How to Rewire Your Brain

Understanding Neuroplasticity: The Brain's Ability to Rewire Itself Hi guys, welcome back to How to Stop being a Loser. Thanks so much for listening. Please subscribe for all of you've been enjoying the podcast. Thanks for coming back. So today I wanted to talk about, I feel like with New Year's resolutions and people just wanting to start over, it being the month of new habits and new behaviors and everyone wanting to, you know, engage in self improvement. I wanted to talk about a little bit, not a little bit a lot of it about the basis of all of that from a neurological perspective, from a neuroscience perspective, because no matter what we decide, we want to change about ourselves, change about our brain. All of that comes down to neuroplasticity, which is our brains ability to rewire itself and create new neural connections, remove neural connections, strengthen neural connections, create new neural pathways. And I realize I talked a lot about this, but I haven't dedicated a full episode to how to rewire the brain and how to change the brain to just live a better life, to do harder things for better habit formation. And just what's kind of going on neurologically here. Because I think I noticed that when I do give advice, it's always going to be from that perspective. And I feel like just understanding what's happening in my brain when I want to implement a new habit, stop negative useless behaviors that aren't serving me anymore, just make changes in my life. Like I'm coming at it from a position of I know what's going on in my brain and therefore I know how to implement correct tools that will actually prove efficacious to me instead of just. And no shame to anyone online who's giving advice, but there are a lot of things on TikTok and a lot of things online like journal or go to Pilates or go do this. And those things aren't necessarily going to get you the results that you want. Maybe they will, depending on what you're looking for. But I find I have a much better understanding of myself, of the other people around me, of my own behaviors, thoughts, feelings, and actions. It's made me a more empathetic person. And it's just allowed me to gain true control over my own brain because I know what's going on. I didn't know how to do it because I study it. You know what I'm saying? And I want everyone to be able to have that same, same shared experience because everyone deserves to know well what is going on in my brain and how can I truly change the way that I'm thinking in a way that's useful? Who wants to waste their time doing some useless ritual or some useless trend and that's not actually going to get you the results that you're looking for. So again, disclaimer, I'm not a neuroscientist. I'm not a neuroscience student. This is just something that I research for fun. I get all my information all and only from scientists and doctors, and I'd try to cite as many of those sources possible. A lot of this is from Doctor Tara Swart from her episode on Diary CEO. She's a neuroscientist and neuropharmacologist. Dr. K, his episode on Diary CEO, he is phenomenal, phenomenal. I encourage everyone to listen to all these podcasts and recommending a lot of Huberman Lab. I listen to a lot of Angie Huberman stuff on neurochemistry, neuroscience, specifically his podcasts. It's How to Focus to change Your brain and How to rewire Your Brain and Learn faster with Doctor Michael Kilgard, who I really, really like. He's actually a professor of neuroscience at Utd here in Dallas. His work in neuroplasticity is extremely inspiring. So we're just going to talk about how to rewire your brain and what you can do through rewiring it. And I'm going to explain it in a way that's less maybe overwhelming because I, I, I know like not everyone has the time to spend learning all the scientific language and reading all these studies. So I try to explain it in a way that is easy to understand and entertaining. A lot of this is also from Harvard Health Publishing and just studies that I've read. So what is neuroplasticity? Debunking Myths: Neuroplasticity Beyond Age 25 & Manifestation I feel I kind of explained it. Neuro and neuroplasticity is the same thing. That's your brain and nervous systems ability to change. And if I'm looking down, it's because I'm looking at my notes. The brain changes in response to its environment. And I will say this nervous is a relatively new, I don't know discovery, but new comp concept that's been implemented. So up until recently, we didn't think that the brain could change at all. We knew that it changed in a lot in infancy, adolescence up into your early 20s, and then you're kind of done. So those connections are formed and they're not changing. Now we know that that is absolutely not true. And you can change your brain and change your neural pathways and neural connections well into adulthood, but it is going to be in a different way. And I think that's where a lot of the misconception comes from with neuroplasticity. I see a lot of people saying your brain is always changing regardless of if you want it to or not, and everything that you do is changing your brain. That's absolutely not true. If you are 25 or older, give or give or take a year or two, because when you turn 25, your brain is not as malleable anymore. So maybe when you were younger, you have these sort of passive experiences of your brain changing in response to your environment. Neuroplasticity is occurring in a very different way. And so I'm speaking to people that are 25 and older. I mean, younger too. Of course, you can change your brain deliberately at any time. I'm just saying it's different. So it's important to recognize that distinction. I just turned 25, so I'm going to teach you how to do that. How do you actually change your brain? How do you actually manipulate your behaviors and your thoughts to change the way that you think about things and change your perspective? If you can change your perspective, you can change your life. Remember that you are experiencing reality from one perspective and it's your own and it is very very specific to you. Your perception is completely different from somebody elses and therefore you could say your reality is very different than somebody else's. So that's why learning neuroplasticity is so amazing. And what a breakthrough discovery that was that we now know that you're not stuck and that you're not, you know, permanently broken. And if you have things you want to change about yourself that is scientifically possible, it's not something because we did. We did, we thought it was impossible for a long time. So it's been really exciting and there's been so much information coming out about it. And again, I think a lot of misinformation, a lot of people like to talk about, Oh well, it's manifesting. And I, I see like on Spotify, there's neuroplasticity frequency. Unfortunately, you cannot just listen to something or see something or even experience something and expect that to change your brain and expect that to induce neuroplasticity, to induce neuroplasticity. There's very specific things that we have to deliberately engage in and pay attention to for that to happen. So don't listen to everything