Neuroscientist: How To Reinvent Yourself Today - Live Longer, Healthier & Happier | Tara Swart

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:00 What is a vision board, and why is it so powerful?

Dr. Tara Swart 0:03 Okay, so I'm going to start off by saying that this year mine is actually on my phone on Pinterest, which is not, [clears throat] it's not the ideal that I recommend. Um, but I, I just couldn't find the images that I wanted in magazines. But your ideal vision board is a collage that you make by hand, so it's visual. It's, you've been tactile with it whilst you've created it, so you've already created sort of, you know, um, a bond with it in a way. And I just would get a variety of magazines, so, you know, maybe travel, lifestyle, food, um, and look for images that represent things that I want in my life that year. Sometimes you see an image, and it's not something you th- thought about that you wanted, but you just really love that image. You can pick images like that. I try not to use words or numbers, but if you specifically want, had a goal of earning a certain amount of money this year, let's say if you run your own business, you could put that number on there. Um, and it's really important to think about things like if you don't want your life to be too crammed full, that you actually have a board with some space on it, that you don't fill it up. So the whole look and feel of it should represent how you want your life to be. And then, um, it's the visual images, they sort of, they track to parts of your brain that resonate deeper down. So if you write out a list of what you want in your life, that won't have the same impact, but if you repeatedly see these images of what you want, then when you're going around your daily life, you're more likely to notice opportunities to do or get things that you want in your life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39 I mean, th- this is the nub of, of, of your approach, really, isn't it? This whole idea of, um, you know, people are familiar with the law of attraction. Um, but you've really got a lot of science to back that up. So what is it? Is it that by making our brain aware of what we want, like actually having some sort of, you know, acts full of intention where we're actually stating, uh, whether it's in journaling, whether it's in affirmations, whether it's on the vision board, we're actually visualizing what we want out of life. Does, is it, is it that the brain is, what, more, more aware to seeing those opportunities? I mean, what happens?

Dr. Tara Swart 2:16 Yeah, so journaling and affirmations are still words, right? So this is adding in another level, which is the visual one, and the way it works is through two main mechanisms in the brain called selective attention or selective filtering and value tagging. So because we're bombarded with so much information all the time, everything, you know, everything that we see, everything that we hear, everything that we feel, um, our brain naturally has to filter l- most of that out. And so there's a natural mechanism for understanding what's important to our survival, you know, to us doing well in life, and anything that's not totally relevant to that will get filtered out. By creating a vision board, you're priming your brain, telling it what's important to you, so it's more likely to notice those things. So, you know, if I said to you today, "Notice everything that's red," you will notice more London buses and post boxes and, you know, telephone boxes than you do normally, and this is a m- a more sophisticated version of doing that. Um, also, the value tagging is that what the brain does decide to keep as important in front of mind, it then tags in order of importance, so importance in terms of things like our personal identity, our work identity, our feeling of belonging in society, and then things that I need to be successful. So again, if you repeatedly look at these images, they're much more front of mind. They're higher up in your value tagging system. And do you remember, did you play Tetris?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:44 I did play Tetris, yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 3:45 So do you remember if you played it till last thing at night when you fell as- when you were falling asleep, and you shut your eyes, you could see the little blocks falling-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:51 Yeah

Dr. Tara Swart 3:51 ... in front of your eyes? So that's a phenomenon that's now become called, it's called the Tetris effect. So if you keep your vision board by your bed, then in those states of waking and falling asleep, the hypnagogic and hypnopompic states, your brain is more impressionable. So if you see that image last thing at night, you close your eyes, you go to sleep, it is going to make a stronger impression on your subconscious. And then the next day, you know, like you said this morning, you read the book, and you decided to go to the gym. This weekend, you're thinking of doing the vision board. You're much more likely to actually act on that if there's a trigger that reminds you to do it at the time.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 4:28 Yeah. And for people who haven't heard that, um, um, there's a couple things I wanna touch on. Um, Tara mentioned that I went to the gym this morning, and just before we started recording, I was telling Tara this, w- literally what happened this morning. So I've, I was at an event in London yesterday. I stayed in a hotel last night here, and I, I was, I do tend to get up at 5:00 anyway, so I was up at 5:00, but I was feeling quite tired, you know, out of my home, out of my usual routine, um, you know, where I normally meditate, and I, you know, I, I did what I know I arguably shouldn't do. I went onto my computer 'cause I thought, "Oh, I'm interviewing Tara in a couple of hours. I need to, um, I need to make sure, you know, have a flick through the book again, get some ideas for the b- for the conversation." And as I was looking you up online, there's quite a few, uh, videos you've made, um, which are really good, actually. I'm gonna link to all of those, uh, online resources in the show notes page, which is gonna be drchatterjee.com/thesource, so you can see all those videos I'm talking about. But one of them, uh, was I think three tips on how to make your brain function better. I, I, think it was something like that. It was about drinking water. It was about how, you gave a stat about if you do how much aerobic exercise in the morning? I don't know if you remember. You, some sort of aerobic exercise in the morning, how it improves your brain function a certain percent.

Dr. Tara Swart 5:37 Yeah, it's 30 minutes improves your productivity for the rest of that day by 15%.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:41 Yeah. Now, look, I'm all about health and wellbeing. I've written two books on health and wellbeing, and I thought, "You know what? I'm not gonna do that now." So I actually shut the computer, put my gym stuff on. I went downstairs to the hotel gym for half an hour, and that was down to watching that video from you because even though I know it, I needed that reminder. So I think that is quite powerful, um, that we all might know what we need to do, 'cause clearly a lot of society knows what we should be doing, but we don't do it, so we do need these triggers. The other thing that, that really fascinates me, um, and I read about the, the Tetris effects in your book, and you've, you've, you've talked about all the science, uh, which is really, really fascinating. It's that period just before we go to bed. Yes, you can do it with the vision boards, but if we, if we look at what a lot of people in society are doing, you know, they're on their phones in the evening, they're scrolling through the news, let's say. You know, at the moment we've got all this, you know, I don't know when the podcast is gonna come out, but, you know, there's lots going on about Brexit and all kinds of stuff, you know, quite toxic, um, emotive viewpoints online. If we're looking at that just before we go to bed, as opposed to these beautiful images of how we want our life to be, that's gonna have quite a different impact on our subconscious, isn't it?

Dr. Tara Swart 6:54 Absolutely, and that's, you know, one of the things about being conscious and not being on autopilot is, is basically controlling what you expose your brain to, 'cause the more you expose it to bad news, the more you're likely to live life through fear. We know, for example, that people who repeatedly looked at images of the Twin Towers going down, who had no personal connection to New York, could get PTSD. I mean, it's, it's incredible that just exposing yourself repeatedly to bad news, especially with visual imagery, can actually traumatize you in a way that, you know, you can't easily get over. So I'm very, very careful about what I look at, what I read. Um, you know, my social media feeds are carefully controlled to be as positive as possible. Um, you're absolutely right that if you don't think about it and you look at bad news just before you go to sleep, then... Think about young children. You've got young children. Even if they, you know, read a book that's not that scary, but maybe has some monsters in it, then they can have nightmares, they can feel frightened. Um, so yeah, everything that we expose our brain to has an impact, and we need to be much more mindful of that, um, especially because the gearing of the brain, it's two to two and a half times more likely to focus on negatives than positives. So we need to be feeding our brain more positive things to keep ourselves confident, um, and, you know, moving forward positively.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:19 Yeah. I, I think, I think what you're saying is so profound because it's, it, it's the missing piece for me in health and wellbeing. It's, yes, the physical stuff's important. Working out more is important. Moving more, sleeping more, of course these things are more important. But what we are exposing our vis- you know, our visual field to, what we're exposing our brains to, is something that I don't think gets spoken about enough, and I think it's super, super important. So, um, a few weeks ago on the podcast, I spoke to Johann Hari. Um, you know, and if people haven't heard that, I highly encourage you. I think it's probably one of the most impactful conversations I've had so far on the podcast, and he talked about this study, I believe, in the 1970s, where, um, they exposed kids, right, to adverts. So basically, in a nutshell, f- my, my recollection of the story is that one group of kids got to see an advert with the equivalent of what Dora the Explorer is today back then, right? And the other group h- did not see the advert. And then the kids were asked would they like to play with a, a nasty child who has, you know, the equivalent of Dora the Explorer, or would they like to play with a nice child? And, you know, a huge amount of the kids who've expo- been exposed to the advert were happy to play with a nasty child just so they could play with the Dora the Explorer. And it just showed me how incredibly powerful what we're exposing ourselves to. That's a child and adverts, and I'm, I'm pretty militant at home in terms of, uh, you know, uh, technology with kids, but also, uh, adverts in particular. I really don't like them, and I've, I've drilled it into the kids' grandparents that I don't want them watching tele where they can see adverts. I think adverts... You know, like my daughter last year at Christmas, no word of a lie, she, we asked her what she wanted, and she didn't really know, right? And I think that's becau- in many reasons because she doesn't see adverts, so she doesn't know what she should be asking for Christmas. I mean, you know, sorry to go on about this, but it is so, so important. You know, maybe we should, you know... I don't have a news app on my phone anymore. I barely watch the news, and I'm happier when I don't do it.

Dr. Tara Swart 10:31 I really actually want to make you take back that apology, 'cause I think this is a really important thing to talk about. So I hardly watch the news. Um, people say, "How do you know what's going on?" Well, when something really important happens, people tell me.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:44 Yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 10:45 It's not like I don't know what's going on. But there's a flip side to this I'm seeing in my clients, um, and, and I think that the, you know, listeners and viewers will resonate with this 'cause I'm just seeing it so much, which is your social media feeds, they produce this feeling of discontent that you don't have this amazing lifestyle, the things that other people have, that you don't look like these people on social media, and it's causing serious mental health issues. I mean, we know that in teenage girls, the more times a day you look at social media, the more likely you are to have an eating disorder or a body dysmorphic disorder. But I'm seeing now with very well-educated, intelligent, successful adults this feeling of discontent by looking at social media. And, you know, I sort of think, I remember saying to one of my clients, "It doesn't have that effect on me because I work so hard on staying grounded." But I think if you d- if you're not conscious about working hard on staying grounded, keeping your kids grounded, it would be so easy to think, "Well, I want that. Why don't I have that? Why doesn't my life look like that?" And you can imagine the chain of negative thoughts that that kicks off.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:54 Yeah. One, one of my, um, one of my friends is going through a really tough time at the moment, and, um, his mum's, um, you know, coming towards the end of her life, and I was, I saw him a couple of weeks ago, and he said to me, he's normally very active on, on Instagram, on Facebook, and he said, "Do you know what? I've, I've..." He actually, we were out together and he said, "Look, I've, um, I've come off everything. I've taken them all off my phone temporarily." I said, "Why?" He said, "Because I've realized I'm not in a good emotional state at the moment, and so when my friends were posting about really cool stuff that they're doing-" I started to get really resentful, really jealous, and I didn't like the way it was making me feel. So I thought, "You know what? These guys are having fun. I shouldn't be resenting them. So I'm just gonna not look at the moments." And I, and I think it affects everyone to a certain degree. So is there, you, you, you mentioned something, it's, and I think you talk about this in the book around the, the section on vision boards, about why images are so powerful. You know, that you, you, they bypass something in the brain. Is that right? It's images?

Dr. Tara Swart 12:51 Well, I think we're very visual creatures. So, you know, um, we, vision is, is a primary sense for most people. And we're bombarded with images that we don't necessarily curate. So that's an important part, you know, a segue from what we were just saying. But yeah, visual sort of, you know, tracks more, more strongly to the subconscious than when you read something. It sort of travels around the brain in a way that gets picked up by logic, by emotion, by intuition. Whereas this kind of bypasses the logic and just gets straight to the core of us. It resonates with us. Um, so using images to make your life feel more positive is really important.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:29 So it bypasses a lot of those systems. It made me think [laughs] of, um, like sublingual B12. You know, B12 you need, um, you know, you need good stomach acid, you need a well-functioning digestive tract to absorb it. Whereas, you know, for people, and many people struggle with that these days. They can't, even if they're taking B12, they can't really absorb it very well. So you take sublingual B12. So actually, it just bypasses the gut and goes straight into your body. And it, it sounds like the same thing happens on one level with, with images. So if that's the case, if images are so powerful, is that one of the reasons then why Instagram has been so successful because it is image-based? But also, is that one of the reasons why Instagram can be, in many ways, uniquely toxic?

Dr. Tara Swart 14:12 So I love that analogy, and I'm gonna steal that one for myself and use it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:15 Of the B12.

Dr. Tara Swart 14:15 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:16 No, do, do it.

Dr. Tara Swart 14:17 Um, yeah, so I think you're right. The image, you know, whether it's Instagram, Facebook, whatever it is, the images can be so impactful, but in a positive or a negative way, and that's what we need to be aware of. Um, so yeah, the, I think the sort of, the issues with comparison, with discontentment, with resentment, they are magnified by imagery rather than writing or listening.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:42 So, so, so we've covered social media quite a bit on this podcast before. And so for people who are, you know, is there a happy medium? So I guess, I guess the point I'm trying to make is can you still engage in social media and get the positives of it, of which there are many, without the negatives? And if so, how do people do that?

Dr. Tara Swart 15:01 So I think that you need to be really careful about what you're looking at. And so I tend to follow people that I know, people who are, you know, real people who are either imparting knowledge or, you know, sharing sort of positive, joyful imagery. And, um, not focusing on things that are either really materialistic or, um, you know, aspirational should be a good word, but I think it's become a bad word in a way-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:26 Yeah. I know what you mean

Dr. Tara Swart 15:26 ... which is, you know, I want things that I can't have. I sort of focus on wanting things that I can make possible, and that's really the key, um, difference between vision boards as they've been described before and what I talk about, is I actually call it an action board. Because what I say is you can't just make this collage and then sit at home waiting for checks to come in the post. You need to be doing things every day to try to make your dreams come true. And so, you know, spending some time on social media is great, it's fun. But spending too much time on it could actually be taking you away from doing the things that you can do to make your life the life that you really want, rather than looking at other people's lives.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:04 I, I love it that you call it an action board because one of the critiques that is often leveled at, um, you know, ideas like the law of attraction, certainly from my understanding, is that what you just think about this stuff and it just happens. Um, and I don't quite think that's what they're saying anyway, but I think that's one of the, the negative, um, com- you know, things that I've heard against it. But you're not really saying that, are you? You're saying create that, but use it as a way to w- imprint what you want in your brain and then create action.

