started my own freelance practice as a coach, and sort of two or three years later, made that into a company and did speaking and writing. Um, and then a little bit after that, a year or two after that, started teaching at MIT Sloan, so applying neuroscience to business and leadership. And then at some point, I'm not sure of the exact date, maybe four or five years ago, Dan and his co-founder, Joel, um, found me on social media, so [laughs] great place to, like-

    9. AA

      Yeah

    10. TS

      ... headhunt people. And were looking for a chief science officer for Heights, which is a brain care supplement. And I think all of the, you know, PhD in neuroscience and medical doctor obviously, um, were important, but the thing that really gelled us together was that when I was traveling, and I was traveling a lot for business at that time, I was taking 10, sometimes up to 20 bottles of supplements with me for my travel. It was very stressful. I was enduring a lot of jet lag. I was going to very different places, having to switch mode between whether I was coaching or speaking, and I wanted to make sure... And, and when I was traveling, I couldn't always eat as healthily as I did when I was at home. Um, so I grow my own food and only eat organic, and I cook from scratch every day.

    11. AA

      Oh.

    12. TS

      Yeah. So when I couldn't do that, I was even more aware of making sure that I got all the nutrients that I feel that I need for my brain and that get very depleted by stress and travel. So, um, when I heard about the idea of having one capsule, it's a double capsule, that had pretty much everything that I would want to take in it, I wanted to be part of that. And from the beginning, I was banging on about magnesium probiotic. And, and now we are bringing those on as bolt-on products to the original brain care supplement.

    13. AA

      Oh, okay. So let, I... S- so many kind of interesting points a- along that journey.

    14. TS

      Yeah.

    15. AA

      Can we zoom

  3. 6:32 – 14:00

    Deciding to leave medicine

    1. AA

      in, can we zoom into 2007? Why did you, why did, why did you leave medicine? What was going on?

    2. TS

      I'd been thinking about it for two years, 'cause it's a really big decision, both personally and professionally. I loved psychiatry, and I really cared about my patients, and I felt that for a lot of my colleagues, it was a lifestyle choice. So to leave knowing that people who depended on me, who waited for months to see me, children, the elderly, you know, really vulnerable people, I had to feel that I was definitely going to have more impact on people by doing whatever I was going to do next. But obviously, the other side of the coin of that was that I'd done my PhD in neuroscience thinking I was going to become a neurologist. When I went to the clinical school, I felt like that interaction with people wasn't gonna be enough for me with neurology and psychiatry, where I started to really delve into people hearing voices that weren't there, um, that your brain could play a trick on you in such a way that you couldn't trust yourself. That felt like a really important thing to be part of and, and try to help with and care about and understand. But what I realized as I moved through the different specialties, so I did child psychiatry, I did forensic psychiatry, vulnerable females, the elderly, rehab, learning disabilities, and I traveled around the world with it too, was that if I remained in that job for the next thirty or forty years, I wasn't gonna get enough intellectual stimulation or challenge to keep me happy and at my best. And so I had that terrible dilemma of feeling like I could do this really well for the rest of my life, but I wouldn't be living my best life if I did that. And so when I finally made the decision to quit, and that was after I'd gone through 100 options of other things that I could do instead of medicine, because when you go to medical school when you're eighteen and then you're a doctor for six or seven years, that's... And I was at medical school essentially for nine years, you don't think that you can do anything else. So it's, uh, you know, it's a really big deal to leave. So I finally found executive coaching as the thing that was very much about goal orientation and focus and determination, but also quite zen, so that seemed to fit with my psychological skills. And when I went to the chief of psychiatry and said, as you'll know, you know, you have to have a form signed [clears throat] by all your bosses for the last two years to prove that you're not leaving 'cause you've done something terrible. Um, when I asked him to sign the form, he said to me, "This is such a great loss to us because you could do this job in your sleep." And I think that was the phrase that I needed to hear, which was, I didn't want to be asleep for the rest of my life. I wanted to be challenged and, um, do new and different things.

    3. AA

      Hmm.

    4. TS

      And at that stage, I thought I was just gonna be a coach. Obviously, I've done, like, loads of different things since then. But yeah, I s- I, um, moved countries, came and did the coaching qualification, had to learn to listen in a way that was completely different to when you're just thinking about what diagnosis you're gonna make. Um, yeah, I think that's... Does that answer your question?

    5. AA

      Yeah, it does. Uh, so it's, it's... How, uh, okay, how, how much of the decision to leave was lifestyle versus kind of intellectual stimulation? I guess I'm asking 'cause I, I mean, I still, still know a- about half my friends are medics-

    6. TS

      Mm-hmm

    7. AA

      ... and the biggest gripe anyone ever has is the lifestyle, um, usually. [chuckles]

    8. TS

      Yeah. So that wasn't a thing for me because-

    9. AA

      Yeah

    10. TS

      ... as I mentioned, a, a lot of people go into psychiatry because of the lifestyle, so it's not, you know, the on-calls aren't as hard. And ever since I was at medical school, um, or not medical school, but in my first year when I s- before I got married, and I still had my maiden name, which was Banerjee, people used to pray for a Banerjee night on call because I literally never got woken up. And I actually worried when I got married and I changed my surname that my luck might change, [chuckles] but it didn't. And when I had my sort of six-monthly review with my consultant in psychiatry, he said, "You know, what's going well? What are you concerned about?" And I said, "I'm concerned I'm not getting enough experience on call because I, I go around the wards, I check everything's okay, I go to sleep, I wake up the next morning." [chuckles] He said, "I wouldn't complain about that." [laughs] Um, so and then in Australia, I could do a lot of phone consultations overnight, or it was a fifteen-minute drive. You know, it wasn't-- that wasn't an issue for me. The lifestyle suited me. Um, I was able to travel.

    11. AA

      Hmm.

    12. TS

      I didn't get too much sleep disruption. I'm obsessed with sleep, so that would've been a problem if I had sleep disruption. So for me, it was definitely... A- and, and in the end, when I felt like how, how would I really be able to feel good about the fact that I was leaving behind patients that I could have given so much care to, it came down to the fact that in NHS or, you know, government psychiatry, you're dealing with people in the lowest socioeconomic groups whose families have abandoned them, who don't have jobs, whose children get taken away from them. And so your impact is really high on that one person, but it doesn't go much further than that. And I felt that if I went into executive coaching and I worked with really senior people who impact Their teams and a company and have corporate social responsibility and are role models in society, that I would be able to touch more people by doing that than I would by staying as an individual doctor