you see on TikTok. A lot of it is true. A lot of it is really good, but I recommend getting all of your information from doctors, from scientists, and that includes me. Like if you want to Fact Check me, don't listen to me either because I'm, I don't have a degree, you know what I mean? But I'm I'm pretty good. The Core Principle: How Neurons That Fire Together Wire Together So age 25, we have to engage in different processes. There is a concept called neurons that fire together, wire together, which you may have heard people do tend to misuse that a little bit just because of the age thing. So when neurons are repeatedly activated at the same time, it's going to strengthen the connection, which is the synapse between the two of them. And that's going to encourage stronger and more repeated connection and communication in the future. So for example, if and that's through neuroplasticity. So if you check your phone in the morning, every single morning, that's going to be encouraged. That behavior is going to be encouraged to repeat because it's firing. So repeated activation between those neurons is going to strengthen that connection. And so we see in habits like checking your phone in the morning, maybe that's a habit that you would want to break. The more that you do that, the stronger the connection is going to be. You also learn to associate triggers with things like if you have a specific song that maybe triggers a memory or a perfume like everyone's got, I know every girl has a perfume where they're like, Oh my God, like this reminds me so much of summer 2025 or whatever. And that's because neurons that fire together wire together. Or if you're someone that's dealt with a lot of abuse and so you have constant fear patterns that have built and become really, really strong, your threat detection might be really, really strong even when there's no threat or danger present. Neurons that fire together wire together. So that principle is the basis of neuroplasticity and it comes in many forms. Like if you decide that you want to learn a new skill, like if you decide that you want to learn how to play an instrument, every time you play an instrument, the neurons involved in that movement of your fingers of your arms is going to get smoother overtime. Time checking your phone in the morning is going to activate the neurons associated with the action and the neurons associated with picking up the phone and scrolling. So those are firing now at the same time. And so that habit can become automatic. And that means it's really hard to break, especially as you get older. Scientific Experiments Proving the Brain's Malleable Power But unless you're a toddler or unless you're young, not every experience is going to rewire the brain. That's not true. All right, so we're going to talk about how to change your internal state to change your brain. First, I want to read y'all. This is the source by Doctor Tara Swart, who's one of my favorite neuroscientists. Sometimes she's a little. I mean, I feel like I probably can't say this about someone who is way more qualified than I am. I mean, I'm not qualified than she is. She's a legitimate neuroscientist. But sometimes her stuff, I feel she connects to spirituality, and I think that's amazing. But I guess it's just maybe not my style, but I have learned so much from her. Just my thoughts on the book. I do absolutely recommend it. But there are parts of it where I'm kind of like, maybe that's a little bit of a stretch in my opinion. And I know a lot of people tend to connect neuroscience to spirituality. And I think people are entitled, you know, do whatever you want with the information that you learn. But I do want to talk a little bit about like manifestation and some of the misconceptions I think that have been derived from people interpreting scientific protocols and principles as something that they're not. There's this really fascinating experiment that she's talked about previously with weight lifters. They lifted no weights for two weeks. They just sat there and visualized themselves lifting weights. They had a 13% increase in muscle mass. So if you ever doubt how powerful your thoughts are, your cells are listening. And there's so many experiments like this to prove it. So this is all this is from her book. This is directly from the source, page 90, Your malleable mind. So there was this really fascinating study done in 1979 that took a bunch of people aged somewhere between 80 and 89 and they were put into environments that reflected and mimicked that of their environment 20 years prior. So music and behaviors, if they had reading glasses now, they weren't allowed to use them. If they had walking aids, now they weren't allowed to use them. Old fashioned furnishings, listening to radio programs, and from the 50s and after one week, 7 days of living this old life, they experienced improved vision, memory, hearing, and even increased physical strength. Doctor Tara also talks about into her book how she was told she would need reading glasses and based off of her understanding of neuroplasticity, she believed that she could offset these effects herself without needing reading glasses. So she forced herself to read things at uncomfortable distances, not use any of the contacts or eyeglasses or crutches. And she said that it worked. She says it hasn't deteriorated, and it's actually improved a little bit. This isn't to say that if you're experiencing vision problems, you shouldn't go see a doctor and you shouldn't use eyeglasses or contacts. But it is to say that I think that the brain is so much more powerful than we tend to give it credit for. And once you really start believing in the studies and the research that proves the potentials of our own mind, it's something to take seriously and tap into. And what also is so interesting in terms of like senses, you'll find higher rates of perfect pitch and stronger auditory senses and people who are blind or people who end up going blind later in life, who end up developing these really strong alternative senses, whether it's touch or taste or or hearing, because they've been deprived of that. And I think that that's just proof that the brain will adapt. Understanding Why Your Primitive Brain Resists New Patterns It will adapt to its environment because the brain loves patterns and the brain is obsessed with patterns, which I'll explain more. But your prefrontal cortex is deciphering and modulating patterns for you all day long. And so your brain is actually wired to keep you in the same pattern over and over and over again, even if it's the worst thing for you because it's predictable. And why that is, is the brain is a survival tool. So any excess cognitive load that it has to take take on, it doesn't want to do because it's obsessed with efficiency. So for you to switch up the pattern, do something different, that's going to take a lot more cognitive energy than it would if you just kept doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again. And if the brain is obsessed with efficiency, why would it want to do that? It would love for you to sit in a room and scroll all day because it doesn't have to use any excess cognitive load or effort to change