Dr. Tara Swart 16:32 Absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:33 Yeah, and I think that's quite a big difference and, and a very important difference.

Dr. Tara Swart 16:36 I think you're right. I think that there's been a bit of a unfair, bad reputation, um, of things like the law of attraction and vision boards, um, with this idea that you just expect it to come true. Um, I don't think that's what it ever was either, but I've made a much more strong case-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:50 Sure

Dr. Tara Swart 16:51 ... for saying that you need to do the things that make it come true.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:53 And, and I think that's what makes, um, your book so unique, is that it really ha- has got a lot of these ideas in that are grounded in science, which is, you know, which is great actually. It's really great. And I think, I think it's likely to, you know, inspire people who may be, may have been a bit skeptical of these ideas in the past, might go, "Oh, well that's really interesting. There, there really is science behind this. Now I'm gonna do it," sort of thing.

Dr. Tara Swart 17:18 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:18 And not everyone needs science, but some people do.

Dr. Tara Swart 17:20 A lot of people have said to me that, um, the science has really compelled them to do the exercises and take action. And I've actually been amazed by the fact that everyone from my stepson's friends, who are in their 20s, to my friends and, um, people in the generation above are reading the book [laughs] and doing vision boards. And I didn't, I didn't expect it to have such, you know, broad and wide appeal. But it, you know, some people find the particularly science-y chapter may be a little bit hard to get through. You don't have to read that chapter if you don't want to. But the practical chapters, the chapters about the laws of attraction and vision boards, everybody seems to be really enjoying. And I think it's got just the right amount of science to make you feel like, "Okay, I understand why this works."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:04 Yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 18:04 But, you know, not so much that you think it's a neuroscience book, 'cause it's not.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:07 Well, it's, it's really not. It doesn't read like that at all. It, it reads brilliantly. And, um, I actually, as I was rereading it this morning, want to, um, I wanna do it with my kids actually. 'Cause I think you may, you say collages. That's what they do sometimes at weekends for their homework. And I think, actually, wouldn't it be fun if my wife, me, my kids, we all made our own vision board? And actually, I'm a big fan of, uh, I know many parents listen to this podcast, and I, and I think we can maybe explore this whole idea of negativity and how, and how our brain is programmed to actually, I think you said two, two and a half times more likely to focus on the negative. Which is, which is incredible. But, um- I play a gratitude game with my, with my family every evening. Um, you know, we, we all go around the table saying, "What have I done to make someone else happy? What has somebody else done to make me happy? And what have I learned today?" And, you know, I, I won't reiterate the story in case people have heard it before, but what I really feel I'm doing, although, yes, it was for my kids, but I, I'm getting huge benefit from doing the game myself, I must be honest. I really feel that, you know, it's helping to really instill in my kids from a young age how to reflect on the positive that has happened in their everyday life. And I think arguably as, as the world is becoming more and more stressy, more busy, more toxic, I actually think those are the skills that are gonna be necessary in the future to, to be happy. And, and, you know, and so I feel, well, maybe an extension of that is to maybe once a year we create a vision board together. And then, I, I don't know. I mean, I mean, what, what do you think? Have you, have you had experience of people, any of your clients doing it with their children?

Dr. Tara Swart 19:43 Absolutely. And I think, I think e- each person does need to do their own one.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:47 Okay.

Dr. Tara Swart 19:47 I don't recommend doing a family one.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:49 Okay.

Dr. Tara Swart 19:50 Um, but all of you doing it is great. And the thing I love about children is that, so you know how you were saying earlier, we all kind of know what we should be doing, but we don't always do it. I feel like we put more effort into making sure our children are eating right, sleeping right, you know, and even into looking after our pets more than we do ourselves. Children still have that wonderful self-love that I think adults tend to lose. So try this experiment with your kids. Okay. Ask them who they love. Kids tend to say, "Mommy, Daddy," the sibling, "and myself." We never say, "I love myself," do we? So-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:24 Not in the UK we don't, no. [laughs]

Dr. Tara Swart 20:26 No. [laughs] But in the book, it's a lot about self-love and self-care. Um, so I think, you know, doing that vision board, each of you, but as a family, is kind of saying, "I'm on my own journey. There are things that I want. We're in this together, but, you know, I'm focusing on loving myself and creating what I want in my life, as long as that doesn't clash with the family." Um, that's- that's great. That's okay. And then you kind of know what each other's vision boards are. You can help each other to get them.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:53 Yeah, no, I love it. I'm, I am gonna try that. So I think this whole idea of self-love, loving yourself, is something that I think as Brits we have struggled with for a period of time. I think maybe, I could be wrong, my perception is, is in America they're sort of more open about this. I certainly think in the UK we, we can't really say that, although I think it's really, really important. Um,

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:13 this, this idea of, um, negativity and fear, you, you have a very powerful line in the book where, I can't remember exactly word for word, but you talk about how many of us, um, many of us actually use fear as a way of making decisions, and that can be problematic. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Dr. Tara Swart 21:35 That's actually a natural default. So you have to, to, you know, make a lot of effort to override that because to help us to survive, fear is actually our strongest emotion.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:45 So we're hardwired for that.

Dr. Tara Swart 21:46 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:47 Right.

Dr. Tara Swart 21:48 Um, and you can see why, because when we lived in the cave, you had to be afraid of saber-tooth tigers and run away from them, otherwise you die. You had to feel disgusted by food that was turning, you know, on the turn, 'cause otherwise you could, you could become sick and die. So basically, these sort of negative emotions like fear, anger, disgust, shame, and sadness, they have a much more powerful effect on our brain than positive emotions like love and trust and joy and excitement. Um, and you know, there's a survival advantage to that. But if you, once you know that, you've raised it in your awareness, you can take steps to say, "I choose to make my decisions from ab- abundance," which is a phrase that I use a lot in the book. So of course we don't want bad things to happen to us. We don't want to lose our jobs. We don't want to, um, you know, end our relationships. We don't want to lose friends. Um, we don't want to be in debt. Of- everybody will be saying, "Yes, of course I don't want those things." But instead of making your life decisions based on avoiding those bad things, just choose to make your life decisions based on things like, um, you know, building up a little nest egg in the bank, um, h- having your relationship evolve and improve more than, you know, it, it, it even is at the moment, um, making new friends. So those things all seem to involve a bit of risk, you know. And like you said, as Brits, we don't really like to say, "I'm gonna try to earn more and get a pay rise and put some money away." It's, it's embarrassing. We don't talk about things like that. But you can put that on your vision board. You can promise it to yourself. You don't have to sort of brag about it. You can make a real effort to understand the psyche of your partner more and improve your relationship. You can try to go out and meet new and different people that will broaden your horizons. And actually, um, meeting new people, having new experiences, traveling if you're able to, and if not, just, you know, reading books on topics that are really different to what you normally do, they're all activities that make your brain more open and flexible. And once you learn to try new things and you get a positive benefit from that, then if something bad happens to you, like, you know, you've mentioned a bereavement, I've mentioned a divorce, you will just feel that little bit more able to deal with a change because you've been willingly bringing changes into your life, which seems like a risk at times, but is actually a really good thing to do.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:07 So I, I guess in many ways the, the, the inspiring take home for me is that, look, we are programmed to look at the negative. So we absolutely, if we wanna get the most out of our life, we need a strategy. If we leave it up to the default, if we leave it up to, "Oh, if I feel like it, I'll do it," it ain't gonna happen because, you know, we're hardwired to think this way. So, and, and I think many, you know, many people are starting to realize this. That's why I think so many people in the health and wellbeing sects are talking about gratitude now, 'cause yes, there's science behind gratitude. Um, but it's great to have so many people talking about it and saying, "Hey, it's okay to say that I'm grateful for things," and, and have a daily practice. And, and I sort of feel, and I, and I have written about this before, but I, I, I kind of feel that- A lot of religions have had for years these sort of practices instilled within them. And often I think that religion's actual role for, really was to help create some sort of good living rules for society, wherever, wherever those societies were. And, you know, whether as we're getting more secular as a society now, I think we're losing some of those good practice rules. Um, and I think a lot of them really aren't to do with religion. They're just good practices for, for how to feel well. So if we talk about gratitude, and gratitude is something you talk about.

Dr. Tara Swart 25:27 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:28 Your own practice of gratitude has evolved somewhat over the years, hasn't it?

Dr. Tara Swart 25:33 Yeah, I love the way you put that question because in the book I have drawn on lots of ancient practices and then backed them up by science. So you're right, gratitude is, I'm sure it features in many religions, but it, you know, famously research has been done on, uh, the practice of gratitude in the Buddhist religion. And so what I found with my own practice was that it started off as, you know, I'm grateful for the things in my life like my family, my friends, my ability to travel. Um, and over time it evolved into more intrinsic qualities, um, and resources that I felt that I had. Like, I'm grateful that I'm creative. I'm grateful that I'm resilient. And as my gratitude list started to become about things like that, it made me feel like if something unexpected or bad happens to me in future, I have the tools within me to deal with that. And that was a breakthrough for me. That was really, really empowering. And it led me to add into the book that it shouldn't just be about gratitude. Um, that's an absolute-- I would say that's the minimum, you know, most important one to do. But I've also introduced an idea of accomplishments or achievement lists. So sometimes instead of doing 10 things I'm grateful for, I do 10 things I'm really proud of that I've achieved. Because again, I think being Brits, we don't really acknowledge that and we don't talk about it enough. So, you know, I'll just write down some things that I've done academically or in my career. But again, this evolved into things like, you know, how important it's been for me to become a stepmom, and that that's a real achievement. It's, you know, see, it's an easy thing to say, "Well, you know, well, you are one," but actually, I've made a real effort at it, my stepson's made a real effort, and we've built this, you know, amazing relationship that I didn't expect. And so I consider that a big achievement, not just the medical degree or the neuroscience PhD, you know. And, and so that again builds up your image of yourself as a person. I'm someone that learnt to play a role that I hadn't expected to play.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:30 Yeah, that, that's a great example because society would probably, um, applaud you for your medical degree, for your neuroscience qualifications, for the fact that you are a teacher at such a esteemed business school, MIT.

Dr. Tara Swart 27:44 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:44 And, you know, sometimes that societal view of us doesn't really... It doesn't really match what we're feeling about ourselves. And that sort of mismatch is, is, is often at the root and heart of so much discontentment.

Dr. Tara Swart 27:59 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:59 And so I think that's really powerful that how you've actually had to create-- I, I mean, in some ways it's unfair to say create a story, but in many ways, yeah, you've had to create that narrative in your own head that, you know, I have-- I'm a really good stepmom, and I've worked really hard at it.

Dr. Tara Swart 28:13 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:14 And I think, I think that'll be very helpful for people to think about things like that.

Dr. Tara Swart 28:19 Yeah, I think, you know, I was sort of programmed by society to focus on those outward, um, demonstrations of achievement, like going to medical school and, you know, getting certain jobs and things like that. And it's really taken me through, you know, the process that I've described in the book to get to the point where I actually feel like it's okay to say that I'm more proud of some of those personal things. I mean, I think it's up to my stepson to say whether I'm a really good stepmom or not. Um, but, you know.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:47 Yes, it is. But also it's up to you, I guess, in one level to say how your perception is of your role as a stepmom.

Dr. Tara Swart 28:55 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:55 Because ultimately, you know, you can't really control what your stepson would say about you, but you can control, you know, your view of that, I guess.

Dr. Tara Swart 29:06 Mm. And, and of course, you know, the efforts that I make to-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:08 Yeah

Dr. Tara Swart 29:08 ... to work on that relationship. But yeah, I think, you know, particularly as a woman, that it, it's actually taken me some courage a- actually to say that I am proud of those things that are traditionally seen as, you know, softer female attributes, where I've had to like, work so hard to get the sort of, you know, more masculine, logical attributes. Um, and that's really what the source is. It's about being at peace with and integrating all those different aspects of yourself.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:36 Yeah. You mentioned as a woman, uh, and I'm really interested in your experience 'cause you, you do a lot of executive coaching, uh, you help a lot of people get more out of their lives.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:47 Is there a difference between the way women view some of these ideas and the way men do? I've been a doctor for over twenty years. I've seen tens of thousands of patients, and I have to say that journaling is one of the most powerful habits I've seen with all of my patients. When people journal regularly, I see improvements in things like focus and productivity. I see improvements in their mental health, their decision-making, but also in their ability to make healthy change in their life. And the reason is, is because journaling helps you get to know yourself better. If you ask yourself the right questions, you'll get the right answers. And I've created my very own journal called The Three Question Journal. In that journal are three of the most powerful questions I believe that you can ask yourself each morning and each evening. Now, these are questions that are tried and tested with my patients over the past two decades. These are busy people with busy lives. And the reason I've created this journal is to help people with a very simple practice that doesn't take any more than five minutes, that can immediately start to have a huge impact. Now, there's many ways to journal. You have to find the right method that works for you. But if you're interested in trying something new this year, I think The Three Question Journal that I've created is very, very powerful. It's simple, it takes minutes to do, and I genuinely believe it will transform your life.

Dr. Tara Swart 31:23 So in my executive coaching work, 90% of my clients are male.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:27 Right.

Dr. Tara Swart 31:27 And because at the level that I'm coaching, at the leadership level, that's, that's how it is. So, you know, that says something already. Um, you know, obviously I am a woman, and my closest friends are more women than men. So when I was writing the book, I was definitely feeling, you know, for some of these stories of women that I know that have been through, um, relationship breakups. That was a big part of, of, you know, what's been written about in the book. And then things like deciding to start up your own business or go for a promotion. I think men and women's experiences of these things are different. Um, but any science that I've mentioned is always based on population norm studies, so it's not all men and all women. Um, I always say if you had, you know, a room full of 100 people and you asked them to line up in order of height, it wouldn't be 50 men on the tall side and 50 women on the short side. There'd be some mixture. So everything about gender has to be taken in, you know, in that sort of way. But I think experiences of emotions, of relationships, um, of parenting even, they are different experiences.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:30 I, I think that's the key, isn't it? We, you know, as a rule, and I guess obviously there are individual cases which don't, um, follow these sort of rules, um, but men and women probably by and large experience things a little bit differently. Our perception of things might be a little bit different, certainly for some of us. But as I read through your book and I think about my own patients-

Dr. Tara Swart 32:50 [clears throat]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:51 ... of which there are men and women, I, I don't see anything in there that would not be applicable to one sex over another. I think it's absolutely applicable to everybody really. In fact, I guess what I'd say, if everyone was to read this and apply the tools in your book, they would probably feel that they're getting more out of their life. Um, which, you know, i- is a huge compliment to, to what's in it. I think it's ... I, I think there's a lot there that, that really just doesn't get spoken about, um, in the health and wellbeing sector, which is why I'm, I'm so pleased to, to be able to have this conversation with you. You do talk about something that does get spoken about a lot, which is meditation. But what fascinates me is I've read that you do your meditation for 12 minutes on the tube.