    13. AA

      Just a quick note from one of our sponsors and we'll get right back to the episode, and very excitingly, this episode is brought to you by Heights. Heights is a brain care smart supplement that I've actually been taking for the last 12 months, ever since I became friends with Dan Morissetto, who was the founder of Heights, and who we had on the podcast in Season 1. And this season of the podcast, we're also featuring Dr Tara Swart, who is a neuroscientist and psychiatrist. So what is Heights? Well, it's a brain care smart supplement. Basically, it is a supplement. You take two of them every morning, like I do. It's like these two little capsules which have omega-3 oil in them, and they've got a bunch of multivitamins as well. They have all of the details on the website. It-- every single ingredient that they've got is super high quality. And the great thing is that just by taking two of these capsules every morning, like I do, you get all of the essential micronutrients that you need without having to deal with drinking sludge or anything fancy like that. So the great thing about Heights is that even if you don't have one of these absolutely perfect diets, at least you know you have your bases covered in terms of the micronutrients that you need. It's very easy to sign up. You just go to yourheights.com, and then you sign up to the thing, and it's a mail order. They get to you every month or in three-month packets. And if you use the coupon code ALI15, that's A-L-I-1-5, at checkout, then you'll get fifteen percent off your first three months of subscription. I've been subscribed to this for the last twelve months. I also happen to be an investor in the company because I believe in the product, and I love how they're fully evidence-based in absolutely everything they do. And if you're interested in the evidence base behind all, like, twenty different ingredients that they've got here, you can check them out on the website, and that'll be linked in the video description and in the show notes. So thank you so much to Heights for sponsoring this episode. How did you land on executive

  4. 14:00 – 19:24

    How did you land on executive coaching?

    1. AA

      coaching? Like, as-- I-- it's only recently I even knew the, the term existed.

    2. TS

      Hmm.

    3. AA

      Like, how d- how did you discover that that was a thing and that-

    4. TS

      Yeah

    5. AA

      ... that's the career you wanted to go down?

    6. TS

      So one of my best friends at school who studied, you know, psychol- psychology and philosophy at university and then also did a PhD in the neuroscience area, she went on to work for McKinsey, and I went on to work for the NHS. And that's where our lives, [laughs] having been at school together, diverged quite significantly. And she encouraged me to look into the idea of coaching and sent me lots of articles to read about it. And during that two years that I was thinking about whether I would do something different, we spent a lot of time sitting in Green Park talking about business psychology. And so I really owe it to her to have introduced me to even the idea of that. And I was originally going to go and work as a coach for her. She was going to set up a business. But then that fell through, and I literally heard these words come out of my mouth before I decided really, and I was like, "Well, I'm gonna do it anyway." That... I think that's when I, when I... I looked for the next opening for the coaching course, and I think I'd-- it was either, like, quit now, and we give you a three months' notice, and you could do it soon, or you'd have to wait another six months, and I just, I just quit. And I think it's actually really related to what I understand about neuroplasticity now, because there's a period of time where you make new connections in your brain, and you build up this new pathway, and it's almost like there's a tipping point where that pathway becomes the way that you think now, and your old ways of thinking get overwritten. So I feel like that two years of really thinking about, "Should I leave? What could I do instead? How can I justify this to myself and feel good about it?" Um, when something came along that was the right thing, I was just able to say, "Okay, I'm quitting my job. I'm moving countries. Um, I'm starting this course on a thing that I've, I've only read a few papers about, but I don't really know what it is."

    7. AA

      Yeah.

    8. TS

      Um, and yeah, I just did it.

    9. AA

      Yeah, it's interesting. So, like, just, like, this, this time last week, I, I happened to be at, at St Pancras Station, and, um, someone came up to me who recognized me from the videos, and she had been a-- she'd been in medicine for fourteen years and was leaving to become a coach and was in the middle of doing-

    10. TS

      Oh, good

    11. AA

      ... a coaching qualification.

    12. TS

      Oh, wow.

    13. AA

      And so it's like-- And, and, and just earlier today, I was interviewing, um, another friend, Simon, who's, who's also a coach, and it's just like we, we've lots of interactions with pe- with people who have found coaching as, like, a career. Um, and even though I, I feel like I was quite clued into the alternative career thingy-

    14. TS

      Hmm

    15. AA

      ... just, like, being a coach has never even, even vaguely occurred to me. But now I find that, you know, through, through YouTube and through the podcast, like, a lot of people have emailed me like, "Hey, do you do one-on-one coaching?" And I'm always like, "N- no" [laughs] with-- but it's always, like, a question mark on the end of it. Yeah. So, okay, so you left psychiatry, and, uh, did you have, like, a backup? How, how were you planning to make money while doing the coaching thing? Were you thinking, "I can do a locum every now and then"? What was the thought process?

    16. TS

      Um, so interestingly about the locum, and I'm not saying this is right for everyone at all. A lot of people have a side job or a part-time job when they're starting up a new business. I think the decision to leave medicine was so emotive for me that I had to burn my boats. I was like, "There's no way back. I will never do a locum. I have to make this work." And there were times that I couldn't pay my bills, and people said, "Tara, please just go and do one weekend. You'll earn enough money to pay your rent for six months, and you'll, you know, don't-- won't have to worry about your bills." And I, I said no. But that probably says [laughs]

    17. AA

      [laughs]

    18. TS

      ... says quite a lot about the kind of person I am.

    19. AA

      Yeah.

    20. TS

      And that's why I qualified it by saying that's not for everyone. So I was married at the time that I made the decision.

    21. AA

      Hmm.

    22. TS

      And we did have an agreement that he would, you know, support me, uh, for a period of time whilst I did the course. And I s- once I knew I was going to quit, even though there wasn't much time, I started saving, you know. Um, unfortunately, we got divorced during that time [laughs] , so that, um... But actually, he was, you know, super supp- supportive and still, um, helped me for as long as I needed and would have continued to help me for longer, but there was a- Point in time where I said, "I don't need-"

    23. AA

      Right.

    24. TS

      Yeah.

    25. AA

      And so you built up your coaching business, I guess, from the ground up since then, and that's kind of what you do now with, along with the, the Heights stuff?

    26. TS

      Um, no, it's really changed.

    27. AA

      Oh, okay.

    28. TS

      So I was doing, like, all coaching at the beginning, and then, and that was 2008, '09, '10. Around 2010, neuroscience became a buzz topic in business and leadership, and people wanted speakers, and there weren't that many. I mean, as a s- former psychiatrist, I fell very much in the gap between psychologists that become coaches and business people that become coaches, and I didn't belong anywhere. But suddenly, um, where it was like, well, who can talk about neuroscience in business? I was like, "Well, I can." Um, so I started doing a few talks thinking they would just lead to me getting coaching clients, and then I realized very quickly that that could be a revenue generator for my business. And it went like this literally. Like, all my money was coming from coaching and none was coming from speaking, and then it went like that-

    29. AA

      Oh, wow

    30. TS

      ... over time.

  5. 19:24 – 20:42

    How do neuroscience and business go together?

    1. AA

      how do neuroscience and business go to, go together?