and do something different. It's the same thing over and over again. So it might be the worst thing for you, but at least it's predictable. And that is why when people say things like, well, it's comfortable. Well, it's what I've always done. That is a product of the way that your brain is wipers. The brain is very primitive. That's not an excuse or something to kind of trust. So that is why it becomes so uncomfortable to change the brain. And that's why human beings are so stubborn, very obstinate creatures, because change is uncomfortable. And for you, having these neural pathways that are deeply, deeply entrenched. And the more you do something, the more you have this repeated behavior, the more deeply entrenched the neural pathway is going to become. And so the brain can just drive down that highway every single day, every single day. And the second you go, well, actually, I don't want to keep thinking negatively about this thing or I don't want to keep waking up at 9 AMI want to wake up at six. OK, Well, now you're building a whole new road, a whole new road. And right now it's a little back Rd. It's not a super highway like the one that you've been doing for 20 years or 15 years or 25 years. And so that's going to be really uncomfortable and your brain is going to resist that because it's trying to preserve your energy because it wants you to survive. It wants to have reserves of energy and reserves of cognitive effort in case something happens because it's still thinks, well, what if someone comes in and is going to attack you? Or what if a bear is going to walk in your front door and try and eat you? Because the brain is very primitive, it doesn't get a lot of software updates. So it doesn't really understand like, hey, actually the potential threat of a bear attacking these low. Now we're not living in caves anymore. It's very primitive. And so it's going, why are you switching up the pattern that you've always done? Why are you wasting your cognitive effort trying to switch up the pattern? And now I don't know where to predict and I don't know what to do. And this is really going to push me. You'll actually notice when you do this, you're going to be hungrier and you're going to be more tired because you are using excess cognitive effort. So that's what's happening. Your brain does not like that. Your brain is like, what the hell, please chill and go back to doing what you've always done. And This is why I have so much more empathy for people that are like maybe in relationships that I don't understand or I'm like, this is a toxic relationship. Why do you stay? Or this is a toxic behavioral cycle that you participate in. Why do you continue to do it? Why don't you do something better for yourself? Of course it can be done and there are 1,000,000 excuses in the world. But once you understand what's going on with their brain and that they wake up every morning and it's the same neural pathway over and over and over again, it's the same behavior over and over and over again and repeated behavioral patterns that your brain knows that it's expecting you to do, you understand why it's so difficult for them. The Role of Myelin in Strengthening Neural Pathways and Habits So because of that, your brain is always going to reinforce what you repeatedly do. And whatever you repeatedly do, you're going to get better at. So the more you procrastinate and stay lazy and complain, the better you're going to get at it. So there's a substance called myelin that wraps around neural connections and makes the signals travel faster, like oil or like it's like a fatty substance that just makes everything go smoother and faster. The more you use a pathway, the more myelinated it becomes. So when you try to do something different and engage in a new pattern and a new behavior, the brain doesn't have that myelinated connection that it has for everything else. So it's a lot more cognitive effort and it's a lot harder. Your brain is like, what the hell? I'm trying to preserve as much energy as possible because I'm trying to save you and protect you. And you're like, no, we're going to raw dog this other behavior, this other pattern. And your brain is like relaxed, I don't want to do that. And your brain gets really uncomfortable because you're like, we're going to have a different perspective on this or we're going to have a different default mood or we're going to push ourselves to not fall into crippling anxiety because a boy isn't texting us back, you know, all these behaviors that we don't want to engage in anymore, all those habits that we don't want to have any more. So if you consistently eat fast food, you're going to crave fast food. If you consistently eat clean, eventually you're going to start to crave clean. You really are a product of what you feed your brain and your brain is always going to to expect what you feed it the most. And so that's why, although it might be tough to realize, when you look at your environment and you look at the habits that you've created for yourself and your behavior, all you can really say is, wow, look what I've created for myself. So when we wake up and we're like, wow, this isn't the perspective I want. This isn't the life that I want to live. Understand that it's going to be uncomfortable to change and it's going to feel odd. I mean, even something like, I was in a workout class the other day and my instructor was talking about neuroplasticity in the way or in a way that had to do with our workout. And he was like, OK, I want you to stick out your right arm. And we had to wait. Pull it up to your chest, pull it back. And I want you to do the same thing with your leg and then switch. It was a coordination challenge, but it was it was using both sides of my body and doing things that I'd never done before. It was so difficult for me. And you realize how difficult it is just for your brain to tell your body what you want it to do, just to just to tell your body to do what you want it to do. I did tumbling for a long time and I remember even just saying like even just getting your legs to kick over when you have the strength, you have the flexibility, you have the body, you have the physical fitness, but getting your brain to actually do that, it's very resistant. And I think that's a really good example. And just something to remember, when you start lifting heavier weights or you start doing more complex exercises, it's going to be really uncomfortable at 1st and you might fall and you might lose balance and you might lose coordination. But that's neuroplasticity. Alertness, Focused Attention, and Sleep: Priming Your Brain for Change So just remember that every habit you engage in is going to reinforce the neural pathways associated with that habit. But what really leads to lasting change and how we induce neuroplasticity is consistent repetition and deliberate attention. For neuroplasticity to occur, some things need to happen once we're over the age 25, give or take a year. So the way that the nervous system in the brain change is recognition. You have to pay attention and bring forth recognition of the problem, which it's kind of hilarious, but admitting is the first step. Accountability is the first step is true