Dr. Tara Swart 33:31 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:33 So tell me about that.

Dr. Tara Swart 33:34 Um, so, you know, we all lead very busy lives, as you often say.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:38 We, we do. [laughs]

Dr. Tara Swart 33:39 [laughs] Um, so I was struggling to, to fit in that extra 12 minutes. I mean, that sounds so pathetic because it's only 12 minutes. But I was sort of like, okay, I could either do it first thing in the morning, which I know you do, which is great, but I wake up in the morning and I just feel like I have to get ready and get out of the house. Um, and to take an extra 12 minutes, which would, to me, would mean 12 minutes less of sleep, is just not a deal that I've made with myself. So then I would often go through the day and think, "Well, I'll do it after work," or, "I'll do it, you know, before bed." And you- you're just too tired, aren't you? You don't really want to do that. So I started realizing that I was spending time on the tube that was essentially sort of dead time. Um, and I discovered, you know, all these great apps like Headspace, Calm, Buddhify. Put my earphones in. If I got a seat, then I would, you know, close my eyes, listen to the voice for 10, 12, 15 minutes, and I'd ... my meditation was done. Um, I had been practicing yoga for many years before that, so it took me nine or 10 months to be able to achieve the same without the earphones and the app.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:43 That's fascinating. So you, you started off doing it with an app-

Dr. Tara Swart 34:47 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:47 ... which is pretty much accessible to everybody listening to this podcast.

Dr. Tara Swart 34:50 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:50 Everyone's got a phone, pretty much. Everyone c- can download some of these apps. So I get that. I get that a busy tube with, uh, noise and hustle around you, you can sort of close off and meditate. But you've built up to the point where can you still meditate without your earphones and without using an app?

Dr. Tara Swart 35:08 Yeah. So like I said, it took me nine or 10 months, and that was somebody who'd been doing yoga for, you know, 10 years by then. So it may not be right for, for everyone to do that. But, um, one of the things that you can do in meditation is to, uh, focus just on one sound in, in the plethora of sounds that are around you. So as long, you know, as long as I get a seat. I did try it once standing up. That was really stupid-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:31 [laughs]

Dr. Tara Swart 35:31 ... 'cause when you close your eyes, you lose balance. Um, I sit down, I make sure that my arms and legs aren't crossed, I close my eyes, um, and I focus on breathing, and I do a s- a body scan. And then I'll just focus on a positive image, you know, either one that I've just used before that I really like or something that I want for that day. Um-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:51 Do you close your eyes?

Dr. Tara Swart 35:52 Yeah, I close my eyes. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:53 So you close your eyes.

Dr. Tara Swart 35:53 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:53 You're just sitting there for 10, 12 minutes-

Dr. Tara Swart 35:55 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:55 ... closing your eyes. And, uh, do, do you use a timer?

Dr. Tara Swart 35:59 No, because I know, um, that six tube stops is 12 minutes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:03 Yeah. Brilliant. Do you know what I love about this, Tara, is that whether it's in your meditation practice, whether it's the way you've evolved your gratitude practice, that you started off doing things which you knew were gonna help you, and as you got to know yourself better, as you got to know your life better and your routines better, you evolve them. Um, you progress them. You've progressed your gratitude practice so it serves you probably in an even better way than your, your pr- your, your initial one did.

Dr. Tara Swart 36:28 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:29 You're now able to meditate, you know, without using external help, which, you know, obviously that doesn't have to be the goal for people. But for me, you know, I would love to be able to be able ... You know, I would love to be able to meditate more without using an app if I could. And, and sometimes I can, and it's something that I'm working towards. So I, I just want people listening to, to really understand that actually you just need to get started. You need to hear some of these practices. You need to look at the chapters in your book where there are some really practical tips, and just start doing some of these exercises. And you know what? Do them in whatever way you want to initially, but it may evolve.

Dr. Tara Swart 37:01 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:02 Is that what you've seen in your coaching practice as well?

Dr. Tara Swart 37:04 Absolutely. The experience of it changes things for people. So when I teach at MIT, I do a guided meditation at the end of the day. And I believe that- For some, you know, for many people, that's their first experience of meditation, that then they will go and get the app. If I just give you all the science about why meditation is so great and then say, "Go and get an app," but you've never experienced it, I think there'd be a massive percentage difference in the number of people that would actually action that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:31 Yeah. So it's, it's that whole idea that, you know, we respond as humans, don't we, to feelings, to experiences, not necessarily to that logical ... That right at the start we were talking about this. You know, we, we think logic is king, but, but maybe it's feelings and intuition-

Dr. Tara Swart 37:45 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:45 ... and experiences that are king.

Dr. Tara Swart 37:47 Absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:48 Yeah. And I think that's, that's, that's quite a, a paradigm shift for many of us. I must ask you, why 12 minutes?

Dr. Tara Swart 37:56 So there's this amazing study by Amishi Jha in New York. Um, she worked with the US Marines, and she showed that Marines who did 12 minutes of mindfulness meditation every day had increased resilience on the battlefield compared to Marines that did less than 12 minutes or nothing. So I think 12 minutes is the absolute minimum, and basically, most of us are quite lazy. [laughs] Our brains are quite lazy, so I do the absolute minimum. I think 15 minutes would probably be better, but, you know, I've got that study in my brain. I've expanded on it in the book-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:32 Yeah

Dr. Tara Swart 38:32 ... and given references. Um, so i- it is obviously better to do more, um, but that's the minimum that will have a positive impact on your brain over time, so that's what I do.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:42 Fantastic. Tara, I wanna start bringing this to a close now. I've really enjoyed the conversation we've had today. Uh, really has left me feeling quite inspired to change a few things in my life, and I will, I will, I will let you know. In fact, what I'm gonna do is, uh ... Do you, is it, is it okay to, for me to do my own action board and send it to you in a text or something? Is that, is that-

Dr. Tara Swart 38:59 Absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:59 Yeah? I-

Dr. Tara Swart 38:59 Yeah, I'd love that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:00 Yeah, I think that's, that's, um ... I'm saying it on air, so it's, it's almost a good accountability thing for me to do. Uh, so I, I will aim to do that within the next few weeks. I'll aim to do that.

Dr. Tara Swart 39:09 Okay.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:10 Okay, that's all right. Um,

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:12 but I wanna finish on two, two questions really. The first one is ... And this probably leads into the second question, but i- in, in your evolution, it sounds like you've been on quite a journey over the last 10, 15 years in personal life and professional life. Um, what are the things that you think you have changed in your life that have had the most impact on your wellbeing?

Dr. Tara Swart 39:36 Great question. Um, I'm going to start, start with sleep. When I wrote my previous book, the research came out about the glymphatic system that flushes-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:45 Yeah

Dr. Tara Swart 39:45 ... toxins out of the brain, um, the same toxins that if they build up lead to dementing diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. So, like you, I was a junior doctor working crazy hours and not sleeping. Now I travel around the world a lot, so I'm often jet lagged. So basically, I try to get eight hours of good quality sleep as often as I can. If I'm restless because of jet lag, then I will take the opportunity to turn myself onto my side, which is the best position for flushing toxins out of the brain. So basically-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:15 What, what side is that?

Dr. Tara Swart 40:16 Um, either side is fine, uh, as opposed to front or back.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:20 Okay.

Dr. Tara Swart 40:21 Um, so sleeping on your side helps the, the glymphatic system to work more efficiently. So basically, the message there is I try to do the right things about sleep and everything else, but I don't get stressed about it if I can't.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:34 Yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 40:35 Um, so that's, that's a really big thing for me. You know, I try to eat right. I try to remember to take my supplements. I journal when I can. I meditate when I can. Um, but if I don't do it, then I, I don't get stressed. I would say that is a really big learning for me. I think that that's a really big tip. I would also say it's better to change 10 things by 1% than try to change one thing by 10%, so work on micro tweaks to your routine, like go to bed half an hour earlier, do a digital detox over one weekend, um, drink a bit more water than you normally do, try to increase your steps by 1 to 2,000 per day for a week and see what happens. So for small things like that build up because you start to feel better. Your brain becomes more powerful, and then you're able to do, you know, some of the bigger goals that you may have been-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:21 Yeah

Dr. Tara Swart 41:21 ... saving up.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:22 Man, I love that. I, I absolutely love that, that whole idea that ... You know, I never heard it put like that before. Try and change 10 things by 1% rather than one thing by 10%. I think, you know, we often try and bite off more than we can chew. Uh, very, very common. I've done that. I've made that mistake in my own life in trying to make wellbeing changes, and I've realized that it may work for a few weeks. It just doesn't tend to be sustainable. Um, so that's what you have done differently, and I guess this would probably would be a similar answer, but, you know, it's called Feel Better, Live More, this podcast. It's to try and inspire people to get the most out of their lives and inspire people s- to, to, to sort of believe that they can be the architects of their own health. So can you leave my listeners with some, you know, short, snappy tips that they can do immediately that's gonna improve the quality of their life?

Dr. Tara Swart 42:10 I would say go to bed half an hour earlier from tonight. Start journaling from tomorrow morning. Download an meditation app and just listen to it and, and, you know, think about starting to bring that into your practice. Don't drink caffeine after 12 o'clock.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:28 Love it.

Dr. Tara Swart 42:30 Um, and longer term, s- make a vision board.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:34 When you hear the word stress-

Dr. Tara Swart 42:36 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:37 ... what does it mean to you?

Dr. Tara Swart 42:40 So when you introduce me like that, like, you know, "You're a doctor, psychiatrist," it makes me, made me feel a bit like, oh, I'm just like a jack of all trades. But as soon as you said the word stress, each of those roles made sense to me. So I define stress as when the load on your body or mind is too much for you to bear. So as a medical doctor, as a junior doctor, if I saw somebody, um, in A&E that was having a heart attack, that is, that's stress on their cardiovascular system. As a psychiatrist, if I saw people who had a breakdown of their psychosis or their depression, that's stress on their mental state. And then I changed career at a really interesting time because, um, having been a psychiatrist and starting, you know, from the bottom of the ladder into executive coaching, the fact that it was the time of the financial crisis when people were under a lot of stress, there were high-profile suicides in, you know, in Canary Wharf in London. Um, there were a lot more people having heart attacks from str- you know, caused by stress. Um, that was actually something that I could address. So, so it sort of made sense that a psychiatrist and medical doctor would come into the executive coaching space-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:54 Mm

Dr. Tara Swart 43:54 ... in financial services at that time. And then as a neuroscientist, I would say that's where the stress piece really lands for me because your brain's perception of what is going on is gonna have this cascade effect on the rest of your body. So if you perceive, w- basically your brain perceives that, you know, there's a threat to your survival, then it's gonna signal for your cortisol levels to rise, so your adrenal glands will release more cortisol. That goes around in the blood. It crosses the blood-brain barrier, and the receptors in the brain can see that you're on high alert all the time, and so that process is pro-inflammatory, so that has all sorts of knock-on effects on your cardiovascular system, your immunity, your gastrointestinal system, and it's very dehydrating, so you know, that can show up on your skin and your hairs, your scalp. And, and, and the other thing is that as a very ancient survival mechanism, that encourages storage of fat in the abdominal fat cells. So basically you would kind of have very dry skin, frizzy hair, a bigger belly that you can't shift, um, sleep disturbance, probably some kind of digestive problems, and it's all... You know, what's behind all of that is stress.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:17 Yeah. It's, it's incredible, like when you really understand the physiology of the stress response-

Dr. Tara Swart 45:25 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:25 ... and how it affects every single organ system-

Dr. Tara Swart 45:28 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:28 ... then you understand why many doctors, including myself, say that 80 to 90% of what we see in any given day-

Dr. Tara Swart 45:37 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:38 ... is in some way related to stress, right?

Dr. Tara Swart 45:40 Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:41 Stress has such a massive impact on physical health, mental health-

Dr. Tara Swart 45:44 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:45 ... emotional health.

Dr. Tara Swart 45:46 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:47 You mentioned stress and belly fat there.

Dr. Tara Swart 45:50 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:51 And I think if we just, if we just stay on stress and physical health for a moment-

Dr. Tara Swart 45:55 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:56 ... clearly many people around the world are trying to lose excess fat on their bodies-

Dr. Tara Swart 46:04 Mm. Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:04 ... for a variety of reasons, sometimes vanity, sometimes health, whatever it might be, right? And there is this obsession around diet.

Dr. Tara Swart 46:13 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:14 And of course diet is important.

Dr. Tara Swart 46:16 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:17 But I think we underestimate how much stress is behind our weight-

Dr. Tara Swart 46:25 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:25 ... the amount of fat that we're storing-

Dr. Tara Swart 46:27 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:27 ... you know, and so many other things. Would you agree with that?

Dr. Tara Swart 46:29 Yeah, totally, because a- again, referring particularly back to the time of the financial crisis, this was happening a lot more then. People would report to me that they had gained weight, that as a result of that they had started to eat a bit differently, whether it's a bit less or a bit more healthily, and they started doing some more exercise, but they still couldn't shift the weight, and as soon as I heard that, I knew that it was promoted by cortisol. So even if you eat less or you move more or both, if you've got these high levels of cortisol, it's still driving that, um, you know, depositing the fat into your belly. So it's kind of, you know, we have subcutaneous fat, and then we, we have visceral fat. So you're not getting fat all over, but it's mostly the belt that people would say, "You know, I've had to, like, undo it a notch, and I just can't shift it," and that's definitely driven by the stress hormone.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:19 I once heard you say in an interview that you have seen quite a lot of people have stress-induced heart attacks as well.

Dr. Tara Swart 47:29 Mm-hmm. I was teaching a class at MIT where I was talking about exactly what we've just mentioned, and a really young woman stood up and said, "When I was in a really busy, stressful job, I had a heart attack." And it was interesting because in your mind, when you're talking about the kind of people that have heart attacks from str- stress, you are imagining, like, an older guy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:52 Mm.