    2. TS

      Well, basically, if you're in business, if you're a leader, if you're a senior executive, if you're a, an, you know, a, a trader, then you're being paid to use your brain. But if, if you haven't studied neuroscience, you probably don't know as much as you need to know to get the most out of that really important organ. So I can go in and do a general one-hour talk that sort of tells people about how their brain works, how to get the best out of it, um, you know, all the foundational factors that contribute to peak performance and brain optimization and good mental health and wellbeing. Um, and then in coaching, I can either take that approach, which is here's the sort of general ideas for improving your wellbeing, and therefore your, your brain performance, or I can find out what somebody's issue is. And it could be stress, it could be travel, it could be doubting themselves when they're about to make a trading decision. Um, and then I can go and look at the research and find something specific to help them overcome that particular brain issue that they might have.

    3. AA

      Hmm. Okay. So I wonder if we can start general then. So, like, let's say someone's listening to this, or even me, 'cause I actually d- d- don't

  6. 20:42 – 34:40

    What can we do to improve our brain performance?

    1. AA

      know much about this, um, what are the things that we can do to improve our brain performance?

    2. TS

      So we talk about things like s- rest, which is sleep, and also sort of downtime. Nutrition is super important. So the brain is, uh, obviously a tiny proportion of your body weight, um, and only weighs a few kilos, but it uses up, up to 30% of the breakdown products of what you eat. So when you're asleep, your brain is, is eating up 20% of what you ate that day. When you're at work, um, and focused on something, it's using up about a quarter of what you eat. And when you're stressed, it's using up, up to 30%.

    3. AA

      Oh, wow.

    4. TS

      Yeah. And so obviously people think, "What should I eat if I want to be healthy generally, or I want to lose weight, or I want to build muscle mass?" But the sorts of people that, you know, like you and the people that I work with, aren't thinking enough about what should I be eating so I can make the best decisions today?

    5. AA

      Hmm.

    6. TS

      What should I be eating so I can solve complex problems? What should, should I be eating so I c- I can understand what's going on, like, in terms of interpersonal communication in my te- with my team, for example? And then there's everything from hydration, exercise, um, breathing, mindfulness, curiosity.

    7. AA

      Yeah.

    8. TS

      Like, there's, there's so many factors that contribute to brain health, and they're probably not dissimilar to things as a doctor that you would know contribute to cardiovascular health or gastrointestinal health. But, you know, we at Heights feel that if you approach everything with a brain care first attitude-

    9. AA

      Yeah

    10. TS

      ... then you're kind of taking care of the rest of the stuff. Like, if you eat and drink in a way that's good for your brain, your skin and your hair are gonna look nicer. I mean, and I... That s- sounds like a such a girly thing to say, but people make a lot of really important choices based on what they look like. And, and, and that's fine, and that probably has, like, beneficial effects on, on our br- you know, our brains and our guts as well. But considering this organ is so energy hungry and it's so important in terms of everything else that happens in your body, I feel like we need to flip that narrative so that it's starting with, okay, what can I, what things can I do today that, that are gonna be the best for my brain?

    11. AA

      Just a quick message from one of our sponsors, and we'll get right back to the episode. And this episode is very kindly brought to you by Shortform. Shortform is the world's best service that summarizes books, but it's way more than just book summaries. They almost have a whole study guide for every book that they've got on the platform, where they've got a one-page summary, and then they also have chapter-by-chapter breakdowns. And it's not just chapter-by-chapter breakdowns. Also, in between the chapter breakdowns, they have interactive exercises where you can engage more readily with the ideas in the book. Shortform covers nonfiction books from a bunch of different genres that you might be interested in. For example, they've got a load of stuff in the business world, so if, for example, you're an entrepreneur or you want to become an entrepreneur, that'll be great for you. They've got books in motivation. They've got books in education. They've got books in lifestyle and communication. Basically, any genre of, like, nonfiction, personal development-y, self-help-y stuff that will help you level up your life, it's all there on Shortform. Shortform publishes new book guides and articles every week. And if you're a subscriber, then you get to vote on what book they cover next. And in fact, through that system, I have voted for various books that they've then turned into summaries. For example, one book I've recently reread through the Shortform book guide is No Rules Rules by Reed Hastings, who's one of the founders of Netflix. Now, I listened to the audiobook of No Rules Rules a while ago, and I was sort of applying it to my team at the time. But since then, my team has grown and the challenges have changed, and so I used Shortform's guide to revisit some of the key lessons from No Rules Rules around building the appropriate team culture. Anyway, if any of that sounds up your street and you would like to sign up to the world's best service that summarizes books, then head over to shortform.com/deepdive, and that will give you a completely free five-day trial, and you can try out the service to your heart's content. That link will also be in the video description and in the show notes. And thank you so much, Shortform, for sponsoring this episode. I wonder if we can start with the nutrition thing then. And I guess what should me and I guess listeners and viewers be thinking about when it comes to nutrition? Like, or, or is it all just the stuff that everyone kind of knows but doesn't implement, or do you feel like there's actually a knowledge gap and an understanding gap, or if it's just a actually implement, im- im- implementing the things that we all know we probably should do?

    12. TS

      I like to think there's a bit of both.

    13. AA

      Okay.

    14. TS

      So I think there's a lot of things that are in the public dome- domain that people are aware of that we all know we should be doing, but we're not necessarily always doing.

    15. AA

      Yeah.

    16. TS

      But there are definitely fun neuroscience facts that I can throw in that, that I would guess maybe even you haven't heard of.

    17. AA

      Oh.

    18. TS

      So shall we try?

    19. AA

      Yeah.

    20. TS

      Yeah.

    21. AA

      Perfect, yeah.

    22. TS

      Okay. So, um, I would say like level one is that you eat three healthy meals a day and, and maybe you snack in between if you need to. And when I say healthy, mostly plant-based, you know, maybe some fish and eggs, minimal amounts of, of other types of meat. Um, foods that contain high amounts of water and good fats, so a bit of dairy, fatty fish, nuts and seeds, berries. I mean, I'm already going above level one, I would say, with some of those, but, but, you know, three healthy meals a day-

    23. AA

      Question

    24. TS

      ... that kind of food.

    25. AA

      Question on that front.

    26. TS

      Yeah.

    27. AA

      Intermittent fasting question.

    28. TS

      Yeah, yeah.

    29. AA

      [laughs] Okay.

    30. TS

      So level two.

  7. 34:40 – 35:18

    How do you train your reaction to stress?

    1. TS

      so I would say probably we're both really good at languages. [laughs]

    2. AA

      At language things, yeah.

    3. TS

      Yeah. So I wanna be a bit careful about saying when you're at university, because by then you've already narrowed down what you're doing quite a lot.

    4. AA

      Oh, okay. So it might even be when you're at school then.

    5. TS

      Yeah. And it might even just be what you're interested in outside of academia.

    6. AA

      Yeah.

    7. TS

      Um, [lips smack] so I do believe in identifying what your passions are. Uh, usually aligns with what your strengths are. Maybe not always, but thinking about it that way is, is a really good way to think about it, and not kind of trying to be good at everything.

    8. AA

      Yeah.