because that's going to signal to your amygdala, which is the emotional processing center of your brain, to the prefrontal cortex, such as the logical decision making part of the brain to the nervous system, that this is important because you have alertness and emotion associated with this. And that's going to cue the brain and the nervous system that this is not going to be a reflexive automatic thing that we do anymore. And there are specific chemicals that are released when we want to change. So we want to relieve norepinephrine and acetylcholine. That's what's going to increase that alertness. You have to be alert for us to induce this change. And Norse or norepinephrine is nor adrenaline. So we need alertness and we need to focus and deliberate attention. And that's how we can start to see change and repetition. Repetition rewires. So if we can trigger the release of acetylcholine and norepinephrine, we're able to basically set the tone for our brain to be able to rewire itself a lot faster and a lot more effectively. So the way that we do that is through something called the vagus nerve, which I think I've talked a bit about the vagus nerve, but that's is giant superhighway, big, big, big nerve that goes throughout your entire body. And the way that you do that is through the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is a giant, giant superhighway nerve thing that goes throughout your entire body, connects the heart, the brain, your digestive system, and is deeply connected to the parasympathetic nervous system, which is. The rest and digest part of your nervous system versus the sympathetic nervous system which is the fight or flight. What we know is stimulation of the vagus nerve comes from high intensity workouts, cold water exposure and eating foods that help induce the release of acetylcholine. So when you work out, This is why daily exercise is so impactful and will consistently keep your brain primed for neuroplasticity. Because in the hours following high intensity exercise we have that release of acetylcholine, we have increased alertness and our brain is able to be it's neuroplastic self and slay also sleep. Neuroplasticity is not just like this thing that happens and it's like a 5 minute thing and your brain shifts and then you're done. It's a process and it's kind of the same way we're like muscles aren't built in the gym, they're built when you sleep and when you recover. They're just shredded apart when you workout. Another reason why. And I'm just saying that because I want you to know how important sleep is for your brain and for neuroplasticity. You're just not able to perform as well and learn new things and create new neural pathways and have neuroplasticity if you're not sleeping. So sleep is incredibly important when it comes to rewiring the brain. It's going to be really hard to do that if you're just not allowing your brain to do it because that's when all those new things happen. That's when those new neural connections form. Everyday Practices to Enhance Neuroplasticity and Cognitive Function I also want to talk about, Well, let me just. Yeah. So I think engaging in exercise, high intensity interval training to get your alertness up, caffeine, you could, you know, induce snore up enough running, you have that alertness. And then attention, attention is the trigger. So experiences that you pay attention to are the ones that are going to deem, you're going to deem the most important and the most impactful. So attention is the facilitator. I always say where attention goes, energy flows. And that's not very sciency, but it's just so well said. And I remind myself of that so often. Like what you pay attention to is what's going to carry the weight. And I don't really have any science behind that, but I believe that I guess I do have some science behind it. I don't know, maybe that's a bit of a stretch. There's a lot of power and accountability and self-awareness, what you pay attention to, and then your alertness surrounding that. So alertness, focusing on that thing, whether you want to learn something new, whatever you're trying to change, whatever neural circuit you're trying to change, and then making sure that you're sleeping and that you're doing enough for your brain to be able to induce those changes properly. Some things that I do to boost my own neuroplasticity and keep my brain as neuroplastic as possible is I'm currently learning a new language. I'm obsessed with learning Spanish. Oh my gosh. Once you Start learning a language and you get into it, you'll get obsessed with it, but you can't quit after a week. That is amazing for neuroplasticity because it's a completely different thing and it's it's a lot of new neural connections and a lot of new neural pathways. It's also got an increased Gray matter in the brain. It's going to help boost your memory. It's going to help train you to focus. Focusing is a muscle. It's something that you will get better at the more that you do it, just like anything else. So if you're doing things to keep your brain alert, like working out and you're pushing yourself to learn new things like a new language, like a new instrument, like a new topic, like a new game, and you're pushing your brain to change and you're forcing it. We will make new neural connections. We will get rid of old ones. We will keep what's serving as we will remove what's not serving us. You can have some serious enhanced cognitive effects, focus, memory, attention, problem solving, which I think all leads to improved mood and improved quality of life. I mean the confidence. Confidence is comes from competence. Competence breeds competence. And so if you're working on building your competence in learning new things and taking care of your brain, your problem solving skills, your memory, your attention, your focus, and you're able to manipulate your focus on focus and focus on the things that are serving you that are positive in your life, how would that not increase your well-being and increase your confidence? I'm learning new language. I probably do it. I mean, I have a lot more time, you know, Actually, I kind of don't. I spend hours learning Spanish. I've watched so many movies in Spanish. I watch Tik Toks in Spanish. I watch Dreaming Spanish for like hours a day when I'm getting ready, when I'm in the shower, when I'm in the car. I'm constantly speaking Spanish to myself. And it's been so, so great. Learning a new instrument, learning the roadways of your city, forcing yourself to just learn new things and engage in new hobbies. Learn to play chess, learn to play mahjong. I even just think teaching yourself things for fun, like I spend a lot of time researching and studying things for fun. Like understanding the human brain is pretty complex and I I can imagine that that is benefiting my neuroplasticity, increasing it quite significantly by learning these new things and challenging my brain to think about it in different ways. Even engaging in like memory challenges for myself. Like asking myself what did I eat yesterday? What did I wear yesterday? Using my non dominant hand. Like brushing my teeth with my left hand or putting on the shoe that I don't normally put on 1st. Making sure I'm