Dr. Tara Swart 47:52 Maybe someone a bit overweight. Um, so to see this, you know, just woman that looked so young and slim and healthy, to hear her say that actually had a really, you know, kind of big impact on me. But it was when I was working with a really big global bank in several different capacities. So I had seen their employee engagement survey, and then they came and told me that they were seeing a lot of, um, either deaths from or, or heart attacks that didn't cause death on the trading floor, and they wanted, because I was a former doctor, wanted me to help them, you know, deal with that. And I said, "But I've seen your employee engagement survey, so I know people are really stressed. So I know those two things are connected, so we actually need to deal with that." They couldn't understand that. I mean, it was like 15 years ago now, so the whole idea of the brain-body connection has evolved quite a lot since then. But it... what was so obvious to me as a doctor was really not obvious to them, um, to the point that they wanted to help these employees, but they could not understand that you had to deal with the stress to... You couldn't just deal with the heart attacks.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:59 Yeah. It's interesting that that client who you saw with a stress-induced heart attack was a woman. It reminds me of a patient that I had 10, maybe even 15 years ago. She was in her 30s. She was slim, and she developed prediabetes- From stress alone

Dr. Tara Swart 49:30 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:30 And the reason I know that is because, A, I knew that she looked after herself with her diet and her exercise

Dr. Tara Swart 49:36 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:37 But her job was mega, mega stressful

Dr. Tara Swart 49:39 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:40 And when we helped her address that, when she realized that she needs to address that, within a few months, without changing her diet and her exercise, her blood sugar came back into the normal range

Dr. Tara Swart 49:52 Really?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:53 So it's kind of, stress's, um, impact on our physical health I think is profound, and I don't think the public know enough about it, and frankly, I don't think our profession knows enough about it

Dr. Tara Swart 50:07 No. It's, because it's kind of behind whatever inflammatory, you know, marker you're seeing, it's almost like it's hidden. So you know, even if we understand that a certain disease is, is kind of like underpinned by inflammation, we're still not necessarily taking that step back and saying, "What are the stress factors in your life?" We're, we're much more likely as a profession of doctors to say, "Keep a food diary. You know, how much exercise do you do? How do you sleep?" And keep focusing on those physical things. And I think, I think that's a problem, but I also think it's... Do you remember when we did the episode during the pandemic, early on in the pandemic-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:51 Yeah

Dr. Tara Swart 50:51 ... and I said to you, "This is either gonna be a mental health crisis or a spiritual revolution"? I think we've still got our options open. So [laughs] I feel like some of the things that we learnt during the pandemic, whether it was just the benefits of being in nature more or whether it was understanding mental health better, um, I think is opening the door to the medical profession and, you know, and educating the population about stress and how big an impact it has on all of those other things

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:22 Yeah. I do remember you saying that. There's a lot to unpick there. Um, spiritual revolution, nature, I definitely wanna get into all of that. Because we focus on women a little bit, we've said, you know, your client, my patient-

Dr. Tara Swart 51:42 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:42 ... and what happens-

Dr. Tara Swart 51:43 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:43 ... on the back of stress-

Dr. Tara Swart 51:45 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:46 ...

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:46 I'd love to know, in your experience, do women and men handle stress differently?

Dr. Tara Swart 51:53 Um, obviously these are generalizations-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:56 Yeah

Dr. Tara Swart 51:56 ... but I would say, you know, what I hear when I'm, you know, in a taxi talking to the taxi driver or just, you know, me with my girlfriends or whatever is, it's still this idea that men don't talk to each other about things like stress and mental health as much as women do. Um, but on the other side of the coin, I think that because of this myth that women are better at multitasking than men, women put a lot of pressure on themselves to do everything, be everything. You know, be the mom, the wife, still have a career, um, you know, do your fitness. Often with the kind of type A personalities that I work with, they've got a super, super stressful job, like they're a law firm partner, and they go and do really high-intensity exercise, and I'm always telling them, "That is spiking your cortisol, so actually you are exactly the kind of person that should be doing more gentle exercise because of your, like, you know, your personality type and the stress of the job that you've got." Um, and I think that women under stress can either, you know, skip meals or because of the pressure of being a certain weight, they can be dieting in a way that's not actually healthy and helpful. So I think that contributes to, you know, stress on the system because if you're not properly fueled, then it's really hard to do all the things that you need to do. So I think there are different issues for, you know, the two genders that we're talking about, and there is some research that shows that men are very good at adaptive stress responses. So if there's a crisis, they can deal with that and, um, for, you know, a short period of time, but they need then to like just, you know, go away and hide in the cave and recover

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:46 Mm-hmm

Dr. Tara Swart 53:46 Whereas women find ways to recoup their resilience better during long periods of stress

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:52 Wow, that's interesting. You mentioned men, and it's, it's a bit of a cliche, but, uh, but it also is true from what I've seen, both as a doctor but also in my personal life or what I've experienced and what I've seen in my friends

Dr. Tara Swart 54:06 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:07 You said that men traditionally haven't opened up as much as women

Dr. Tara Swart 54:13 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:15 Why is that important, especially if we think about it through the lens of the brain?

Dr. Tara Swart 54:19 Um, because there's two main ways to offload stress from your system. One is physical exercise, which sweats out the cortisol from your body, and the other one is speaking out loud or possibly journaling as well, but I think speaking, you know, speaking with someone because then you've got that sort of social connection piece. But instead of ruminating on your thoughts, if you actually get them out of your brain-body system, that reduces your cortisol levels too. And I think, and you know, I imagine that you confide in your wife. I think a lot of men confide in their wife, but I think that confiding in other men is still not happening as much as it could

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:04 Look, the truth is, Tara, this is something I've realized is an issue in my own life over the last few years

Dr. Tara Swart 55:10 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:10 Because my best mates are still the mates I made at university

Dr. Tara Swart 55:15 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:15 And they live hundreds of miles away from me

Dr. Tara Swart 55:17 Oh

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:18 And so literally four weekends ago we got together, we went to Wales for a weekend

Dr. Tara Swart 55:24 Oh, yeah. That's lovely

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:24 And, um, it was a very different weekend from how we might have done it in our 20s. We went walking in the hills [laughs]

Dr. Tara Swart 55:29 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:30 And it was amazing

Dr. Tara Swart 55:31 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:31 It was just three of us actually But I think we really opened up and shared things with each other-

Dr. Tara Swart 55:38 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:38 ... that I don't think we, we have done in ages.

Dr. Tara Swart 55:41 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:41 And I think we all felt lighter when we left and, you know, drove home and returned home to our families.

Dr. Tara Swart 55:48 Mm. Mm. So that would've been, you know, the being, being in na- don't un- underestimate the power of being in nature. I know we're gonna come to that later, but yeah. And, you know, being with people that you trust, that you've got such a long history with, that you can share things with, that maybe you find that some of the issues that you're facing in life, you're not alone in them.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:08 Mm.

Dr. Tara Swart 56:08 You know, there's just so much benefit from that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:11 What's the impact of stress on our ability to make decisions?

Dr. Tara Swart 56:17 Yeah. So basically, when those receptors in the brain sense these high levels of cortisol, another thing that they do is they reroute the blood supply. Because they're p- they're perceiving an imminent threat to our survival, they don't want to give up resources for things that are not crucial to our survival. So basically, thinking flexibly, regulating your emotions, suppressing your biases, solving complex problems, being creative, being imaginative, you don't need to do any of that to survive.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:47 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tara Swart 56:48 So I call it going into low power mode. You know, bl- the blood supply is really just going to the parts of the brain that need you to wake up in the morning, do the minimum amount of self-care, make sure you don't lose your job. Um, but in terms of, you know, that complex decision-making, where normally the prefrontal cortex is regulating the emotions that are coming from the amygdala, that regulation becomes less good. So in the stress state, um, we're likely to experience emotions like fear or anger or shame, and, um, that has a very negative effect on our decision-making power.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:28 You mentioned two terms there, the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala.

Dr. Tara Swart 57:31 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:32 What are they?

Dr. Tara Swart 57:33 So the amygdala, amygdalae, are two almond-shaped structures that are in the limbic system, which is the... So it's the sort of size and shape of your clenched fist. It's deep inside your brain, and then the cortex is the part of the brain that's around that. And in that system, there are these two almond-shaped structures, which is where all of our basic emotions start from. But the limbic system and the cortex, they're talking to each other all the time, and the prefrontal cortex is just the part of the outer cortex that's here at the front. Um, when we experience an emotion, the prefrontal cortex can kind of regulate that, so it's not too extreme. Um, but when we have high levels of cortisol, then we're, we're experiencing more of these, what we call survival emotions, and the prefrontal cortex is getting less of the blood supply with the oxygen and the glucose in it, so it's less able to regulate those emotions.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:31 It's become very clear to me over the past few years that if who we are in the world is essentially related to the tuning of our nervous system, then it kind of means that if you are chronically busy, overworked, and overstressed, you are literally becoming a different person. And then if you follow that logic, it begs the question, like, who are we? Like, do we even know who we are if we are that stressed all the time?

Dr. Tara Swart 59:05 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:06 Fr- from my perspective, if I think about who I am today compared to, let's say, 12 years ago-

Dr. Tara Swart 59:12 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:12 ... when my dad was alive and I was in the thick of caring for Dad-

Dr. Tara Swart 59:16 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:16 ... whilst, you know, I was married, had f- a family-

Dr. Tara Swart 59:21 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:21 ... uh, a job as a busy GP-

Dr. Tara Swart 59:24 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:24 ... and I was also helping my family care for my father-

Dr. Tara Swart 59:27 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:27 ... I cannot believe what I used to do. Now that my life compared to back then-

Dr. Tara Swart 59:33 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:34 ... is so much calmer-

Dr. Tara Swart 59:36 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:36 ... and more under my control-

Dr. Tara Swart 59:38 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:38 ... than it was back then, I think I was a different person. I think the same elements of Rangan were still there.

Dr. Tara Swart 59:45 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:45 But actually, the way I saw the world-

Dr. Tara Swart 59:47 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:48 ... how I might take on a more victim mentality to the world-

Dr. Tara Swart 59:52 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:52 ... as opposed to I'm in the driver's seat of the world-

Dr. Tara Swart 59:55 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:56 ... I think was very, very different, and a huge part of that, I think... To make sure you're taking action after watching this video, I've created a free guide to help you build healthy habits. We can all make short-term change, but can those changes become a fundamental part of our life? Often they don't, and that's why in this free guide, I share with you the six crucial steps you need to take. They're really, really effective. If you wanna get hold of that free guide right now, all you have to do is click the link in the description box below. Was due to the state of my nervous system.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:00:33 Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I love the way you've put that, that, you know, if you're stressed all the time, you're literally becoming another person. I mean, I've never heard it put like that before. Obviously, I speak a lot about neuroplasticity, which is the ability of the brain to grow and change throughout life, but that's sort of, you know, that's a, like a longer-term learning. But what you're talking about is the day-to-day stressors and aggressions that can grind us down and stop us from becoming the best version of ourselves. So I would say yeah, I think over life we evolve as people, but also at every stage there is the choice to be the best version of yourself or be a stressed version of yourself. And, you know, there'll be shades of gray in that. It'll be a spectrum. Um, so absolutely the point that you made, which is that if you're chronically stressed all the time, then you're gonna be at the lower end of that spectrum. But also just e- day to day, I mean, I was sharing an example with a really close friend the other day that I noticed that on days that I'm feeling stressed, I look in the mirror and I think I look terrible, and the next day Just 'cause I'm in a good mood, I'm like, "Ooh, I'm looking really good today." H- but I can't have looked that different from yesterday to today. But, you know, the thought that goes through your mind is like, "Oh, you look terrible." But that's starting, starting with stress, then it's like, you know, the negative, um, self-image, and then that's just gonna spiral, isn't it? 'Cause if I look in the mirror and say, "Oh, I look terrible," then my day's [laughs] not really gonna get better. Um, and it did... It was just what... It doesn't always happen one day to the next, but it was interesting because it did, and because I try to, to practice metacognition as much as possible, which is thinking about your thinking. So even when that thought went through my head, I was able to step back from that and say, "Okay, wow, you must be stressed today," because that is like, you wouldn't say that to your best friend, you know? Um, yeah, and it did actually kind of... I got the insight into it, because the next day I was like, "Oh, I'm looking really good." [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:39 But we'll come back to metacognition.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:02:41 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:43 Another way of looking at that is through the lens of sleep, right? Because sleep deprivation is a huge stressor on the body.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:02:51 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:52 And if I just take me today compared to yesterday, on Wednesday night, I actually had a really bad night's sleep for a variety of reasons.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:03:01 Yeah, you said to me yesterday you were tired, didn't you?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:03 Yeah. We, we had a long chat on the phone yesterday, and I, I, my brain just wasn't working.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:03:07 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:07 Like, I felt that it was just a bit mushy yesterday.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:03:13 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:13 And, you know, things looked bleak, and my workload was getting on top of me-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:03:17 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:17 ... and I thought, "Wow, how am I gonna get all this done?" And all this kind of stuff. I slept really well last night, and I'm like a different person today.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:03:26 Yeah. I know.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:26 I feel on top of the world. If I hit a workload, no problem. I'll easily get that done.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:03:29 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:29 You know, the world's great. I mean, it's pouring down with rain, and it's dark-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:03:33 I know