    9. TS

      Play, play to your strengths. The neuroscience really supports that.

    10. AA

      Hmm, okay.

  8. 35:18 – 50:22

    Understanding Neuroplasticity

    1. AA

      And so to what extent is this relevant when you're, for, like coaching, coaching people in the sort of this executive advice space?

    2. TS

      That's such a good question because actually I often get dragged in because people say, "This person is really, really, really good at what they do-

    3. AA

      Mm-hmm

    4. TS

      ... but they've got no emotional intelligence. And unless you can help them change, we're gonna have to get rid of them." It's that bad. Like-

    5. AA

      Oh, wow

    6. TS

      ... I mean, not so much recently, but more when I was coaching, like around the time of the financial crisis and the consequences of that. There were still people that would shout, go red in the face, make people cry, like make people not, you know, want to quit their team and stuff like that.

    7. AA

      Mm-hmm.

    8. TS

      So that was almost me having to do, like, neurogenesis with them. [laughs]

    9. AA

      [laughs]

    10. TS

      But, um, I would definitely help them to see what they're really good at and, and t- play to that because that- those are quick wins. And in coaching, I would want people to get quick wins because then they'll believe that they can change things and that I can help them. And a lot of coaching is about building up that relationship of trust so that it's okay for them to try something and fail because they know that you'll just still be there encouraging and, and helping them learn from it. Um, it's really... It's a very, like, um, privileged, like, special kind of relationship. It's intense. It's one-on-one. It's... can be very emotional. But the main thing I found that helped these senior guys who are pretty much at the top of their career ladder, um, don't really have to worry about finances, why would they get- Put in that effort that it's gonna take for them to now change their behavior. And a lot of them said, "It's too hard. I don't understand what I need to do. I don't understand what people mean when they say you need to be more caring or understanding or emotionally intelligent, and I don't, I don't know if I can do it." And so I explained neuroplasticity to them, like building a brick wall or building a pathway, and so one of the analogies that I could use is if you came up to a field that was, like, knee-high in grass, then the first time you walk across that field, you're gonna be pushing that grass down with your feet, and maybe some of it would bounce back up. But if you walk that same path every day for a week, you probably would have trodden a sort of, you know, just a, a p- a pathway through the grass that you can walk through easily. If you then said, "Okay, I'm gonna lay down some wooden slabs to make it even easier to walk along there," and then you built that further and you maybe, like, cemented them in or whatever, then eventually you could make a path that's so easy to walk down that it takes no effort at all, and it's exactly the same in the brain when you learn something new. And so what I would get these guys to do is I'd say, "Go home tonight and listen to your child for five minutes without interrupting them and not having your phone on your person." And that alone was so eye-opening for people, because they were never doing it. They were always asking, "How did... How... You know, how was school today? Did you do your homework? Did you do this? Did you get 10 out of 10 on your spelling test?" And they'd probably be scrolling on their phone half the time, and the child would feel that they weren't really listening. And this happened with men, women, all different ages. And then I'd say, "Okay, now try this with a friend. Try to, like, have a, you know, conversation where y- you really listen to them and you don't interrupt them." And then they'd do that, and then the next stage would be with a colleague but somebody they've got a good relationship with. And then by the time they started feeling like, "Yeah, I can do this. I can really listen. I don't have to, like, sort of answer back all the time," we'd get them to the point where they'd have a conversation like that with somebody that they haven't been getting on with at work, and that pathway was sort of built in the brain by then, so-

    11. AA

      Oh

    12. TS

      ... yeah.

    13. AA

      What sort of time period are we talking for this to happen?

    14. TS

      It really depends how attention-intense the task is. So if it's something like, "I want to start going to the gym three times a week," or, "I want to try intermittent fasting," it takes two to three weeks to get that, you know, to not feel like it's really difficult. When we're talking about things like emotion intelligence or intuition or creativity, we're talking more like six to 12 months, but I have this new theory, which I haven't really shared before, which is that if you really focus on doing this, in a nine-month period, which is the gestation period of a baby, so from fertilization to a newborn baby being born, you can essentially create a rebirth in your brain by rewiring your neural pathways.

    15. AA

      Oh, that's good.

    16. TS

      [laughs]

    17. AA

      That's a good theory. I like it. [laughs] That's very sticky. It makes sense. It's like, oh, okay, nine months. Just a quick note from one of our sponsors and we'll get right back to the episode, and this episode is very kindly brought to you by Skillshare. If you haven't heard by now, Skillshare is one of the world's leading platforms for online classes, for online education. They've got thousands and thousands of classes on all sorts of topics, from business, entrepreneurship, lifestyle design, cooking, interior design, loads of stuff. And very excitingly, I have actually been teaching on Skillshare since 2019, and I've got 13 classes on Skillshare. Yes, 13 classes. And you can access all of them completely free of charge by going to skillshare.com/deepdive, and that link will give you a free one-month trial to Skillshare, during which you can watch any and all of my classes. One class you might be interested in is my YouTube for Beginners class. If you've ever thought about starting a YouTube channel, this is the class for you. I'll take you step by step across, like, three, four hours, something like that, through all of the steps you need to take to make your first two videos on YouTube, how to do the channel art, how to think of a name, all of that fun stuff. And loads of people have taken that class and said that that class was so good that they would have literally paid hundreds of dollars for it, but you get it completely for free on Skillshare by going to skillshare.com/deepdive. After your trial's over, you can choose to continue the subscription if you like, and you can access the thousands of classes Skillshare has from other teachers, including people that I know, people I'm friends with, like Thomas Frank and Nathaniel Drew. But yeah, the main reason to check out Skillshare, of course, is that you wanna check out my classes if you wanna learn about productivity and video editing and YouTubing and even cooking. So head over to skillshare.com/deepdive, and thank you so much, Skillshare, for sponsoring this episode. Any other tips for developing emotional intelligence? Uh, asking for a friend.

    18. TS

      [laughs]

    19. AA

      [laughs]

    20. TS

      Oh, I love that. Um, well, so emotional intelligence is two things, which is, one, that you actually understand and are able to regulate your own emotions, and then the second part is that you understand what's going on emotionally for somebody else, and you can respond to that in an appropriate manner, compassionate but not getting sucked in. So in terms of the yourself part, just, like, naming how you're feeling, so finding a word for how you're feeling and, you know... And I say this with- from a, a p- position of really caring, but it's, it's harder for men to do that than women because the, the way that we're still brought up in society, which is, "Big boys don't cry," and, um, you know, "Don't, don't be sad," or sort of... So having a wider vocabulary for your emotions. And you can start off by either just, you can check in with yourself every hour and say, "How am I feeling emotionally?" You can do it one to four times a day. You could journal. Um, and then in terms of other people, just spend listening. That's why that listening exercise is so important bec- and listening without interrupting, and looking at people's, um, facial expression and stuff like that. And so I would say to you, and this isn't, obviously isn't gonna apply to everybody else, but just in the exact same way that you learnt to do a physical examination on a patient You kind of go through that checklist of like-

    21. AA

      Mm-hmm

    22. TS

      ... okay, these are the things, like what am I seeing here? Is this person smiling at me? D- are their eyes welling up with tears? [laughs] Are, are they starting to raise their voice? Is their voice quivering? Just really-

    23. AA

      Mm

    24. TS

      ... paying attention to those things.