hydrated and eating foods that protect my brain. Even a 1 to 3% decrease in hydration levels can negatively impact your attention, memory, focus. Your brain is like 7879 water. But yeah, learning new skills, engaging in new hobbies. If you always do the same workout over and over and over again, do something that challenges your brain. Do something that feels weird or different. Use your body in a new way. Go take a class in something that you know nothing about, or try and teach yourself physics. I mean, I mean, whatever, but never ever stop pushing your brain because if your brain is very, very malleable and if you keep it exercising, you keep it strong and you keep it sharp, you will live a better life because you're able to manipulate your perspective in a way that's actually scientific that you know, is actually working brain healthy diet. Fueling Your Brain: Essential Foods and Creatine for Cognitive Health I'm going to look up some foods here because I just let me think of what I can think of off the top of my head. The egg yolk, crazy, crazy good salmon row like fish eggs. And then you think about it physically an embryo, which sorry if that's kind of gross, It's good for your brain. Let me tell you, fat is, is so important for your brain. If you eat a diet high in fat is so, so good for preventing Alzheimer's, preventing dementia. Let me pull some stuff so I'm not just talking out of my ass here. I know that I'm not. But high fat diet for brain healthy fat, avocado, olive oil, fatty fish, nuts, it's absolutely incredible for reducing cognitive decline. And there was some study that I read that had people do like a high protein diet, which was also good for the brain, but significantly, significantly, it was better for your brain to eat healthy fats. And I feel like my hair, my skin, my brain, I just feel more nourished and glowy and sharper when I'm eating a high fat diet. I eat a pretty insane amount of fat. I actually met with a nutritionist I think like a month ago and she was like, this is like the highest fat diet I've ever seen. And I'm like, I'm telling you, I feel amazing. And you know, you want to keep it in check. Obviously we can end up dealing with high cholesterol and things when we're older, but high fat, high healthy fat. This is from UNC School of Medicine. This is UNC Neuroscience Center. This is the study I was telling you all about. Facts of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids on brain improvement. They're learning memory ability and cognitive well-being. That's your National Institute of Health and blood flow to the brain. Higher levels linked to better brain structure, larger volume, healthier Gray matter, and improve cognitive function, memory and processing speed in middle-aged and older adults. Also, creatine is incredible for the brain. I take creatine every single day of my life. Everyone needs to be on creatine, especially women because we only have about 70% of the creatine stores that men do. We produce creatine, but when you supplement it 5 milligrams a day creatine monohydrate, you fill up your creatine stores takes I think it's about 30 days for your Korean tooth source to become saturated and you go through the saturation period. After that happens, the overflow actually goes to your brain and the studies coming out about creatine and how it affects processing speed, memory, there's actually a study that came out that showed it can actually reverse the effects of the negative effects of sleep deprivation on the brain. If you kind of macro dose creatine to taking like 10 to 20 grams of creatine. There's a lot of studies in Germany showing how amazing it is for cognitive health and cognitive performance. So I really believe in it, especially in terms of like dementia and Alzheimer's, which is really exciting. Fried food is really bad for your brain, like really bad. So stay away from that. Eat it and eat it as little as you can. And then omega-3, salmon, avocado, olive oil, I would say butter, although it's controversial, high, high healthy fat nuts, leafy greens, especially for folate. That's going to help support neurotransmitter production like serotonin. I'm kind of going off on a tangent. I'm sure you could look up brain healthy foods on your own, but that's definitely important for keeping the brain healthy. It's, it's all one thing. So anything that you can do to support your cognition is going to help with maybe not anything, but most things I would say would help prime the brain for neuroplasticity to occur. I also want to talk a little bit about your brain's threat detection and sort of negativity bias and status quo bias. So I talked a little bit a little bit about how your brain is obsessed with patterns and it's obsessed with keeping you in the same thing over and over again, even if it's the worst thing for you. Rewiring Your Brain to Overcome Threat Detection and Negativity Bias And that is the status quo bias. But we also have a threat detection bias that is high. And when I was talking about how primitive the brain is and how it's still looking out for like a bear to come attack you or a member of the enemy tribe going to come attack you because it's primitive, thinks you're being hunted. It's got to hunt. You got to hunter gatherer brain. Your threat detection is going to be much higher. That's why if you were out in the forest hunting, hunt, hunting and foraging for food and you came across an apple, but then a Saber toothed tiger approached, your brain is going whoa and tunnel visioning in on that Saber toothed tiger. You didn't even remember the apple. What apple? I have a tiger trying to attack me. Fuck that. So you that that becomes so much more important and that makes sense because primitively that would need to be more important. What happens in people with quote, UN quote, dysregulated nervous systems, which I think that that terminology, it gets skewed a lot. It's a little bit of a myth, but it is real. You can't have a dysregulated nervous system. And typically what's happening there is the sympathetic nervous system, which is the Firefly is taking over the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the rest and digest and you're detecting threats that aren't there. So your body thinks it's being chased by a bear, but it's not. You're just in a fight with someone. I'm going to talk about nervous system and regulating the nervous system in another episode, but I just wanted to say because the the brain and the nervous system are so, so intertwined and neuroplasticity is is rewiring the brain and the nervous system. And so there are things that you can do, which I'll talk about the next episode. But like, if you're someone who starts to perceive stress as beneficial, your body will actually have a different response to it, a more positive, less harmful response to it than someone who sees all stress is bad because not all stress is bad. You have distress and then you have positive stress. So just things like that where you really, you really your perception is really powerful and the experiences that you choose to pay attention to are the ones that are going to rewire your brain with enough focused attention. So through this knowledge of