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:33 ... but I'm, like, buzzing today because of my sleep. So we can be a different person. Literally, I think we can be a different person depending on whether we've slept well or not.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:03:45 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:46 We can be a different person depending on the levels of stress that we're carrying.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:03:51 Yeah, and I think getting as much insight about yourself out of that is really important. Because I'm at the stage now where if I'm on that day where the workload is just, just seems so overwhelming, I actually now say, "Okay, there's gonna be a day soon where you've had a great night's sleep, or you're just in a better mood, and you're gonna just get that to-do list done in, like, minutes. What seems like a mountain now, it's not gonna feel like that every day, so that's fine. Don't do it today. Just wait till you have a good day." 'Cause I've got so much evidence of this now, you know, of times where I was thinking, "Oh, I've got so much to do," and, like, it's creeping closer to the deadline, and haven't done anything, and I keep putting it off. And then finally I do it, and it's like, oh, that's not as bad as I thought it was. But it's much more related to what you're saying, which is that, yeah, the state of your nervous system.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:43 What does this metacognition term mean? You, you sort of gave us a brief explanation, you know, thinking about the thoughts.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:04:51 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:53 I know you're a huge fan of journaling.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:04:55 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:55 We've covered that in the past, but I'd love to talk about it again, because I think it is such a powerful tool for people-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:05:03 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:04 ... um, to improve their physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:05:09 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:10 Is journaling a type of metacognition?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:05:17 It is if you read back over your journal entries. So just the act of writing into it may not be enough, because you're writing in that moment where you believe what you've written is absolutely true. Uh, or it is just a representation of what you're feeling in that moment. When you read over it, that's when you can practice metacognition, which is to question what you've said. Um, it's very difficult to question it in the moment that you've just written it, because you wouldn't have written something that you didn't think was the case. Um, so I think that, a few things here. If there are people who say, for whatever reason, "I have nobody that I would confide my, you know, deepest mental, emotional issues to," then journaling is a, a good way to get that out of your brain-body system. So I just... You know, I mentioned earlier about speaking out loud or preferably with someone, but journaling is a good second option. Um, so in terms of, um, just, you know, gaining self-awareness and practicing metacognition, reading back the last three months or six months or something, seeing if there are patterns, seeing if what you wrote then still feels true now, that's a good practice. And you mentioned that journaling is good for physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing, but I think it's really great for spiritual evolution as well. Because even if you just do 10 things I'm grateful for, you're practicing gratitude through your journaling, so you're kind of, you know, actually doing a spiritual practice as well. And, and you could do more than that. You could, um, you know, whether it's whether you made a decision with your intuition or your logic, or whether it's, you know, recording that you've been practicing some chanting or some drumming or, um, what, you know, what your experiences are mentally and physically of spending time in nature. If you record all that, then you're kind of evolving spiritually as well.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:18 What does spirituality mean to you?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:07:23 So when I do my quadrant exercise with people, which is, um, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, the way I describe it is physical is what you feel in your body, mental is what's going on in your thoughts, emotional is how you're feeling in your emotions, and spiritual is something that's not described by those other three, um, and is just a sense of- How you are in your spirit or your soul. Um, and if you're not comfortable with words like soul or God, then it can be, you know, how you f- how you feel your values are being upheld. Because having your values crossed in any way is kind of like it's a boundary transgression, and that hurts, like, deeply. You know, it's not just emotional, mental or physical. It's, it's something more than that. It's your integrity. So... And I say that, you know, I mean, spirituality means a lot more than that to me personally. But in terms of the way that I've posed it in The Source, was to take away any, you know, any conflict that someone might have about their own religion or faith or lack of, and just saying, you know, there is something more than what you feel physically and what goes on in your thoughts and what goes on in your emotions.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:46 We've been talking about stress and the impact that chronic unrelenting stress can k- can have on us, right?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:08:57 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:57 And you just mentioned about spirituality and how if our values are being crossed, that's a boundary transgression.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:09:06 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:08 One thing I've been thinking about recently is the causes of burnouts.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:09:13 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:13 And obviously it's, you know, we can say, "Yeah, it's too much work. It's not enough time to rest and recover." And of course those things are important, but more and more I'm led to the belief that a huge cause of burnout for people is not living a life in accordance with their values.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:09:36 Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:37 And I think that was so interesting to me, this, this boundary transgression, I think we can link that to chronic stress.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:09:44 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:44 And yes, I recognize that some people don't have much choice or autonomy-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:09:48 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:48 ... in their work, let's say.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:09:49 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:51 I, I recognize that, but I think for many people it ain't just the workload-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:09:57 No

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:57 ... it's also what they're doing on a daily basis.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:10:01 Yeah, and I think it's two things. One is that... So you could take two people, let's say you and I, and we could have the same job like we've actually had in the NHS as junior doctors, and one of us could burn out and the other one doesn't. Why is that? So partly there are things that you can do to build your mental resilience, to build your resilience to stress. So if you have those tools and practices, if you've been doing them for years, or you, or you, you know, incorporate them now, that can help you to withs- withstand stress. But the other thing is that there's clearly different thresholds for different people of what causes them to actually burn out. So, you know, let's say you get... someone gets divorced. Some- someone might find it a difficult experience, but, you know, get through it, move on, and somebody else might completely break down. So basically two things. One is that we each have our own starting point or threshold, and two, we can do things to build that up. And I really found that actually in the pandemic around the time that we last, you know, we spoke on the podcast, is that because I had been practicing yoga and meditation and, you know, walking in nature and bathing with salts and, you know, just all the thing, journaling, because I'd been doing those things for so long, I could, I could really immediately draw on the help that I can get from those things. Um, but, you know, a message that I kept putting out there is that even if you've never done these things before, if you start now, it will help you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:48 If someone says to you, "Tara, like I hear all this stuff that you're saying about values, I know how important they are, but how do I find my own?" What do you say to them?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:11:59 Um, the first thing I say is, "What characteristic do you most dislike in other people?" 'Cause the chances are that the opposite of that is your most strongly held value.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:11 I love that question. See, it's interesting, when I hear that question, I think that, but I also think something else, right? I think that many of us dislike qualities in other people that we have within us-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:12:28 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:28 ... as well.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:12:29 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:30 And the reason we dislike it so much is because we don't like it in ourselves-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:12:35 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:35 ... but it's easy to not look inward and change something in ourselves. It's much easier to make a judgment of someone else.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:12:42 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:42 What do you think to that?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:12:43 I mean, there's obviously truth to that because psychologically that would be described as, you know, something that's in your shadow, the shadow of your personality. So, um, what tends to go in there are the things that you worked out as a child, that if you did those things, you would get rebuffed by your primary caregivers. So you would hide those things away into your shadow. You know, things like, "Oh, don't show off," or, "Stop being so bossy," or, you know, "Share with your brother," you know, "Stop being so mean." Um, so those things, yeah, that can absolutely happen. But I think you have to separate that and because... Okay, let's say, so generosity is my top value. So if I thought that that's because I actually feel like [laughs] I'm not very generous, I think I would know. But, um, you know, and I'm not, I'm not just talking about money. I think, you know, generosity of spirit, generous with your time. When I see people who could do something for somebody else, but they don't do it, that ki- you know, I really notice that. Um, and I don't think that I'm guilty of that one, let's say.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:50 So let, let's say, let's take you, right? You've, you've- You've shared that generosity is one of your, your top values.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:13:57 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:58 How, how does the knowledge of knowing that-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:14:00 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:01 ... help you in your day-to-day life?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:14:07 Um, well, for, for instance, it makes me, you know, sort of preempt things, like if I was gonna go out for a coffee with you after this podcast, I would want to pay. Or, you know, even something that you said today, which is that, you know, "Hey, if you wanna, you know, stay for a couple of hours after we finish the podcast, I can drop you to the station, unless that's too late for you," you know? And, and I thought, "Well, I will get home a bit later than I had planned, but actually, how often do I get to see you? I haven't seen you for y- for years."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:43 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:14:43 Um, it's quite a long journey, so I'm not e- easily necessarily gonna see you again, like, as soon as I would like to.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:51 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:14:51 So, you know, sharing my time with you, I think is, you know, it's... I see that as a gift.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:56 Is it something you constantly are assessing? For example, in your journaling practice, I think your daily journaling practice, unless something's changed over the last few years-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:15:04 Oh, it's not every single day. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:06 Okay. So your, so your regular journaling practice-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:15:10 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:10 ... do you ask yourself or do, you know, d- does generosity come up somewhere, you know, "Am I living in alignment with this value?" Or is it not quite as... I, I don't know. Is it, is it as specific as that?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:15:23 No. I think that one, because I've identified that one a long time ago, and I, you know, I do feel like it is a strong characteristic for me. So what's more likely to happen is if I, if I feel like somebody's not being generous towards me, whether it's with their time-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:40 Mm-hmm

Dr. Tara Swart 1:15:40 ... listening or, you know, somebody owes you money or whatever it is, you know, like I, I feel like that would make me question, is this person a true friend? Is this person somebody that I want around me? And, you know, I remember when, you know, I was in my 20s, I had a friend who literally gave me her last £5 note. You know, we had no money. And she was like, "Oh, I've got a fiver left, but you can have it," you know? S- And so it's... But to me, I will never forget that that is a really generous person, and then there are people with lots of money that wouldn't do that. So it's about your attitude. Um, it's, it's, it's not even about being equal because I think, you know, you pay things forward, you kind of like, you, you get a lot of help from one friend here, and you give in a different way-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:29 Mm-hmm

Dr. Tara Swart 1:16:29 ... to somebody else. But it's just if that, if that value is so important to me, then it's more about making sure that I feel that in my social circle.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:40 What are some of the other values that are important to you?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:16:43 Um, trust is a really important one. Um, mostly because the... You know, what I usually say to my team is, I mean, we do sign contracts obviously, but mostly I say, "I operate on trust. I make my decisions on trust." Somebody could break that, but I choose to live my life based on trust. Um, so obviously then if I feel like there's somebody in my life that isn't trustworthy, that would be a serious boundary transgression for me.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:13 I love what you just said, and I love it because you're making a very intentional choice about how you want to live your life.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:17:23 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:26 You are essentially controlling what you can control, right? You're con- you're, you're basically saying, "I'm going to go into things based on trust." Now, if someone chooses to break that trust-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:17:39 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:40 ... you can't do anything about that. That's out of your control.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:17:43 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:44 Whereas taking this back to stress states, right? Because trust, you can't really operate from trust if you're stressed.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:17:55 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:56 Right? Because the fear response, "I'm, I'm in danger," you don't wanna trust people if you feel in danger, right?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:18:03 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:03 So trust is that you have to have a calm, regulating nervous system to operate from trust-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:18:10 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:10 ... first of all.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:18:11 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:11 But what I l- what I really love the most about what you said is that, look, yeah, people may cheat on you, people may break that trust-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:18:18 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:18 ... people may do those things.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:18:20 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:20 But if you choose to live because you're scared of that happening-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:18:26 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:26 ... well, you change who you are-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:18:28 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:29 ... and you can't even control it anyway.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:18:30 No. And let's just use that example 'cause you used it. If somebody cheats on their partner, at the end of the day, the problem is theirs. You know, they've let themselves down as a person. They've, you know, had the impact that it's had on the relationship. I can walk away from that and say, "I'm not a cheat. Thank," you know, "thank goodness. I should feel really good about myself."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:56 But the problem often is then, if we take a relationship as an example, that experience-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:19:04 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:04 ... of, let's say, someone in a, um, in, in a relationship, one party has cheated-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:19:13 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:13 ... for whatever reason-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:19:14 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:14 ... okay? The party who hasn't, yes, as you said, they can walk away. They know that they didn't cheat, and maybe, you know, integrity, um, trust, these are, these are core values to them, so they know they didn't break that.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:19:28 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:29 But unfortunately, because of how our brain is wired, often what happens is that that then impacts how we show up in the future.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:19:38 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:38 Because we were cheated on once, it's less likely we want to trust in the future.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:19:45 Yeah. That's true. So I, I wanna go back and pick up on something that you said about, um, that you, you know, you, you can't operate based on trust when you're in, when you're under a lot of stress. So they're actually opposite states.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:58 Sorry to interrupt. If you're enjoying this video and want to learn more, you can download my free special guide containing six simple breathing practices that will help you calm your mind, lower stress, and improve your energy. To get ahold of this guide, all you have to do is click on the link in the description box below

Dr. Tara Swart 1:20:18 So the survival emotions, fear, anger, disgust, shame, and sadness, which correlate with the hormone cortisol, at the other end of the spectrum, we have joy, excitement, love, and trust, and they correlate with the hormone oxytocin. So you can't be in those two states at the same time 'cause one of those hormones is higher than the other. Um, so you literally cannot, uh, like trust yourself, trust anyone else, trust your decision-making when you're in this stressed state.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:50 So you say you trust your gut a lot, I think, when you make decisions.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:20:55 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:55 Right. So if we're gonna follow everything we've just said throughout the course of this conversation so far, right? In order to trust your gut, you can't be stressed, rushing around, overly busy. How do you then... Because so many people really struggle with this.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:21:17 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:17 The reason I'm, I'm spending a long time on this chronic stress is because I've seen firsthand how many people this impacts.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:21:27 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:27 Right? Physical health, mental health, emotional health, the whole shebang-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:21:31 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:31 ... when we're chronically stressed, and I genuinely believe that a lot of us don't even realize how stressed we are.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:21:38 I agree.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:38 We, we just got used to that as our normal state.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:21:41 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:41 So our decision-making comes from that place of stress-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:21:44 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:44 ... which is why I think we find it hard to operate from love and trust and joy and compassion.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:21:49 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:50 Because of that, what can people do? How do you do it? How d- how do you know when you're making a decision if it is really coming from trust or it's coming from fear?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:22:04 Oh, I mean, I can tell the diff... I, I can feel physically when, when I'm making a decision, like what state I'm in.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:11 In your head or in your body?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:22:12 In my body.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:13 So what happens?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:22:14 Um, so may- maybe both, but, like, if I'm... Because, you know, even, even I go [laughs] between those. I'm not constantly, like, walking around in a love bubble. Um, you know, if I'm smiling, if I'm feeling calm, um, if I'm, like, you know, moving relatively more slowly, then, you know, I can tell that I'm in parasympathetic, which is basically, like, rest and digest-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:47 Mm

Dr. Tara Swart 1:22:47 ... or rest and relax. When I'm feeling agitated, you know, my facial expression is not, you know, it's kind of, like, down, um, when my, like, thoughts are, like, racing more, then I know that I'm, I'm probab- you know, I'm not gonna be making the best decisions that I can. And, and often it comes with that feeling of, "I can't decide. I can't..." You know, like something that, a decision that you need to make, you just feel like you can't make it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:19 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:23:19 It just feels very cloudy. Whereas when you're in the trust and love state, things feel very clear. Um, what I tend to do, what I've learned to do at that time is think of three people in, you know, family or friends that I trust who would have a relevant opinion to the decision that I'm trying to make. So, you know, it's three d- could be three different people each time. And I ask each of them what their opinion is, and, and then I will use that to try to inform my opinion. But also, I'll try to wait till I'm, you know, in a better state before I make a final decision.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:59 When you are asking your family or friends, are you literally calling them and asking them?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:24:03 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:03 And the reason I ask that is I, is because I had Shane Parrish on the show-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:24:07 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:07 ... a couple of months ago, who's just written this book called Clear Thinking, and in that book, Shane talks about having a board of directors-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:24:14 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:14 ... that we can always refer to.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:24:16 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:16 But those board of directors could be dead. They could be fictional characters-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:24:20 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:20 ... from the past. So he, you know, he wouldn't be against what you just said-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:24:24 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:25 ... but he would be, you know, I guess he would make the case that, let's say, for example, someone doesn't have access to friends or family-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:24:34 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:34 ... and they feel really, really isolated.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:24:36 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:36 Maybe this board of directors side is super helpful for that person. You-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:24:39 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:39 ... you've got friends, you've got family-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:24:41 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:41 ... you can call, uh, and ask for, for help. But it's almost like imagining, well, you know, let's say someone had you on their board of directors. Well, what would, what would Dr. Tara do here?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:24:52 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:53 What would she say in this situation? You know?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:24:55 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:55 What would... I don't know. What would my grandma who died 10 years ago, what would she say about that?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:25:02 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:02 I guess in both examples, what's going on, in some ways we're getting out of our own heads and our bodies and minds, and we're, we're getting a bit of distance.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:25:13 Yeah. So it's basically coming back to that idea of metacognition, which is that when you're embroiled in your own thoughts and feelings, it can be very difficult to be rational and have perspective. But if your brother came to you with the same issue that you're experiencing, you would be able to give him-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:31 Easy