    25. AA

      Okay. So these high-flying executives are coming to you for help with a thing. It sounds like emotional intelligence was like a big part.

    26. TS

      It was a big one. Stress and emo- so resilience to stress and-

    27. AA

      Yeah

    28. TS

      ... emotional intelligence, as a former psychiatrist, those were my bread and butter-

    29. AA

      Okay

    30. TS

      ... after the financial crisis.

  9. 50:22 – 1:00:20

    The importance of breath work and being in nature

    1. AA

      are the, what... Beyond sleep, hydration, exercise, rest, the, the basic stuff that we've, we've kind of talked about-

    2. TS

      Mm-hmm

    3. AA

      ... and would be good to explore those more, in more detail, what are some easy, I guess, easy actionable things that people can do to reduce stress levels?

    4. TS

      Mm-hmm. Before I answer that, I do-- I can't go on without repeating the importance of str- of sleep because there are still a lot of people that say, "Well, I can get by on four or five hours sleep," or, "I don't need to sleep that much," or, "I'll sleep when I die." I mean, these phrases are still around, right? But actually getting enough sleep is probably the single most important foundation to being able to recoup your resilience during the day. The second one I would say, uh, we've talked a lot about nutrition, so I'll go on to, um, oxygenation of the brain, and that is either through formal exercise. But what I find with stress is that people start to breathe in a shallow manner or they hold their breath. So a lot of people when they're scrolling on social media are actually holding their breath, and they don't really realize that. And now that I've said this to you, probably when people hear it, they will start realizing that they might be doing that. And you're already smiling, so I'm wondering if you're-

    5. AA

      Yeah

    6. TS

      ... thinking that you do it. So just remembering to, to breathe deeply is... If you, if you are at a, at a desk or at, um, you know, on the laptop a lot of the time, then each hour when you check in on, "Okay, how am I feeling emotionally?" Also just check in on, like, how deeply you're breathing, and maybe just do 10 deep breaths for the sake of it anyway.

    7. AA

      Why, why does deep breathing help? 'Cause it really does. Like, I've, I... Like, anytime I have... Like, even, even earlier when I was having the conversation with Simon, who's also a coach, and this morning interviewing Jim, who... We, we were talking about compassion-

    8. TS

      Mm-hmm

    9. AA

      ... and stuff. Breathing came into it somehow.

    10. TS

      Yeah.

    11. AA

      And I found myself being like and realizing, "Oh, I actually have some-- I actually don't breathe deeply very much."

    12. TS

      I know.

    13. AA

      Um, and I tend to take very shallow breaths, and my singing teacher even pointed, pointed this out. He was like, "The massive problem with your singing, you don't breathe anywhere near deep enough. So when you're in the shower in the morning, you need to take 10 deep breaths."

    14. TS

      Mm.

    15. AA

      And it's just something that I just don't do.

    16. TS

      Mm. Mm.

    17. AA

      And there's something about it that feels really good. So what's, what's, what's going on there? [laughs]

    18. TS

      Well, it's good that you're doing singing 'cause at least you're paying attention to breathing, which a lot of people wouldn't. So it's one of these things we're not very conscious of all day 'cause obviously it's happening 17, 18 times a minute, and we can't be paying attention to that all the time. Um, stress is definitely the biggest contributor to shallow breathing and breath holding. Um, so if we weren't stressed, we probably would... We- well, not probably, we would naturally be breathing more deeply.

    19. AA

      Hmm.

    20. TS

      And even if we're breathing normally, it's still good to take 10 deep breaths 'cause it does give that boost of oxygen to the brain. That's why it feels so good.

    21. AA

      Yeah.

    22. TS

      Because the brain's resources are glucose and oxygen, right? I mean, you know that from basic physiology. So as long as you've eaten enough and supplied the, the glucose that the brain can take up, yeah, within two or three hours of eating, then the second thing that you can supply your brain with is oxygen. If you're tired but you don't have time for a nap, do you have time to go for a walk? If you don't have time to go for a walk, 10, take 10 deep breaths at your desk. It, it makes a difference.

    23. AA

      You mentioned nature and looking at the stars and stuff. What's inherently good about nature?

    24. TS

      Yeah. So this, this has really come up as a big one in the last few years, and I don't... I'm not sure if it's coincidental with the pandemic and having been locked up or, or l- locked up, but also had more opportunity to maybe commune with nature than you- we did in our hectic lifestyles before. But the brain benefits of time spent in nature are massive, and I, uh, whenever I'm asked a question that, that I don't necessarily factually know the answer to straight away, I always take it back to evolution. There's a reason that our brains were wired in a certain way, and, and when we first became, you know, homo sapiens, we walked on the savanna. We, we walked in the land. We, we ate what we could hunt, fish, or har- or harvest. And so our relationship with nature was, was, you know, we were dependent on it, but it was also a huge threat to us. Floods-

    25. AA

      Yeah

    26. TS

      ... storms, you know, fires. Um, it's the symbiotic relationship, and what we've done through agriculture and construction is just move ourselves further and further away from that. And even if you just think of one, like, super scientific example of that is that the quality and diversity of our gut flora has diminished so much since we lived in the cave.

    27. AA

      Hmm.

    28. TS

      It's, it's, like, reduced by... I don't wanna get the number wrong, but it's a shocking factor, like hundreds. Um- And agriculture's contributed to that, antibiotics have contributed to that, to that. Like, obviously antibiotics save lives and, you know, it's been an amazing advance for us as humans. But, um, the fact that we eat food that's not as diverse as it used to be, that we don't necessarily eat those natural things, the prebiotic and probiotic foods and supplements that allow our gut bacteria to flourish, and we eat so much processed food, um, and that stress, alcohol, and antibiotics will damage our gut microbiome. That's one of the huge consequences of, of, um, having moved away from nature. And people ask all sorts of questions that we don't know all the answers to yet about why do we have more diseases like ME, like MS, like autism, like ADD, and some of the answers lie in that disconnection from nature and what that's done to our-- how that's shaped our bodies and our brains-

    29. AA

      Right

    30. TS

      ... um, and how we live as a result of that.

  10. 1:00:20 – 1:03:55

    Long term ways to build resilience and journaling

    1. AA

      term ways to build resilience?

    2. TS

      So here we're talking more like the things I said would take like nine months or more to build up.

    3. AA

      Mm.

    4. TS

      So that's having a really long-term journaling practice-

    5. AA

      Mm

    6. TS

      ... a long-term gratitude practice, practicing meditation, yoga, regularly spending time in nature-

    7. AA

      Yeah

    8. TS

      ... um, curating the sort of news and social media information that you allow into your brain, being very careful about the kind of people that you hang around with.

