Neuroscience Hacks For Optimizing Dopamine, Serotonin, Oxytocin, BDNF, And More

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[00:00:00] LM: Hello, friends, and welcome to the Liz Moody podcast, where every week we’re sharing real science, real stories, and realistic tools that actually level up every part of your life. I’m your host, Liz Moody, and I’m a bestselling author and longtime journalist. Let’s dive in. This episode is all about how we can change our brain, both the pathways that our thoughts regularly take and the neurochemicals like BDNF, serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and more.

[00:00:27] To create the motivation, focus, happiness, stress relief, romance, and more that we want in our lives. My guest today is Nicole Vignola, a neuroscientist, brain health consultant, keynote speaker, and author of the brilliant book, Rewire, Break the Cycle, Alter Your Thoughts, and Create Lasting Change. She has been featured in publications like The Washington Post, The Today Show, Elle, Marie Claire, Women’s Health, Men’s Health, and more.

[00:00:52] This episode is filled with brain hacks that you can use to solve your biggest problems, whether you want to curb addictions and bad habits like phone use [00:01:00] or build new habits or procrastinate less or overcome fears, reduce jealousy, get a quick burst of energy, beat boredom, make somebody fall in love with you, improve your sleep.

[00:01:09] She shares so many fascinating sleep facts in this episode, like why many of us are missing out on trauma processing. Or the sneaky thing that is messing with our sleep that I haven’t heard anyone else mention and now I am very annoying reminding Zach about and so much more. Let’s dive right in. One super quick note, I know that 50 percent of you listening to this episode do not follow the podcast.

[00:01:33] Take a second now to hit that follow or subscribe button. It is the best way to support the podcast and it makes sure that episodes show up right in your feed. Go ahead, do it right now. I’ll wait. Trust me, you do not want to miss out on any of our upcoming shows. They are jam packed with science and stories that will change your life.

[00:01:51] All right, let’s get right into the episode. Nicole, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so

[00:01:57] NV: much for having me.

[00:01:57] LM: I just want to dive right in. Let’s start off with [00:02:00] how malleable are our brains, really?

[00:02:02] NV: So we can make changes well into adulthood. So for a long time we thought that we only could make changes up until the age of 25, that the brain was fixed after that.

[00:02:11] But we now know that we can make changes our entire life basically.

[00:02:14] LM: How many changes though? What percentage of our brain is fixed and what percentage of our brain can be changed?

[00:02:22] NV: So there are parts of the brain that can’t be changed in the sense that they regulate breathing rates, heart rates, et cetera, those basic functions, but the rest is malleable.

[00:02:30] All of it is malleable.

[00:02:32] LM: So if we have stressed out anxious thoughts every single day for 30 years, can we still completely eliminate those thoughts?

[00:02:41] NV: I’m not sure that completely is the right word. I think to a much degree there are people who are genetically more predisposed to have generalized anxiety, anxiety disorders, but yes, you can change a lot of those associations with the environment or whatever it is that’s making you anxious.

[00:02:56] So yes, there’s A lot of hope [00:03:00] for these kind of disorders and mental health and our thought patterns. If it’s not falling into a clinical diagnosis, then yes, we can change thought patterns, especially those cyclical thoughts are kind of like ruminate and they don’t have a beginning. They don’t have an end.

[00:03:14] They’re just in a part of a loop. They actually become reinforced. And they form part of a habit in itself, and we call it automaticity. Automaticity is basically what do you repeat without thought. So you don’t walk into a room and think about how you put on the light or how you get dressed or how you make a coffee.

[00:03:29] You just do it. That’s an automatic process. And sometimes those thoughts reside within that automatic process in as well, because that’s, what’s been repeated over time.

[00:03:37] LM: So one of the things that we’re trying to do is take that automaticity from negative loops to loops that we want to be there.

[00:03:44] NV: Yes. And we do have a negativity bias, which means that if we allow ourselves, we do kind of go on the spiral snowball effect, but we can direct, redirect our thoughts to think more.