Dr. Tara Swart 1:25:31 ... some advice. So by having either the actual friends or the fictional board of directors, you're stepping, like, one step aside from yourself. Another thing that I say to people is, "What, what would your sister or best friend say to you?" Or, you know, "What would your wife say to you?" And another exercise I do on my own is I po- I, you know, I sort of acknowledge that I am here in the present today, the age that I am, um, and I pose a question to myself seven years in the future, and then actually walk seven steps forward and turn around

1:26:06 And as if I'm looking at Tara today, and I identify myself as Tara plus seven years, um, and then I answer the question. And that is accessing your intuition, and sometimes it's incredible. You re- you literally feel like a different person. Um, like you're looking at that Tara and just thinking, "If only you knew what I know now."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:28 Different people in the same household can be feeling differently-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:26:34 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:34 ... about the same problem.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:26:36 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:36 And therefore, unless we understand that, this can cause disharmony, this can cause fights between partners-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:26:44 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:44 ... you know, parents and children. And so yes, having an understanding of that's important, but what can we actually do about that?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:26:52 Yeah, so that's where journaling really comes in. Because if you write down how you're feeling, like I know you like to do that morning pages then, you know, just that freeform how I'm feeling. Then when you can reflect afterwards about why maybe a conflict occurred, or why you felt like somebody wasn't on the same page as you, or they got snappy with you, or you got snappy with them, you can start to equate whether it's a physical feeling, whether it's just the mood that you wake up in in the morning, to a certain emotional state. And then if it happens again, you can recognize it maybe a bit earlier and maybe not go as far as snapping. You know, you might say, "I'm having a bad day. Um, I'm feeling the same as I did, you know, three weeks ago when X happened." But you might find some strategies to not snap. So you know, you may go for a walk. Um, you m- you can, it can help you make the decision between is it the right day to go for a family bike ride, or do you need a bit of time to yourself, for example?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:50 That, that, that is so key, isn't it? Because let's talk about parents. You know, we are both parents. We have children in the house with us during this period, and it's something that can pose some challenges. There can be some wonderful benefits of that-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:28:06 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:06 ... but there can also be, you know, a, a bit less time to ourselves. And, and I've noticed this with my wife a little bit. Like sometimes we will go all out together, the four of us, on a bike ride-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:28:18 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:18 ... or a walk. Where sometimes she'll want me to take the kids so that she can go for a walk-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:28:24 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:24 ... herself.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:28:25 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:26 And I guess what we're fundamentally talking about is awareness, an awareness of how we're feeling and an awareness of what we need. And you know, I don't know what you think of this, Tara, but I think unless you have some degree of solitude in your day, some time to reflect in some way, whether that's journaling or sitting in the garden staring at the birds, I think it's very hard to actually know what's going on in your own body and your own mind.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:28:58 I think it's so interesting that you've picked that up, because most people are... You know, the narrative is, "I don't have as much connection as I normally do." You know, some people might be completely on their own, or it might, you know, they might be just a couple. So it's interesting you said we've both got children, but you know, I'm a step-parent and mine, mine's an adult, and so we're not actually together. So that's a separate concern. You know, somebody's on their own and are they lonely? What's happening to their mental health? Um, so my husband and I find ourselves alone together for the first time since we've, you know, been married. Um, and it's very easy to focus on not being connected to many friends or other members of the family. But it's very interesting how I actually find I really need time to myself, even w- though I'm only with one other person. Um, and I think people get into a routine. We sort of naturally, we have all our meals together, but in between that he goes to his study, I, I work from here. And then at 5:00 or 6:00 o'clock we come together to do some exercise, and then it's cook dinner and, you know, watch, watch something [laughs] on the TV, basically. So we've got a little routine like that. And one of my friends, because she is homeschooling and working, um, I said to her, "You know, I've just got a husband to look after. You've got a husband, a son, a dog and two cats."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:13 [laughs]

Dr. Tara Swart 1:30:13 And she said, the other day all of us were sitting on the couch together and she said, "The more time we spend together, the more we want to be together." So you know, there are so many different experiences of, of what we're all going through now.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:24 Yeah, and I think it's one of those things that possibly isn't getting spoken about enough.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:28 Maybe because we feel insensitive talking about the possible upsides of lockdown. But I think-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:30:37 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:37 ... I think it's okay to do that. I think we can recognize on one hand, yes, this is hard. Some people are having their businesses ruined, economic hardship-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:30:46 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:46 ... they're gonna lose their jobs. They're ha- being more anxious, mental health problems. Some people are obviously getting hospitalized. Um, you know, people are having loved ones die. You know, I get it on one hand-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:30:59 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:00 ... clearly a lot of negatives. But there's always positives that we can take from negative experiences, and it's something I guess we touched on, upon on, on our first conversation about how, you know, your divorce, uh-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:31:17 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:17 ... my experience of my bereavement, well, my, my father dying and how that impacted me-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:31:23 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:23 ... has actually caused a lot of changes, and a lot of positive changes in our lives on the back of that. So you know, I think it's okay to say, "Yeah, it, it's, it's a hard time." But actually, you know, on a personal level, I've gotta say there have been many positives.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:31:39 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:39 I have never spent this much time with my kids and my wife on a consistent basis.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:31:46 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:46 You know? And you know what? I realize I love being around them. Like, I knew that anyway-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:31:51 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:51 ... but I love it even more. And I think, well-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:31:53 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:54 ... what would life look like if I saw them this much all the time? Can I, um, can I sort of start to create a life which actually puts that at the heart of it?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:32:06 Yeah, I completely agree with you. And I, you know, I already said there's two sides to every coin. And so you're absolutely right, you know, there's, there's grief, there's, there's mental health, um, adjustment issues. And, you know, I'm very concerned about how we're going to readjust when things, you know, go back to how they were or the new normal, whatever that's going to be. I don't think we've paid enough attention to how difficult that might be for people. But, but you're absolutely right. There are, you know, there's so many positives. And I've coined a phrase that, you know, th- this, there could be a mental health crisis under the radar of this and/or there could be a spiritual revolution. And actually, you know, there are bits of both. So I've definitely had my ups and downs. But, um, I've got such a strong focus on my personal development now, what I'm reading, I'm doing an online course, I'm getting coaching. Um, and it's, you know, in, in that respect I think it's a wonderful way to look at who you really are. It reminds me of Jon Kabat-Zinn's phrase, "Wherever you go, there you are." [laughs] Well, at the moment, there you are all the time, 24/7. You know, you can't get away from yourself. And so what I've really seen, and I'd love to hear what, what you've noticed in this respect, is after I got divorced, that's when, you know, at rock bottom, I had a huge realization about my level of determination, that it was very, very strong, and I'd never had a reason to really notice it before. But, you know, when I had to, that's what I noticed. And now that, you know, you can't have people coming into the house if, you know, something breaks like the fridge or the boiler or, or an electrical switch, all examples of things that I've [laughs] had to deal with in the last few weeks or months. And normally where you just pick up the phone and get somebody else to deal with it, now I'm like, "Can I change an electrical switch?" Or, you know, sort of f- the fridge drawer broke, I asked my husband to do it, and he said, "There's some- something wrong with it. It's impossible." And so I said, "I'll have another go." And, you know, and I kept at it till I did it. And it sort of reminded me that that determination that I discovered at the worst time of my life is really playing out now. And I think it's so interesting to think what's coming to the fore now, good and bad. You know, because there are things that I'm seeing about myself that I hadn't noticed before that people would call shadow work. You know, some of these emotions that come up when you're under stress. They're more obvious now than they might be at normal times. So, but I'm taking that as an opportunity to work on those things, and I'm reminding myself, you know, "You're h- you're so determined," like, what can you get done kind of thing, and that's a really good feeling. So it's fine to have both, like you say.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:36 Yeah, I, I guess it's really hammering home that theme of awareness, isn't it? You're, you, you're aware of some of these positive qualities, and you're choosing to put your attention on them. You're choosing to actually feed your brain that information that, "Hey, look, I, I, I am determined. I am resourceful." And that really, you know, that really plays into, you know, a lot of the themes that you write about, you talk about how powerful our thoughts are and how, how important it is that we intentionally put our focus on particular areas. You know, why focus on the negatives? Why not spend our time focusing on the positives? And then that's what we become. And, you know-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:35:16 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:16 ... hearing that it's, it made me think, you know, this is trivial, right? This is so trivial. But, you know, I, like many busy people, I say busy in inverted commas because I think busyness is a trap that many of us fall into-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:35:31 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:31 ... in the modern world. But a simple thing like, I don't know, like I, I've cycled a lot more in the last six or seven weeks than ever, frankly, for years. Like every day I'm taking the kids on a bike ride somewhere. I mean, it's, it's brilliant.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:35:46 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:46 And I realized that I would occasionally get my bike or their bike serviced. Like, I would take it in. There's nothing wrong with that. But one of their brakes wasn't working the other day, and there was an issue. And I thought, "Well, everything's shut." I thought, "Rangan, come on, you can do this." And, you know-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:36:01 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:01 ... I spent a bit of time figuring it out, getting the toolkit out, and I fixed it. And I know it sounds so small, but you know what? I had such... It felt so good. I thought, "Oh, I'm, I'm able to do that." It was just a small thing, but it, yeah, it really made me feel good.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:36:19 Yeah. It's, it's, it is... I totally get it. 'Cause when I had to phone up the electrical company about this switch, I was, it, you know, I described the problem. He said, "It sounds like it's a switch. You know, the switch needs to be changed." And I was like, "Could I do it?" And he said, "Well, you know, it's like for like. If you open it up and you see where it is and you change the part, you just, you know, put it back to how it was." And I said, "I am a scientist. I think I could do it." [laughs] You know? And it's, um, it- I've been doing, um, in this personal development work sort of revisiting some of my childhood, like who were you before, you know, sort of school and parental expectation and stuff, you know, molded you into the adult that you became. And one of the first things I ever said, apparently, was when, um, you know, I was, I was so small that at the age that your parents still brushed your teeth, apparently I used to often say, "I do it. I do it." And that's definitely coming off again now. I'm feeling just so, like, you know, if the brakes failed on my bike, yeah, I definitely would have a go. And, and I know it would make me feel so good even though it seems like a small thing.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:19 Yeah. Let's be, let's be aware that there's be some people listening to this now who'll go, "Look, okay, I've never been as stressed as I am right now. I've got my kids at home. I'm trying to work," or, "I'm an intensive care nurse and I'm doing shifts, and then I come back and my children are at home, and I'm knackered. And I see on Instagram that people are learning Chinese. I just want to be able to get through the day." So for someone like that who doesn't feel that they've got time-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:37:46 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:46 ... you know, what would you say to them that they might want to focus on during this period?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:37:51 Mm-hmm. Um, I've actually... So I, I read a, a headline that JK Rowling has, had come out and said, you know, all those life coaches who, who are saying this is the time to learn Chinese or, you know, build your new brand should stop shaming people. And the neuroscience really supports that that, that is the case. That I think, you know, I'm talking about embedding micro habits. I'm not saying learn a new language or, you know, sort of, um- Do lots of things, and I completely understand what you're saying. There are some people that are just under so much pressure, and they can't make time for themselves, and they, you know, don't necessarily want to do lots of new things 'cause they don't have the bandwidth in their brain. So I think really the answer is be kind to yourself. Even if it's just having a bath, you know, maybe with some magnesium salts. Um, because people who are stressed have high levels of circulating cortisol, the stress hormone, there's a systemic dryness. You know, you've got dry skin, dry hair. There might be issues with, um, you know, bowel movements and things. So just paying attention to drinking more water. Um, you know, I've got clients at the moment with kidney stones because they're, you know, so busy trying to fit everything in, they're not drinking enough water. So I think, like I said, embedding micro habits, doing those small things that, you know, in your busy life you say, "Oh, I wish I could get into the habit of exercising, taking supplements," but you don't do it. Well, now try to focus on those small things that will actually make your brain and your body more able to cope with the stress that you're going through.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:23 Tara, I love that advice. And, you know, it just so aligns with what I also stand for. I think micro habits are very much undervalued. Um, you know, I've, I've been speaking about for the whole year five-minute interventions-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:39:39 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:39 ... and how five minutes can make a huge difference, and we all have five minutes, right? We all have five minutes.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:39:45 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:46 If we look at, if we, if we analyze our day and what we've spent time doing, I would, I would challenge most people to say they don't have five minutes in the day for a bit of self-care, you know?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:39:57 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:57 And it could be anything. It could be five minutes of journaling first thing in the morning.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:40:01 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:01 It could be last thing at night. It could be just before you have your lunch or your dinner, you do a quick five-minute workout. Even less than five minutes, right? I, I tried to buy some kettlebells I think two weeks into lockdown, and frankly, I couldn't find a single one in the entire UK. Like, nothing. So I imagine that pretty much every household in the UK at the moment [laughs] has got some form of home exercise equipment. Now, I don't think you need home exercise equipment, but if you've got a dumbbell or a kettlebell, right? It's like put it in your kitchen or put it in your bedroom so you're always being visually triggered by it.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:40:38 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:38 And even if once a day you pick it up and do five bicep curls on each arm, if that's all you do, that is still self-care. That is still sending a signal to your body saying, "You know what? I prioritize myself. I'm a strong human being that's thriving."