    9. AA

      I, I made a video recently, uh, where I sort of, uh, uh, experimented with journaling for 90 days, and it was great. Like, it was so great, and I, and now I, I've continued journaling, started bullet journaling as well, and I have this little smart typewriter thing on my desk at home, which is just like, it's literally a keyboard, and all it has is one of those E Ink Kindle-like screens, and all it does is let you write on it, and it just connects to Wi-Fi and syncs it up with whatever.

    10. TS

      Cool.

    11. AA

      So you can't, physically can't get distracted doing anything other than just the writing. And so I've been using that to journal each night along with the bullet journal. And there's, there's something so nice about journaling. Um, what does the neuroscience or evidence say around why journaling is legit?

    12. TS

      Yeah. So, um, at the very minimum, it's like a download of your emotions.

    13. AA

      Mm.

    14. TS

      And so with your, you know, any emotions, uh, negative thoughts, unfinished tasks, if you keep them in your brain body system by just thinking about them in your mind, then you actually increase your cortisol levels, and cortisol correlates with stress.

    15. AA

      Mm.

    16. TS

      So it's like, it's like a pressure cooker building up.

    17. AA

      Yeah.

    18. TS

      If you speak it out loud, write it out into a journal or do physical exercise and literally sweat out some of that cortisol, then you're releasing those negative emotions, negative thought patterns, anxieties, you know, worries-

    19. AA

      Yeah

    20. TS

      ... about the future from your brain body system. But I have... And I'd love to know if you've done this or not. I have, I had an insight, which I just stumbled across by myself, but it really makes sense, obviously, from the neuroplasticity point of view, is that if you go back and read over your journal, you see your thought process laid out in front of you. You see your patterns of behavior. You see, like, your decision-making tools, whether it's more logical or more intuitive. You see what you've written about your relationships with people. And seeing that in your own handwriting or, you know, even if it's been synced up and, and typed out for you, just, just seeing, knowing that it's your words and what you've thought and what you've said, you can't run away from that. So it can be, like, so insightful and enlightening. And I, and I've had that definitely with all of that stuff like emotions and thought patterns and intuition. But I also had it when I was-- I used to go to Boston twice a year to teach at MIT, and I remember with the travel and the jet lag just feeling that I was having these small muscular twitches, and it was noticeable in bed at night. And I decided to read back o- not for that reason, but just anyway, I decided to read back over my journal from six months earlier when I was last in Boston. And I'd written in my journal, "I'm getting these little muscular twitches." And so I worked out that I'd become magnesium deficient by flying, and so I basically, hence why I was carrying so many bottles of things with me when I was traveling, really upped my dose of magnesium, um, for the trips, and it never happened again.

    21. AA

      Oh, wow.

    22. TS

      And if I hadn't read back-

    23. AA

      Yeah

    24. TS

      ... I would never have put two and two together. I would have thought it, it was just happening now and it hadn't happened before.

    25. AA

      What is the deal with

  11. 1:03:55 – 1:07:44

    The power of magnesium

    1. AA

      magnesium? [laughs]

    2. TS

      So, I mean, there are a lot of essential micronutrients-

    3. AA

      Yeah

    4. TS

      ... but magnesium is one that underlies lots of different physiological mechanisms-

    5. AA

      Mm

    6. TS

      ... in the body. So everything from sleep to mood to, um, neuromuscular junctions, um, to our joints, our skin.

    7. AA

      Mm.

    8. TS

      And so-- and, and it's very, very easily depleted by stress. That's the thing. So it's an important mineral, but there are quite... You know, there's also zinc and calcium and other important minerals, potassium. But it's one that's very easily depleted by stress, and that is a big, you know, impactor on, on our brains in modern-

    9. AA

      Mm

    10. TS

      ... and Western society, um, or really just in the modern world. So when we're stressed, and, and the stats show that seventy percent of us are sufficiently stressed to be magnesium deficient, you cannot eat enough leafy greens and nuts and seeds to replenish that. You have to supplement.

    11. AA

      Mm.

    12. TS

      And supplementation by powder or capsule or tablet is fine, but it's best taken transdermally. It's, it's-- studies show that taking magnesium transdermally-

    13. AA

      Oh, like through the skin?

    14. TS

      Yeah.

    15. AA

      Like magnesium, magnesium patches.

    16. TS

      Um, not so much patches, but gels, lotions.

    17. AA

      Really?

    18. TS

      I bathe in, I bathe in magnesium flakes every day.

    19. AA

      No way.

    20. TS

      Yeah.

    21. AA

      Wow. Okay.

    22. TS

      Um-

    23. AA

      So sorry, I interrupt you. So st- studies have shown that.

    24. TS

      There was a study that showed that it was equivalent to taking it IV.

    25. AA

      No way.

    26. TS

      Yeah.

    27. AA

      Bloody hell. That's cool. [laughs]

    28. TS

      Yeah.

    29. AA

      How, how, how much ROI is there on this? Like, should I start bathing in magnesium flakes for the minor benefit?

    30. TS

      Well, I-- it's not a mi-

  12. 1:07:44 – 1:14:28

    Scepticism about supplements

    1. AA

      I feel like there's a lot of skepticism around the idea of supplements, the idea that, "Oh, oh, I'm fine. Oh, like, diet supplement companies equal scam," all of this kind of stuff. And a lot of medics I know are also very skeptical about supplements, 'cause, like, well, you know, you know, there's a normal range. Most people are in the normal range, et cetera, et cetera. But just, like, intuitively, if someone's electrolytes are a little bit off, it can make a massive difference to them, and you-

    2. TS

      Yeah

    3. AA

      ... obviously, you know, whack in the electrolytes. If someone's fluid deplete, then it makes a huge difference to how unwell they look and how unwell they feel, and you give them some saline, it's all, and it's all good. And yet, especially medics, even medics, like, treat, like, drinking water, like, you know, most people I knew, including myself, uh, were more dehydrated than our patients were when we were working-

    4. TS

      [laughs] Oh, God

    5. AA

      ... 'cause it's just like you wouldn't take the time to, to have some water, and you'd, you know, have a wee once a day, and it would be super concentrated, and you'd be like, "Oh, it's fine." But you'd measure someone else's, uh, urine output, and you'd be like, "Oh, hello. That doesn't look very good."

    6. TS

      Yeah.

    7. AA

      "Let's whack in two liters of saline in you." [laughs]

    8. TS

      And apparently nurses get more kidney stones than, like, most other professions because they have the same thing. They don't have time-

    9. AA

      Yeah

    10. TS

      ... to go to the loo or drink water. Um, yeah, that's a really nice way of putting, and I would also say that for a start, most people are not in the normal range for vitamin D, for example, especially us with, like, darker skin. But pretty much, you know, in our, in our English weather, a lot of people, regardless of skin color, are vitamin D deficient, and that has a really, um, important correlation with future cancer risk as well. So, you know, it's an important one to, to supplement if you are deficient. And I would go back and say that I agree. Ideally, we would all get all of our nutrition from our really nutrition-dense, high-quality, organic, you know, biodynamic food.