neuroplasticity, we do have the ability to change our baseline mood and to alter our perception of that threat detection negativity bias that so many of us experience. It makes sense that we have one, but it's about learning to override it and decide that you're going to engage in a different way of thinking, a different thought pattern, a different default autopilot way of thinking. From Autopilot to Intentional Living: Mastering Emotional Control So many of us fall victim to autopilot. And I think that's how we wake up and we realize we're not living the life that we want to live. And I talk a lot about this in personal branding and I don't know if I get into the science of it all in that episode, but it's so true. Like if you were to get up every morning and go, what would the what would the detached version of me do today? And then you decide to do that instead? Or what would the positive version of me do today? Or what would the best version of me do today? And you start to live your life operating like that, and you start acting like the person you want to become all the time behind closed doors with your small little micro habits. You force your brain to change. You do things to induce neuroplasticity with focused attention and alertness on the things that you want to learn. You exercise. You keep your brain primed for change. And then you engage in those behaviors deliberately and repeatedly. The brain is neuroplastic and it will change. It will. And when it comes to things like anxiety, again, I'm, I'm not here to prescribe you if you have anxiety, talk to a doctor as always, but like if you're having anxious attachment with somebody, force yourself, force yourself to become secure. Decide, decide that you are going to act like the version of yourself that is secure and this is the best version of yourself. I hear a lot of people say things like, well, this is the authentic version of me and I don't want to have to pretend like I'm not upset about something when I am. And I'm like, really the best version of yourself is someone who goes into complete shambles and has a panic attack when someone else doesn't give them constant validation and reassurance. That's the version of you that you want to be. OK Why don't you change yourself then? Don't you want to be someone who's calm, who's in charge of their own emotions, who's in control of their own behavior? And you do that with repetition and consistency. It's not supposed to be comfortable. I love when people are like, but it's hard. I'm like, well, yeah, that's the point. Like it's not comfortable. Your, your brain is literally shifting. Your neural pathways are slowly changing. You're slowly removing old neural connections. You can't create new neural connections without removing some, like your brain, you know, has a capacity. So know that that's why it's uncomfortable. And know that when you're beating your brain's negativity bias and you're actively going, especially like when we name what we're doing and we separate our thoughts from the self, that actually will shift the activity from being so, so much activity in the amygdala, which is the emotional threat detection center of the brain, to the prefrontal cortex, which is our logical decision making pattern modulating, deciphering CEO part of the brain. And we'll be able to override that emotional threat detection with logical thinking. But when you say out loud, I am having the thought that this or this is anxiety or this is overthinking or this is spiraling instead of going like, I don't know, I just feel it's like you got to be useful. You know what I mean? You got to be your own biggest advocate and start thinking about things in a solution oriented way and in a way that is going to push your neural pathways to shift. So it's like the more that you sit and think about how awful this thing is that happened to you, which is a complete waste of time by the way, the stronger that neural pathway is going to get and the better you're going to get at it. The more you complain about how awful your life is and how traumatic your childhood was, the better you're going to get at it. The more you focus on your problems there, the more they're going to grow because you're, you should never be focusing on the problem. You need to focus on why. What is the root cause of this? No one just feels like this because, well, I don't know. It's like, well, what is that coming from? Why do you actually feel this way? Well, you walk in and go, I'm a loser. I feel like a loser or I'm lazy. Why are you lazy? Why? Why are you a loser? You just are. And then you sit there and beat yourself up and think about all the reasons why. I mean reasons why, like what is the root cause? Do you know what I'm saying? The Power of Internal Control: Taking Accountability for Your Life Get to the root, root, root, root, root cause. And if you go, I don't know, go. Well, what if I did now push yourself, all the answers are inside you. So often we say, I don't know because it's easy, because it's automatic, but you do know the answers are within you. And if you really pushed yourself and you pushed to that neural connection and you pushed yourself to go down a new neural pathway and dig deeper and go, what if I did know you're capable, promise you you're capable. You you realize all the answers are are within you. And you know, 99% of the time, very, very rarely are you just like, I have no idea where this is coming from. Like we know human beings are made to introspect, but so few of us are taught how to do it. And when you actually take the time to introspect and figure out what is the repeated negative thought that I have about myself, what do I really want to change and bring it to the forefront of your mind. That is where the attention is. That's where the recognition comes from. That's Step 1 of neuroplasticity coupled with alertness, which can come from high intensity exercise, norepinephrine and acetylcholine. We can induce those those neurochemicals to make ourselves alert and prime the brain for neuroplasticity. And then we spend a lot of focus, which you can train your brain to do. It's a skill, it's a muscle. The more you focus and the more you push yourself to focus, the better you'll get at it. Learning something new, new neural pathway, getting rid of old neural connections and forming new ones. And then we sleep, we allow ourselves to recover. We allow all that to sink in. We allow the brain to do its thing. Oversimplified. When we sleep, suddenly things start to fall into place. If you can follow that protocol, you would start to be living a much better life, I think, a life that you really want to live. But it's hard, you know? And this isn't to bash people who go to therapy, because therapy is amazing and wonderful and I've been to so many different therapists that have changed my life. But if all we're doing is sitting around focusing on the surface level of the problem and we're just yapping about the problem, and we're not figuring out what is the root cause of this, what is this really? Is this a need for validation? Is this an ego thing? This is a fear of rejection from this part of my life. And then a lot of people will get to that step and then they'll