Dr. Tara Swart 1:40:54 Mm-hmm. Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:55 And we really shouldn't undervalue the value and, and just how impactful these small micro habits are, especially when you do them consistently.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:41:08 Yeah, I love your, you know, five minutes a day and, you know, there are like a, there's 30 or more tips in your book, isn't there?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:14 Yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:41:14 Of things that you can do for five minutes. Um, my one is I once, um... So I keep my yoga mat out in my bedroom 'cause it's that trigger, you know?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:23 Yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:41:23 So you sort of feel a little bit. Um, a yoga teacher once said to me when I asked, "How do you get into the habit of a daily practice so you don't always have 90 minutes or an hour or even half an hour necessarily?" And she said, "If you leave your yoga mat out, even if you just lie on it for five minutes, that's a daily practice. If you can do 90 minutes the next day or, you know, an hour or whatever, that's more of your practice. But even if you just lie on your mat for five minutes, then you've done, you've connected with your yoga mat every day." And last time we talked about self-love, which I think is more important than ever now, and I think even just lying on that mat is telling yourself, "I care for myself. I love myself. I'm taking this time because me being well and whole is important."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:13 Oh, well, Tara, it- it's so amazing to hear you say this, and I just wanna, for people listening to this now, just let me just reemphasize. Tara is, um, a medical doctor, psychiatrist, health coach, neuroscientist, lecturer at MIT, executive coach. You know, I, I could list it off. The, the point I'm trying to make is with all your specialist qualification in a number of different fields, you're still saying even five minutes a day of lying on a yoga mat has value. And I really want-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:42:46 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:47 ... people listening to this to really, really absorb that and go, "It really makes a difference." So I just wanna add to that and say, and, and, you know, a lot of, um, BJ Fogg, Professor BJ Fogg's work, uh, from Stanford on behavior change talks about the importance of tiny habits. Um-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:43:04 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:04 ... and, and really even the point where even if you do one minute, you're still engaging in that. You're still going through the process of creating that habit. Like if you make-

Dr. Tara Swart 1:43:13 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:13 ... one or two minutes or even five minutes your goal, if you do, if you do one or two minutes, you get your tick. Some days you'll do 10 minutes. Some days you'll do 20 minutes. But on your bad day, still lie on the mat, still do your two minutes or your five minutes.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:43:27 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:27 And it takes the pressure off. And I also like what he talks about, you've said this before, about how emotion also helps us, um, create these habits, a positive emotion, right? So do you do, do you, with your clients, with your, um, with the people you coach, do you talk to them about how to create those positive emotions after they've engaged in a habit?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:43:51 Yeah. So the way that, the word that I use, but we're talking about the same thing, is intention. So it's your intention or desire to do something does make a difference to how li- likely you are to do it, and then the enjoyment of it also has a different effect on your brain of producing endorphins that make you, you know, they create a sort of motivational pathway where you want to do that activity more. So basically, choosing something that you enjoy or is really meaningful to you. You know, for me, that story of even if you lie on your mat for five minute- your yoga mat for five minutes- Uh, in my mind, that's become associated with self-care and self-love. So it means a lot more to me than just lying on my mat for five minutes. And so each person needs to find that thing for themselves because when the intention is that positive and meaningful, you're both more likely to do it and more likely to get more benefit out of it for your brain and your body.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:45 Yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:44:46 So, you know, for example, what I said about the cortisol, which ... I agree with you. There are lots of positives to, you know, sort of not being as busy as we were, not traveling, you know, having more time at home, having more time with your loved ones. But it's still the case that there's this surreal background of something's wrong, you know? That is there, that background anxiety. Um, and so doing these things that can also reduce your stress levels. So, you know, taking a bath, lying on your yoga mat, doing yoga, whatever it is for you that you know is the thing that reduces your stress. I mean, my one is that it's a, you know, a bath with the magnesium salts in.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:27 Yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:45:27 Because magnesium, you know, it sort of reduces levels of the stress hormone. So if I, if, you know, if I'm having a really bad day, I'll just go straight up to the bath. Um, and, you know, keeping on top of things like ordering your magnesium salts from Amazon or whatever so that you ... They're always there. Um, I've just, you know, it's just triggered me to remember I'm about to run out. So even that's an act of self-care, remembering to top up the stuff that you need to keep you going when, when you're not having a good day. But then absolutely focusing on, on the good days. I mean, you know, I had a very interesting reflection a couple of weeks ago where I guess I was probably quite grumpy, but I, you know, wasn't that aware of it. But then I woke up one day, and I just felt so much more positive, and I thought, "Oh, okay, I had two days where I was not really, you know, feeling that great. What can I learn from it? You know, how can I make sure it doesn't last as long next time?" Um, so I have this really nice practice that I'm doing in the morning now, which is as soon as I wake up, 'cause as you know, um, I used to do my meditation on the tube. Well, that's-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:30 Yeah

Dr. Tara Swart 1:46:30 ... you know, I'm not doing that now. [laughs] So d- as soon as I wake up, otherwise I find that I don't do it. Um, that's quite, that's a tip I've been helping my clients with, saying if something's important to you, for your self-care, do it first thing in the morning. Um, 'cause there's so many distractions now. We're working and we're managing the household, and, you know, those things can get mixed up. So I ask myself a question, whatever I'm working on at the moment, and I ask it to my brain for a logical answer, and then I do some deep breathing, and then I place my hands on my heart and I ask it to my heart for an emotional answer. And then I do some deep breathing. I place my hands on my belly, and I ask the same question for an intuitive answer. Um, and that's something I've written about in the book, um, ca- which I've called harmony, which is that you're aligned in your head, your heart, and your gut. Um, and it's, it's fascinating how you get ans- like you said in your jour- in your journaling, you sometimes write something that you w- you weren't aware of, that you didn't expect. You get answers that were not at the front of your mind if you push it deeper and deeper. So that's something I've been doing with, with some of my clients as well.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:36 Tara, that's such a beautiful, such a beautiful image comes with my mind of that, how you just align everything and you ask different parts of you for the answer rather than most of us, often it's just this kind of, you know, the brain or the emotional brain that's kind of determining what we do, and we don't sort of take time to tap into other parts of us to actually tell us a- and help us to determine what's going on. I really, really like that. Um, you mentioned before that one of, one of the things you predict is that we may either have a mental health crisis on the back of this or a spiritual revolution, or more likely a bit of both.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:48:18 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:19 Now, I'd love to sort of delve into this a little bit. So when you say spiritual revolution, I think it's probably worth defining what do you mean by the word spirituality? And then we can perhaps go a bit deeper and go, why does the current pandemic lead you to believe that many people might start to access this idea in themselves? 'Cause I agree. I absolutely agree. Many people are questioning life and where they fit into society and what's their role.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:48:52 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:52 Right? So perhaps you could start by just defining what do you mean when you say spirituality?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:48:59 So that's ... I, I don't know whether to answer that or to, to f- sort of put it back to your listeners and say, you know, what it means to you. But the way that I, you know, have described it in the past is that things, everything in life can be broken, can be, you know, sort of put into a grid of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. So physical is obviously what's going on in your body, and, um, I talk about something that you'll know about, but I just feel that not many people do, which is our, our sense, you could call it our sixth sense, which is interoception, which is the understanding of the physiological state of the inside of your body. So, you know, your breathing, your digestion, um, the, the, you know, the dryness of your skin, that kind of thing. So what's going on in your body. What- mental is what's going on in your thoughts, and emotional is what's going on in your feelings. So sometimes people say what's the difference between those two, but, you know, thoughts are the ki- the nature of the thoughts you're having. Are they negative? Are they positive? Um, how many thoughts you're having. Do you feel quite blank or do you feel like, you know, there's a million thoughts rushing around your head? And then the emotions are do you feel sad? Do you feel angry? Do you feel frightened? Do you feel happy? Do you feel, um, you know, trust or love in, you know, uh, the people that you're with or in the process of what's gonna happen? Um, and then spiritual is really something that's not explained by those three things, and it's something that you feel in your spirit or your integrity or your values. But I would have to say that during this pandemic I would add something to that, which is- I s- I did mention it in the book, but I think I wasn't brave enough to go down that spiritual path too much 'cause, you know, I felt that it was about the backing of the science, which is something I've called universal connection. So it's either the understanding that we're connected to each other in ways that we either didn't understand before or have chosen not to really acknowledge, and also that there's, you know, there's some greater force that we're, we're also connected to. So whether you call it a universal consciousness, um, Carl Jung, the psychologist, talked about the collective unconscious, and that's certainly, um, showing up now in the phenomenon of vivid dreaming. Have you been experiencing vivid dreams?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:20 You know what? I think I might have done on a day or two, but not really. Um, I think my wife has. I think my kids certainly have, and I know many people out there have been. And, and you did a, a really fascinating Instagram post on this, didn't you, about vivid dreaming?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:51:39 Yeah. It's, 'cause I've had a vivid dream, and it was, it was a strange story. I basically... So what's happening is that because we're, you know, we're in uncertainty, there's usually an anxiety element to these dreams and, and that makes people think that it's bad. But actually, it's very healthy emotional processing that our brains are doing. Um, so, you know, I thought I was absolutely fine until I had this anxiety dream, and I was like, okay, you know, obviously there's some background anxiety, and that's, that's, that's normal. That's fine. So I was basically in a scary place and, um, you know, couldn't get out, and suddenly one of my former coaching clients from years ago appeared, uh, in front of me. And I was so relieved to see him that I, you know, ran forward and gave him a hug, and then he took me by the hand, and he rescued me from this place. But as soon as we got outside, I said to him, "But I hugged you, and you held my hand, and now I'm going to get COVID." And then I woke up thinking, like, "What a strange dream." So I came downstairs, and I said to my husband that I had this strange dream and this guy was in it, and he, you know, he knows the guy, so I mentioned him by name. And then as I said, we had breakfast, and then he went to his study, and I was working. And I get a text message, and it's from the guy that was in the dream the night before. [laughs] I mean, no word of a lie, I checked. He hadn't texted me for three months, and he was just checking in, "How are you?" And I went around to my husband's study, and I said, "You are not going to believe who I've just had a text message from."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:04 [laughs]

Dr. Tara Swart 1:53:05 And he said, "I, I can't imagine." Um, and I said, "You know, if I hadn't told you about the dream, if I came to you now and said, 'I got a text message from this guy, and he was in my dream last night,' you would have just written that off." But the fact that I had told him and then it happened, I know that's a total anecdote, but it just made me look into this collective unconscious and vivid dreaming, and it turns out that it's a phenomenon that occurred during both the World Wars and the Holocaust. So, you know, again, that's when all, the, the whole world was involved in something that affected them. Doesn't matter who you are, where you are, you're being affected by this global situation, um, in a, you know, a way that's anxiety inducing. Um, and then, um, I looked into it a bit more. I used to live and work in Australia, so, you know, I know quite a lot about the Aboriginal dream time, and, you know, that's a concept of the story of creativity and h- and our connectedness to everything and everyone. And I started thinking, well, there's, you know, there's definitely something here. And then two completely different sets of journalists contacted me to ask, um, for, you know, some sort of neuroscience quotes on vivid, the vivid dreaming phenomenon. And, and I got quite a lot of responses to that IGTV, people saying that it's a thing in African culture, Asian cultures. Um, so it's fascinating. Yeah, I mean, I can't, I can't explain it, and I guess that's what spirituality means to me, something that you feel to be true and important but you can't necessarily explain.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:36 I think that's so lovely the way you put that. What does intuition mean to you?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:54:44 Um, so basically it means wisdom from all the life lessons that we've picked up, you know, throughout our life but don't necessarily consciously remember. So, you know, let's start with just that s- basic fact, which is we cannot remember everything that we've experienced in our whole life. But we will have, you know, let-- we didn't quite finish off with that, that cheating example, so let's use that as, as an example. We may have been in a relationship that we thought was going to last forever, and then the person cheated, and, you know, you, you took us up to the point where that leaves the person that's been cheated on less willing to trust people in future. Um, and if that happens three or four or five times, then yes, that is your, that's your pattern. Um, but if you say, "Maybe it's because I'm choosing the wrong kind of person for me. Maybe it's because I'm choosing someone that doesn't have the same values as me," then you can use your judgment to make a different decision-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:55:51 Mm

Dr. Tara Swart 1:55:51 ... the next time round, or to make it very clear that that is a deal breaker for you. You know, sometimes these things aren't actually said out loud beforehand. So intuition would be, in that example, a way of making your own judgment based on relationships that you've had before, people that you know, you know, examples of relationships that you have in front of you, of whether this is likely to be a trustworthy person. Um, and then just in all other scenarios, it's, it's the knowing that you have, not based on anything logical or a- you know, necess- obvious data, but based on a sense that you have of the world through the experiences that you've- Felt out

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:38 Yeah, I love that. I asked my wife this question yesterday. I said, "What's intuition to you?" And she just had a couple of seconds thoughts and said, "A knowingness not based on logic."

Dr. Tara Swart 1:56:51 Oh.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:52 And then she got up and went and put the kettle on.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:56:54 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:54 I was like, "That's amazing. I love that."

Dr. Tara Swart 1:56:56 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:56 "That's really, really good. I kind of like that." And it sort of echoes what you just said, right?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:56:59 Yeah, totally.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:57:01 But where does that knowingness come from?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:57:04 Well, it comes from all the experiences that we've had in life, but we don't necessarily remember. So it comes from, you know, like, again, let's take up this cheating example. It comes from the relationship that you witnessed between your parents when you were a kid. It comes from the way your parent of the oppo- opposite gender, what, you know, whatever it was that they did to contribute to or belittle your self-worth.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:57:28 Okay. I'm lo- I'm loving this, Tara, right? So let me continue on that thread, right? So it goes ... It's based upon your past experiences and what you've learnt because of course the brain doesn't forget. It, it logs all of this stuff.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:57:40 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:57:42 So let's keep on that cheating example. So that individual who has been cheated on five to 10 times, let's say.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:57:50 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:57:54 10 years on from that, when they make a judgment based on intuition, their intuition is predicated on the fact that they've been cheated on for 10 years.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:58:07 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:07 So which kind of makes sense because the brain is always trying to predict the future based on past behavior, right?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:58:13 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:14 So it kind of all makes sense. But that can also be problematic 'cause that person can be tapped into their intuition which says, "Hey, when you get into relationships, someone's gonna cheat on you."

Dr. Tara Swart 1:58:24 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:25 But actually that's probably not that helpful. And we, I guess we believe, a lot of us, that intuition is a good thing.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:58:32 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:33 So help us unpack that puzzle if you can.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:58:36 Yeah. So I wouldn't actually call that intuition because that is based on data. So if you've been cheated on five or 10 times, that's, those are facts. So I, I would look more then at what is it about the choice of partner that you're making or the dynamic within the relationship, um, your self-worth, you know. I would look at more of, you know, what is it about you and your, how you behave in a romantic relationship that is repeatedly leading to this outcome.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:15 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:59:16 So it would be logical for that person-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:18 Yeah

Dr. Tara Swart 1:59:18 ... to think that the next person they choose is, is not gonna be faithful to them. Um-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:24 It totally makes sense, doesn't it?