    11. AA

      Yeah.

    12. TS

      But the reality is that most people are not eating in that way, and I do try to eat in that way as much as possible and, uh, but naturally I'm vitamin D deficient. I can't eat enough food to correct that. I have to supplement in the winter months. Um, so... And, and magnesium, I, I know that I have to, and a probiotic I know makes a massive difference to, like, my, my, my gut health, my b- gut-brain connection, my immunity. Um, so I do think it's really important to know yourself really well, but not everybody's a medic and, and, and medics, like you said, are often the worst at neglecting themselves. I feel like since I've left medicine, I've had more personal benefit from the knowledge that I have as a doctor that, 'cause I'm now in health and wellbeing. Um, you know, I'm one of those people that can tell, like, two days before I'm coming down with a cold or a flu, and I can sometimes even, like, well, I, I haven't had a cold or flu for years. As for long as I can remember. Um, and then at the other end of the spectrum, there are people who, like, the day that they go on holiday, they get sick 'cause they've kind of been saving up all that stress-

    13. AA

      [laughs]

    14. TS

      ... and, like, just trying to get through the deadline kind of thing. So I think knowing yourself and then understanding strategically which areas you may need to supplement, and that can be from a blood test or it can be from just understanding that if you're really busy and stressed and you're feeling fatigued, that probably a vitamin B complex could make a, a difference to that.

    15. AA

      Mm-hmm.

    16. TS

      Try it. If it doesn't make a difference, you don't have to take it again. If it does, then keep taking it.

    17. AA

      What sort of time period would you expect a noticeable change?

    18. TS

      I would say one to three months, depending on the level of depletion.

    19. AA

      Okay. And is this the sort of thing that you have to actively monitor your own response to it, like, in terms of how am I feeling today and sample that, or is it like, oh, damn, I feel so much better than I did three months ago? Like, what, what, what sort of response do people have?

    20. TS

      Um, I would say the sec- the latter is more realistic.

    21. AA

      Really?

    22. TS

      So-

    23. AA

      Or just like a-

    24. TS

      Well-

    25. AA

      "Oh, wow, I've, I've, I've noticed myself."

    26. TS

      I mean, okay, if, if... Let's say you're gonna invest in taking something like Heights-

    27. AA

      Yeah

    28. TS

      ... which isn't cheap because it's, doesn't have any fillers in it-

    29. AA

      Yeah

    30. TS

      ... or caking agents, and it's got all high-quality ingredients and everything, then even then, I mean, let's be realistic. You tell me. Would you write down how fatigued you're feeling-

  13. 1:14:28 – 1:24:56

    The gut-brain access and probiotics

    1. AA

      gut health and probiotics. Now, I ... And the gut-brain axis.

    2. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    3. AA

      What, what is going on there? Like, I feel like this is such a, a s- a thing that some people talk about. Six years of med school, not once did anyone mention the phrase gut-brain axis, except maybe in a postscript in a physiology lecture in first year.

    4. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    5. AA

      And we had maybe two lectures on nutrition, which were awful, in first year, and beyond that no one cared anymore. Like-

    6. TS

      Yeah

    7. AA

      ... what is going on with gut-brain axis, gut health? Like, what is gut health? How, how does it affect our lives?

    8. TS

      So I don't know when you were at medical school, but a lot of research has been done quite recently on the gut-brain axis. So we've, we've always known it existed. Like you said, it, I think it was mentioned once in pre-clinical. But now, w- and this is a really exci- I'm really excited about this area of research. So the gut-brain connection is now agreed to be bidirectional. So we used to think that the quality of the gut microbiome had an impact on your mental state and, and your brain power, but now we know that it's both, it's, it goes both ways, and that it is through, um, certain nerves, but actually it's through a much wider network of nerves than we ever knew before. It's through, um, cytokine messaging, which is chemical messages that get sent in the blood, and again, are bidi- bidirectional. It's also through hormones. Um, so basically it's a complex dynamic bidirectional system. [laughs] That sounds like I'm saying, like, uh, everything and nothing in, in one phrase. So a- and interestingly, all the factors that contribute to gut, the health of your gut microbiome, so the bac- the good bacteria that live in your gut, are the same things that we've talked about already. Sleep, 'cause when you, um, are jet lagged, your gut bacteria get jet lagged too. That's why you go to the loo at the wrong time of the day and you're hungry at the wrong time of the day.

    9. AA

      Hmm, okay.

    10. TS

      And, um, obviously nutrition and hydration would affect your gut. And we don't really understand why, but doing exercise improves the quality of your, and diversity of your gut bacteria as well. And then the psychological aspect. So s- some psychological therapies like CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, and mindfulness practices, um, we know more about the effects that they have on certain receptors in the brain, but they also have direct effects on the gut bacteria.

    11. AA

      Do we know how, or is that a active area of research?

    12. TS

      I mean, I think we know that when we're stressed, the gut can become leaky and it can leak, um, hormones into the bloodstream that then has an effect on, you know, an inflammatory effect on the rest of the body. So I think a- at the minimum we know that it's reducing-

    13. AA

      Yeah

    14. TS

      ... the pro-inflammatory effect.

    15. AA

      Okay. How do I know if my gut health is good or not good? Is it the quality of my poo? [laughs]

    16. TS

      It is.

    17. AA

      Okay.

    18. TS

      So, and, and actually you can have your stool sample sent off to a lab-

    19. AA

      Oh

    20. TS

      ... and they can actually give you the breakdown of-

    21. AA

      I, I am gonna do this with Sophie from Heights.

    22. TS

      Yeah.

    23. AA

      Like, in the next couple of weeks.

    24. TS

      Yeah. Um-

    25. AA

      Poor Sophie. [laughs]

    26. TS

      Yeah, yeah, I think she loves poo apparently.

    27. AA

      Yeah. Nice. [laughs]

    28. TS

      Um, so as a doctor, again, of course you, you know, you could examine it, but most people aren't gonna do that, and they wouldn't know really necessarily what, what it meant by the, the color or the consistency and the frequency-

    29. AA

      What-

    30. TS

      ... and that kind of-

  14. 1:24:56 – 2:01:10

    The neuroscience behind mindfulness and the law of attraction

    1. AA

      Having read your book, it strikes me that you are somewhat into Eastern spirituality practices like yoga, meditation, manifestation, affirmation-y type stuff. And I first read The Secret a couple years ago, and I was just like, "There's, there's no way anyone can take this seriously." And then I saw how successful it was, and I was like, "Oh, wow, people are taking this seriously." And then I read your book recently, I think it was like last month or the, what, or, or two months ago.

    2. TS

      Oh, really recently. Okay.