just obsess over that. And well, this happened to me. And so now I'm like this, well, I'm really stressed out because of work. Well, I'm feeling really rejected because this boy broke up with me. There comes a point at which we have to start taking accountability for the behavior that we choose to continue repeating because that is what's forming the neural connection and entrenching it deeper and deeper into our brains. If there is a pattern in your life, you're the problem and the only way to gain control of the solution, which should be the goal when talking, is to take some accountability because otherwise something external or outside of your control is always in charge of you. I'm anxious because my friend said this, so I haven't stopped thinking about it in three days. OK, so your friend is in control. I'm overthinking this decision because my job is just so overwhelming. OK, well then your job is in control. I'm overthinking this because it's easier for me to sit and ruminate here than actually getting up off my ass and taking accountability from my own life. But I'm going to force myself to do something different. OK, now you're in control and now you can actually change something, change something. But if your obsession is with looking to external factors to place accountability on and do this kind of shared accountability thing, do you realize that in doing in doing that, you're giving up your control of finding a solution? Because now that they have the power, what if it was up to you how you reacted to the situation? Nothing outside of yourself can bless or deny you unless you give it the power to do so. That is a huge part of rewiring the brain. You are wiring your brain with your thoughts, feelings, actions and behaviors. Harnessing Cognitive Bias and Your Environment for Positive Change You're in charge and you're in the driver's seat, babe. And that goes into so many things. I mean, I mean, mirror neurons are a great example that you really are who you surround yourself with. Mirror neurons and empathic circuits are our ability to feel what other people feel, and we tend to mimic, or we can mimic and feel what other people feel and what we observe. So whatever you're consuming, the people that you surround yourself with, you're more likely to be like them, the media that you consume. The environment that you designed for yourself, those things can rewire the brain if you pay enough attention to them. So the next time you start to fall down the rabbit hole, or maybe you're just engaging in a behavior that you no longer want to engage and stop deliberate attention and go, I'm overthinking or, you know, name the emotion. Shift the activity back to the prefrontal cortex so you can, you know, regain control of your emotions and figure out what you're going to do instead. Figure out a substitute. What neural connection is going to substitute this one? Because I'm getting rid of this one. What's the repeated negative behavior that I keep engaging in? What's the repeated negative thought that I have about myself? And what am I going to replace it with? And what am I going to force myself over and over and over again with alertness and with deliberate focus and with enough rest to change? I do want to talk about cognitive bias and this concept of like manifestation. I think a lot of people take neuroplasticity and go, well, I'm able to, I'm able to alter my reality and I can attract things with my, the vibration of my thoughts. No, I mean, if you want to believe that and that's how you want to live your life, I actually think it's a beautiful way to live. You know, so often I'm very sciency, but I'm also someone who's like, who cares sometimes. Like, like, who cares? For example, like science shows us that someone who is moderately religious, not extreme religious or absent, but moderately, they tend to have, you know, higher levels. And I don't know what this was tested by, but higher levels of well-being. And they tend to live a happier, more fulfilled life overall. And it's kind of like, I just get to a point where I'm kind of like, who cares? Like if you believe in manifestation and it makes you happy, that's probably a really enjoyable, positive, fulfilling way to live. Like whatever works for you, you know what I mean? I'm just telling you this for the sake of kind of how I run and how I know a lot of other people run, which is you like to see the facts, you like to see the evidence. And I also just feel so strongly about our bodies and how amazing our brain is. I'm almost like you don't need to. The brain does so many amazing things. Like we don't, we don't need to look for more embellishment almost. I don't know, but that's just the way that I think about it. So I'll explain it like this. I don't believe in manifestation in the way that I think that your thoughts can hit a certain frequency and then you're going to attract these things into your life or generate these things into your life that weren't there before. I think that we have two wolves inside of us +1 and -1 and we wake up every morning and we, you have to feed one and you have to starve the other. And every day we pick which one we're going to feed and which one we're going to starve. So today, for example, like I got up, I had a slower morning. I took a nice long shower. I ran to my house and made this really beautiful coffee. I am having a great podcast recording session. I actually got to film some more videos and do some extra work before this. I got to reconnect with a friend. I woke up and I got to drive my my dream car. I got to talk to my friends, which is my dream friend group. I am healthy. I'm very healthy. I'm, you know, surrounded by people that love me and I'm financially secure and everyone around me is pretty healthy and happy. And I'm probably going to finish recording this and then I get to edit and I get to post it because I get to do podcasting for a living and that's pretty cool. And I'm actually really proud and excited for this episode. Also today I overslept about half an hour, which really set me back and I had to get up and I'd shower because I put on this ridiculous self tan that dyed me orange, as you may have noticed. Then I forgot my foundation. So I'm wearing like random stuff that I found in my boyfriend's cabinet that I had leftover. So I feel like my my makeups not as like camera ready. I forgot so much stuff. I forgot the Creamer that I was going to bring for my coffee. And so I had to bring, I had to go back and forth between my house in here and go grab this. And then I forgot my SD card and I ordered a new SD card. And then I came back here and my computer was in charge and I didn't bring this book that I really wanted to reference. So I had to go back and get that. And then my phone completely stopped working. So I had to get on the phone with my cell carrier and figure that out. It was so annoying. And I'm recording this podcast and it's already 3:00 and I wanted to accomplish a lot more today. And there's like no air in my tires. And I have to go figure that out. OK, so that's the same day. Do you see what I'm saying? So the experiences that I chose to pay attention to are is what's going to carry the most weight. And so I