Dr. Tara Swart 1:59:25 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:27 Yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 1:59:27 So I think intuition is more ... An example of that is when a relationship is, it's obvious to everybody else that it's gonna end soon, but the person is clinging on because they're afraid of being single or they, you know, feel ashamed that they couldn't make it work. There are so many times where p- the two people in the relationship are so unhappy that they should just say, "You know what? We used to make each other happy once. We're actually now making each other unhappy. We should probably just let each other go." But, you know, that period tends to be quite drawn out, and that, that leads to, like, more negative experiences. Um, and, you know, that can, that can definitely then, like, damage your, your self-worth, which is the thing that you must fight for really at all costs is your self-esteem, your self-worth. Because that's really the filter that shows you what, if, whether, whether the world is safe or not, whether a person's trustworthy or not. Um, but what the brain tends to do in a stressed state is, so the amygdala, which I mentioned before, the emotional center, gets together with the hippocampus, which is where our memories are stored, and brings up every example of, oh, the last time someone dumped you, you were single for, you know, six years, um, which makes you want to, like, hold onto the status quo out of fear even though you actually know that you're not happy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:01:02 Yeah. How do we tap into our intuition? If we wanna get better, I'd say, if we wanna go, "Look, I, I like the sound of that, Tara. I want-"

Dr. Tara Swart 2:01:12 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:01:12 "I, I've forgotten what intuition feels like-"

Dr. Tara Swart 2:01:16 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:01:16 "... what it looks like for me."

Dr. Tara Swart 2:01:17 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:01:18 "How can I retap into it?"

Dr. Tara Swart 2:01:21 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:01:22 What would you say to them?

Dr. Tara Swart 2:01:23 So if ... I'll, I'll just finish off with that example, and then I'll speak a bit more generally. With, with that example, I would say if you recognize that you have been in that situation before, and maybe you've, maybe you've been in that situation and, and you've said, "You know what? If I get to the stage in a relationship where we're, we're actually both miserable, it's not gonna last forever, it would be better to, like, end it quick sooner. You know, it's less painful for everyone," that you remember that the next time and that you act on it and you do something differently to demonstrate to yourself that you're not just repeating the same pattern.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:01:58 Mm.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:01:58 But more generally, I do think journaling is a really great way to hone your intuition. That's how ... I think I was, I was using intuition, but it, when I first started journaling, that was really how I built my intuition into a superpower, was through journaling. So what I would do, with every decision that I had to make, I would write down what logic was telling me, and I would write down what intuition was telling me. Now, if they were saying the same thing, that was fine. That's easy. If they weren't, then most people's tendency is to go with logic. So what I would suggest is that in a low-risk sc- scenario, if your logic and your intuition aren't aligned- Do an experiment and go with the intuition and see what happens, and write it down. Um, and then as you become more confident in your intuition, do it with something that's a bit more, you know, high stakes. And through pretty much, you know, experimenting like that, a period of trial and error for me, I got to the point where I, I had-- I could convince myself with the data that my intuition was always more accurate than my logic.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:10 I love that. So you ran an experiment on yourself basically.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:03:13 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:13 I love that. In low-risk situations, give it a go 'cause-

Dr. Tara Swart 2:03:18 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:18 ... who cares?

Dr. Tara Swart 2:03:19 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:19 Doesn't really matter.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:03:20 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:21 And I guess, you know, what's a common scenario? It might be, I don't know, applying for a job, or someone's got three job offers or three jobs, so they can't decide.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:03:31 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:31 Right? So that's a, presumably for most people, quite a high-stakes decision.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:03:36 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:37 But I guess the lesson is, if you've been practicing for a period of time-

Dr. Tara Swart 2:03:42 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:42 ... let's say with journaling, then when that high-stakes decision comes into your life, you've got evidence-

Dr. Tara Swart 2:03:50 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:50 ... to kind of say, "Hey, listen, I know that usually my intuition is correct."

Dr. Tara Swart 2:03:56 Mm. Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:59 It's really interesting when we think about that in relationship to decisions that we have to make in our life.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:04:05 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:06 One thing, Tara, I've been thinking a lot about recently is this idea that people, I think, especially today, because we live in this era of information overload, right? Let's even talk within our, you know, our wheelhouse, health and wellbeing, right?

Dr. Tara Swart 2:04:29 Mm. Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:30 There's a million experts online.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:04:32 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:32 Right? We're not all saying the same thing, and what I see often happening is that people have an over-reliance on experts.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:04:42 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:43 And what I mean by that is not that they shouldn't listen to experts, but that let's say you were saying one thing-

Dr. Tara Swart 2:04:51 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:51 ... and they like you and they trust you, and they go, "Wow, you've got all the minerals, you've got all the qualifications and the experience."

Dr. Tara Swart 2:04:57 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:04:58 And let's say you have a particular perspective on one thing.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:05:01 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05:02 And then they also like me and go, "Yeah, but you've also wrong and got the minerals and the experience and the qualifications."

Dr. Tara Swart 2:05:09 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05:09 But you're saying different things.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:05:10 Yeah. So let's, let's give a concrete example for that. So I don't eat breakfast, so I only eat between 12 and 8. So let's say I'm not... I'm just saying what I do, I'm not saying everybody should be doing that [laughs] . But you know, let's say that you s- I say I don't eat breakfast and you say you do eat breakfast, and we've both got the same qualifications. So I think what you're trying to say is that then each person has to think, "Okay, there are pros and cons to eating breakfast or not eating breakfast. What is right for me?"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05:40 Yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:05:41 Each person should know their body better than any doctor or expert.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05:45 Agreed. Exactly what I'm trying to say. Yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:05:47 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:05:48 And so I guess what I'd love your perspective on is for people who are listening to this right now, who do get into a jam on those things and go, "Man, I, I find it confusing when, I don't know, this guy says low carb, and this person says plant-based."

Dr. Tara Swart 2:06:06 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:06 "And I don't know what I should do."

Dr. Tara Swart 2:06:10 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:10 How do you help that person become their own expert?

Dr. Tara Swart 2:06:15 Um, it's, it is quite hard because, you know, even with like the team of people that work for me, they'll, they come to me for the latest on, you know, what should you be eating, what should you not be eating. And I remember one of them asked for Christmas to get, um, one of those food intolerance tests that you can get, and I said, "Why don't you just listen to your body?" And she said, "Well, I'm not you, Tara. [laughs] I'm not a doctor. Like, I can't, I can't do that." Um, I think it's important for people to know that intuition is often referred to as the sixth sense, but the actual sixth sense that we have is called interoception.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06:51 Mm.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:06:52 Which is our sense of the physiological state of the inside of our body. It's how we know when we need to go to the loo, or how we know when we're hungry or tired. Um, but you can hone that even further. So, you know, a very, very simple thing to do is keep a food diary for a week. Write down everything that you eat, and then make some notes about whether you were bloated or whether you went to the loo or not, or how your mood was or how you slept, and just, you know, try to get to know yourself better. Um, it's kind of not directly related to this, but you know, I did notice again during the pandemic and since, that that book, The Body Keeps the Score-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:07:31 Mm

Dr. Tara Swart 2:07:32 ... has b- has gone back into the bestseller list. So I think people are realizing that a lot of their trauma or, you know, psychological stress was somatized into their body, so you know, it was coming up as aches and pains and changes in posture.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:07:46 Yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:07:46 Um, so the more we can educate ourselves about our own body, which only means listening to and looking at, do you look dehydrated? Are you bloated? Um, you know, when you eat a certain food, do your lips tingle?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:02 Yeah. I think one of the most powerful things that people can do to become their own expert again is to have some form of daily solitude practice where they're actually practicing.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:08:20 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:21 So, you know, it's a great book, The Body Keeps the Score.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:08:24 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:24 Uh, Bessel came on the show last year.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:08:26 Oh, really?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:26 We had a wonderful conversation together.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:08:28 Oh, wow.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:29 And I know you're a practitioner of yoga. I believe that you've said in an interview before that yoga is one of the things that really helped you learn about your body.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:08:41 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:41 And I think for many practitioners a- and, and people who love yoga, it, it absolutely does that.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:08:46 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:46 I don't think it's the only way. I think there's many ways.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:08:47 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:47 But that is certainly one way. But you mentioned interoception. I think we all need some form of practice, I think daily-

Dr. Tara Swart 2:08:56 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:56 ... even if it's just five minutes-

Dr. Tara Swart 2:08:58 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08:58 ... where we are practicing that, whether it be a five-minute yoga sequence in the morning. And I guess for me, and I've, I've, I've sort of been advising this to patients for years now, I like people to have the same practice every day.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:09:16 Okay.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:09:16 Because I think the consistency of the practice allows you to start detecting what's different.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:09:23 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:09:23 So if you do the same five yoga moves first thing every morning-

Dr. Tara Swart 2:09:27 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:09:27 ... on some days it's gonna feel fluid and easy, and your body's gonna feel light. And on other days it's gonna feel tight, or one part of you's gonna have a bit of tension which wasn't there the day before. My belief is if people do that regularly, they start to develop the skill of interoception.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:09:49 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:09:49 And I think that helps them build intuition because they're tuning into themselves.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:09:56 There's so much... I love what you said. There's so much here. So, um, when I'm really, um, you know, very strict about doing a daily yoga practice, then on a day where I think I actually can't, then the minimum I have to do is lie on my mat for five minutes. Um, so, 'cause it still means I did something every single day.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:10:18 Mm.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:10:18 I mean, ideally I would do, you know, much more than that, but if I, for some reason I can't, I have to lie on the mat, have to make contact with the mat. And so I... It's funny, sometimes I lie on the mat and I, I think of myself on a sort of seesaw and I think, how do I feel? Do I feel like my feet are above my head or, you know, which way around do I feel? And that tells me something about myself. But I would suggest a body scan is a really good thing to do-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:10:43 Yeah

Dr. Tara Swart 2:10:43 ... for this. Um, and you know, we usually do the body scan sort of about the outside of the body. So we go through, like, the toes, and the knees, and the hips, and the, you know, head and everything. But you can actually then go inside and you can say, "How do I feel in my brain? How do I feel in my throat? How do I feel in my lungs? How do I feel in my stomach? How do I feel in my bladder?" You know, so you can... Y- you're not, you're not getting necessarily physical sensations from those, but you can start to think like that more so that, you know, you are more aware of what's, um, going on on the inside of your body. And then what I wanted to connect that to, where you were talking about interoception being connected to intuition, is to remind us about the two-way connection between the brain and the gut itself-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:11:34 Mm

Dr. Tara Swart 2:11:34 ... and the gut... Well, you could a- almost argue the gut, the gut microbiome, and the brain. So there's also a physical, a biological impact on intuition. Because if your gut is inflamed, or depleted of good bacteria, or leaky, or bloated, then, you know, you've got to start thinking that's gonna have a psychological impact too. I mean, we know that the brain signals to the gut and the gut microbiome, and they signal to the brain. We've al- you know, we've known for a long time about-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:12:09 Yeah

Dr. Tara Swart 2:12:09 ... the vagus nerve, but now we know that they also, um, use other nerves in both directions, um, enteric nerves. They send hormonal signals in both directions. They send, send other chemical messages in the blood called cytokine messaging. So there's a lot going on between your brain and your gut, and both its physical condition and, you know, your psychological sense of, of the inside of your body are, are really important to that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:12:40 I love that, and I think it's really important for people to just really understand that what you just said about interoception, you know, you feel, how does your brain feel, how does your bladder feel, how do your lungs feel? Someone may go and try that tomorrow morning. Okay, look, I, Tara, Rangan, I, I, I can't feel anything, right? I, I don't know what you're talking about. It gets easier with time if you practice, doesn't it?

Dr. Tara Swart 2:13:07 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13:07 Like, suddenly you start to... I think we've lost touch with our bodies-

Dr. Tara Swart 2:13:11 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13:11 ... uh, certainly in the West, right? We're, we're a head-focused society.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:13:16 Totally.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13:16 I have been for many years, and, and lost touch with what your body is telling you.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:13:20 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13:20 But your body can tell you so much.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:13:22 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13:23 But you've gotta practice. So I think the reason why or one of the reasons why people struggle with this tsunami of expertise out there-

Dr. Tara Swart 2:13:31 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13:31 ... is 'cause they've lost touch with themselves.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:13:33 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13:34 And you simply cannot, in my view, regain that without some intentional time alone each day.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:13:40 No. And I think that if someone said to you, "Oh, well, like, you know, I, I can't feel anything from my lungs," well, a good signal of how your lungs are doing is how you're breathing.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13:49 Yeah.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:13:49 So even if you just focus on your breath for five minutes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:13:52 Totally. Where does journaling fit in here? And I guess what I'm, what I'm getting at is that there's many ways to tune into ourselves, right? You can do it, I guess, bottom up, sort of through the body. I've got tightness in my abdomen when I breathe. My left side's a bit tighter than my right. So you're, you're building up that body awareness.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:14:15 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:14:15 But journaling is almost top down, isn't it? Where you are using the incredible prefrontal cortex that humans have-

Dr. Tara Swart 2:14:23 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:14:23 ... and you're learning about yourself with the mind as opposed to the body.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:14:28 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:14:29 Like, I think those things can work beautifully in harmony with each other.

Dr. Tara Swart 2:14:32 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:14:32 But, you know, what's your perspective on, on those two different approaches?

Dr. Tara Swart 2:14:37 Um-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:14:37 Or are they different?

Dr. Tara Swart 2:14:39 I mean, I think they should definitely be combined. You know, the brain-body connection is something that I've been speaking about for a long time, and aga- you know, like the brain-gut connection, it's a two-way thing. So yeah, if you were doing those two things in combination, I feel like you would actually get more than double the benefit-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:14:57 Mm

Dr. Tara Swart 2:14:57 ... of doing one of them.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:14:58 [upbeat music] Click here for a powerful conversation with an incredible Buddhist monk who's got life lessons to share that will help you immediately with your health and your happiness.

Speaker 2:15:09 It's only when you learn what to do with your unhappiness that you can really break through and find stable happiness. We are all drowning in addictions, and they are all based on distraction. What is it we're trying to distract ourselves from?