    3. AA

      Yeah, yeah, very recently. Um, and I was like, "Oh, you know, maybe there is something to this manifestation-y type stuff." But then around, around the same time, I've started to dabble with books around spirituality, and basically 100% of them talk about meditation, and like 90% of them talk about yoga. And so clearly there's something going on here which benefits us and which science seems to have sort of scratched the surface of, but not really. What is your take on all this stuff? How should a nor- normal rational thinking person approach the realm of spirituality broadly? [chuckles]

    4. TS

      Um, well, I've probably been on a similar journey to you in that it was very difficult for me to accept something that wasn't evidence-based, and I partly started the research for my book to, to convince myself that there was an evidence base for the laws of attraction. That's where it started. I spent one summer holiday researching what the laws of attraction were, finding out that there wasn't even necessarily agreement about exactly what they were. But kind of, you know, whittling it down to the most commonly agreed 10 or 12, and then just trying to apply the cognitive science to it. 'Cause I'd heard about all the, the quantum science and the vibrations and things, but I felt like, well, if it's to do with the power of your thinking, surely it should be explained by cognitive science, so let me see if I can do that. And it was surprisingly easy to explain most of the laws of attraction through cognitive science, and the one or two that maybe I couldn't find evidence for, I sort of came to that point of where, what I said to you earlier, which was, "I don't think it's going to harm you. So if you're happy to do it without the evidence, do it, and if you don't want to do it without the evidence, then don't." Um, and then through that I became much more interested in visualization, but I had personally been doing vision boards really successfully for over a decade by the time I wrote my book. Um, and so understanding more about the neuroscience of the selective filtering that your brain does and the selective attention that you can p- choose to pay to certain things, and the way that your brain tags what's important in value to it in your brain, you know, that was all like, "Okay. Wow." And, and what was really gratifying is that people who weren't scientists at all said that understanding that the science, that there was science and what it was, made them actually do something like a vision board or visualization, where they'd heard of it before but never actually bothered to do it. And then being a, you know, senior lecturer at MIT and my previous book being Neuroscience for Leadership and working with the kind of people that I do in financial services, I suppose it was a bit of a risk to go out there with a book that's about science and spirituality, and suddenly start being more open about the fact that I do yoga and, you know, I grew up with meditation and... Um, but the response to my book, that actually had a huge impact on me. So by doing the research I was, I was like, "Yeah, this is legit." Um, and now I understand even m- better, like how it works, and that contributes to me being able to do visualization and manifestation better. But just seeing, like the amazing impact it had on people, seeing, just seeing the numbers go up of the international translations. I mean, on the day that my book came out in the UK, I'd already signed 24 international translation contracts, and now I think we're up to 38. And that means it's having global appeal, that people of all different races and cultures and religions and belief systems, it's, it's got that appeal. A- and, and, you know, I absolutely love neuroscience and psychology and neuroplasticity. And so that tells me that personally, that journey for me was that it's okay to go out there and talk about stuff that you believe in in private and not keep it completely separate to your professional life.

    5. AA

      Yeah.

    6. TS

      And so yeah. You know, I grew up with yoga and meditation in the household, but I just wanted to fit in and be like my friends in London who didn't grow up with those things, and those things circled back to me later in life. And now it's cool to be into those things anyway, so. [chuckles]

    7. AA

      Yeah. [chuckles]

    8. TS

      Um, but they're bit... You know, both yoga and meditation are forms of mindfulness, so I use that as an umbrella term like sport, and then under sport there's all sorts of different sports, and under mindfulness there's meditation, there's yoga, there's spending time in nature, there's barefoot walking, there's eating mindfully, there's paying attention.

    9. AA

      Why is mindfulness good for you?

    10. TS

      [chuckles] I, I'd love to put that back onto you and say, how could it be good to be mindless? You know, thoughtless, not paying attention. Like-

    11. AA

      Okay, so the s- the specific sit- scenario I have in mind is, um, so I walk, I walk here every morning. I have a n- a nice half an hour walk by the canal. It's all very nice. Um, this morning, like most mornings, I have an audiobook on at like 3.5 times speed, and I was listening to The Bomb by some author, which is about the history of the nuclear arsenal and how that evolved from the 1960s up to, up till the present day. 'Cause I was just like, "I wanna learn more about the topic. It's kinda cool." And so I've got this like... For, if, if someone were to see that, they would be like, "This is the archetypal example of toxic productivity. This guy is a psychopath-

    12. TS

      [laughs]

    13. AA

      ... and a sociopath. He's off his rocker." [chuckles] Like, "What, why the fuck is he s- listening to a book at 3.5 times speed, can't even understand what's going on about writing like n- n- nuclear arms proliferation?" And I quite liked it. I was like, you know, I was walking by the canal, listening to this book. I've got like, you know, three podcast interviews today where I can have cool conversations with people, like life is good. But part of me is like, "Yeah, but what if I d- what if I took the AirPods out? What if I just kind of enjoyed the walk and walked mindfully and, and stuff?" And I've tried that a few times and I haven't noticed a... I d- I don't feel as if like I'm suddenly way more stressed if I'm listening to an audiobook at three times speed [chuckles] compared to if I'm not.

    14. TS

      Mm.

    15. AA

      And so... But I wonder if I'm missing something. That's, that's kind of why I ask, uh-

    16. TS

      Okay.

    17. AA

      Yeah.

    18. TS

      So am I your third person of today?

    19. AA

      You are, yeah.

    20. TS

      Okay. So, and I'm using that to assess you because I know that three in a day-

    21. AA

      Yeah

    22. TS

      ... is like the maximum that I can do, and with that third one I start Feeling a bit like, did I ask that question to Tara or did I ask that person, you know, that question to the person that I was with earlier? 'Cause it all starts to like merge into one a little bit. So you f- uh, you feel so alert and engaged. I think you're, like, definitely in your happy place and good at this and, like, nothing's detracted from your mental performance. And, you know, you're also at that stage in your life, like your age and h- and where you are with your business, that you want to be absorbing all this information and, and doing like as much as, as you can. But maybe it's about just understanding that there's some-- there is defin- there is something good in terms of cortisol levels and, um, about spending some time where you're not always doing.

    23. AA

      Okay. Yeah.

    24. TS

      And I'm guessing, and we'd have to keep in touch to prove that this is true, that as you get older that that might change.

    25. AA

      Mm-hmm.

    26. TS

      So I think... I don't know how old you are, but I, I'm pretty sure-

    27. AA

      I'm 28.

    28. TS

      Okay. So-

    29. AA

      Yeah

    30. TS

      ... I'm a lot older than you [laughs] wow, okay.

Episode duration: 2:01:10

In the uListen app, the transcript lights up word by word as you listen. Get uListen

Transcript of episode njhNz6irWws

Get more out of YouTube videos.

Read along on your phone, search it beside the video, or ask your favorite AI app what was said.

iOSAndroidClaudeChatGPTChrome