chose to feed the positive wolf and starve the -1 and every time I choose to have deliberate attention on something that I find more positive or helpful to me, I visualize that wolf like growing, which I don't know if there's any science behind that. But I do know that there's science behind cognitive bias, which is like if you buy a new car, you suddenly see that car everywhere. It's not because there's more cars, there's more of that car suddenly on the road. It's because your brain is always going to expect what you feed it the most and it's always going to select out things. So cognitive bias is where your brain selects and is specific at pulling out information that aligns with what you already believe, what you've already predetermined, that's a double positive. What you've predetermined is correct opinion or fact. Your brain is going to seek out knowledge that validates that. Again, why we're so stubborn, why we love patterns. So if you've decided that you're having a good day, your brain is going to pick out things that align with that. If you've decided you're having a bad day, your brain is going to pick out things that align with that. So it's not manifesting like you're just deciding what you see and what you don't see, like the brain is not able to pick up on. I mean, we have all kinds of things. We have sensory gating, you know, these things that when you're talking to me, if I'm having a conversation with you, my brain is going to drown out the music in the background and it's going to drown out that kids screaming over there and this person pouring coffee into a mug over here. Because my focus is on you because that's selective attention. So it's gating the senses that aren't directly impacting me. Human beings are quite egocentric and we kind of only can care about things that have to do with our survival because again, the brain is a survival tool. So it doesn't have the capacity to be like aware of everything all at once. But thankfully, we can use cognitive bias, which is typically seen as a negative thing, which I think it can be, you know, in the sense that it does make us stubborn and it can make us, I guess the word would be closed minded to seeing alternate opinions because you want to believe and you want to find things that validate what you already hold to be true. But if that's true and we know that it is, you can use that to your advantage. And the way that you perceive your days and the way that you perceive your life, I think that's something that can really be used to your advantage. You really do depict your reality with your perception. Unlock Your Brain's Potential: The Profound Benefits of Meditation I also want to talk a little bit about meditation because could you all go down a paper trail with that? I mean, it's pretty, pretty fascinating. It drastically, drastically changes the brain. Meditation does. And it's not always. There's so many different forms of meditation and there's so many different ways you can meditate. And you know, do I do it with a video? And do I do a brain scan meditation and do I do it with a guided meditation or a non guided meditation? Meditation is a seriously powerful tool for anxiety and a seriously powerful tool for neuroplasticity and focus and attention. It's so funny to me that everyone doesn't meditate. It's because to me it's such an obviously biological necessary thing to do. And it's something that we can see effects in with very short, you know, small amounts of meditation. You don't need to meditate for hours every single day sometimes. And again, I'm not a doctor and I don't know if I should be saying this, but I think maybe before you default to needing some sort of pharmacological intervention, try these things that have been scientifically proven to work like meditation. The goal of meditation is to think of nothing. You might think that's easy, but when you try to do it, you try to literally think of nothing. Your mind, when you feel your mind wander, you actually read to whatever your breath or a specific part of your body. The goal eventually would be to think of nothing, but a lot of times we start with just focusing on the breath or just focusing on the rising and falling of your belly. Sam Waking Up with Sam Harris, he's a great meditation program, Waking Up with Sam Harris and Sam Harris has a lot of good podcast too. Great neuroscientist. You could do a 10 minute meditation every day where all you do is sit there and focus on the breath and just see how long. Not see how long you can go, but just see how you do. Just see if you can really sit there and not allow the mind to wander and force the brain to focus on one thing right in front of you. The effects of that alone are profound and it's extremely difficult for us to do. Sort of calming the monkey mind is what my parents explains to me when I was younger. It builds serious cognitive strength and flexibility and skill and really primes the brain for neuroplasticity. And, and we'll train you to focus. If you have issues focusing, meditate 10 minutes every single morning, 15 minutes every single morning. And Sam Harris's is great because it's 5 minutes. I think it starts with five and then it increases as you get better at it because again, the more you do it, the better you're going to get at it. But there's so many studies that show how it can significantly, significantly help with anxiety, with focus. I think it's absolutely something we all should be doing. OK, I'm going to read this from Harvard Health. This is called 10 minutes of daily mindfulness may help change your outlook about health improvements. This is from 2024. Practicing just 10 minutes of daily mindfulness can ease depression and anxiety to motivate people and motivate people to adopt healthier lifestyle habits. Researchers enrolled 12147 adults from 91 countries. Most of them had no prior experiences with mindfulness exercises, so they've never done this before. Participants were randomly assigned to either practice mindfulness exercises or to listen to an audio book for 10 minutes every day for a month. Mindfulness sessions, which were delivered through a free mobile app, included relaxation exercises, breath focused attention and self reflection. So yeah, in terms of changing the brain, meditation is something that can change your personality, can improve your default mood, has been proven to help decrease anxiety, decrease depression. There's so many benefits of meditation. I would definitely look into that if you're interested in maintaining your neuroplasticity, which I think you should be, but also just the amazing cognitive and lifestyle benefits that it has. Final Thoughts on Rewiring Your Brain for a Better Life OK, I feel like I've covered everything that I know about changing the brain. I'm sure I'll talk about this in subsequent episodes, but I hope that you feel inspired. Please subscribe, follow if you want more content like this. I'm very appreciative and grateful for everyone taking the time to listen and let me know what you'd like to see more of. I do Q&A's on my Instagram story weekly so I'll ask like what topics you want to see and let me know. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you all next week.