[00:03:56] And I say quote unquote positive because I don’t want to slap on this [00:04:00] toxic positive, but I always call it what I’ve called in the book is a reframe. So you’re reframing your mindset to have a more logical. Outlook on something. So for example, maybe you start a new job and you don’t think you’re very good at it.

[00:04:14] So your negativity bias and your anxious thoughts and your negative self referential thoughts will say to you that you’re not worthy. You’re not good. You’re rubbish. You’re not good at this, but a reframe is okay. You’re not good at it right now. Because it’s a new job, but you can be in the future knowing that you can learn as you go along.

[00:04:30] And that’s a healthy way to change the perspective.

[00:04:33] LM: So every single time you think, I’m not good at this, do you have to replace that thought to catch that negative loop?

[00:04:40] NV: Yes. So phase one, ditch the negative and then dismantle the firing patterns, those negative ones. So that you can start to redirect. One of the tools that I’ve given is the physiological sigh.

[00:04:50] That is a good way to just regulate your central nervous system back to a state where you can make logical thoughts and then you can reframe. Because when you try and reframe in a [00:05:00] state of stress, anxiety, worry, it’s hard to reason with yourself. Our brain was designed to run or fight from fearful stimuli in our environment, not make sense of it.

[00:05:09] There’s a line in your vicinity, you’re not going to think. Why is there a lion? You’re going to run fight or freeze. And then once the stress hormones come down, then you can make sense of the whole situation. And that’s what’s happening when we’re in these cyclical patterns of negative thinking, our stress hormones are raised.

[00:05:26] So it’s hard to reason with ourselves. So putting in something like this physiological psych can help interject the thought process for one and to help you lower those stress hormones that you can then come back to it with a more logical mind and reframe.

[00:05:39] LM: So the vibe needs to be, think negative thought, notice negative cycle, do some sort of intervention to bring our stress levels down and then replace it with the positive thought that you would prefer to have.

[00:05:50] Is the physiological side your preferred intervention?

[00:05:53] NV: Because it’s easy to do. You can do it. Yeah. before a meeting, during a meeting, at any point in time, and it’s pretty non [00:06:00] invasive. So I’m sure your listeners do know, but should we do it once together? So you sip in through the nose and then sip in again, hold at the top for about a second and then long exhale through the mouth.

[00:06:10] So let’s go.

[00:06:15] That’s nice.

[00:06:16] LM: It is.

[00:06:16] NV: Yeah.

[00:06:17] LM: Do you feel calmer? I do. On my book tour, that’s the first thing that we all did together. And it was really nice because I’d be looking out at the city. I would see a lot of people and there’d be this kind of like excitement at the beginning and then everybody does this together and then we would all just feel so much calmer.

[00:06:31] It was a palpable energy shift in the room.

[00:06:33] NV: Yes, and I love that you said that because we do have research that shows that we can actually become coherent with the people that are sitting with us. So by doing that I start all my talks with that as well and it just helps everyone sink into the same frequency.

[00:06:45] So we’re ready to absorb.

[00:06:46] LM: Yeah. Tell me about that. I find that really interesting that we’re sinking. In a neurological way with the people around us?

[00:06:53] NV: Yes, exactly. So it’s called brainwave synchronization or interpersonal synchronization. So in the beginning, [00:07:00] we might find that we might be bouncing off each other a little bit.

[00:07:02] And then after a while, we start sinking into it a little bit more. And parts of your brain will be firing in synchrony to your parts of your brain at the same frequency. And I think that that’s wild.

[00:07:12] LM: It feels insane. It feels not possible. How are my brainwaves impacting your brainwaves that are feet away from my brainwaves?

[00:07:22] NV: And I think that’s why it’s really important to sometimes hold space for somebody who’s maybe on a different frequency. I made this post and it went viral where my partner was having a really bad day and he was like really triggered and I was just kind of like, I’m just going to hold space and be calm for him because I could easily just be like, Oh my God, just stop it and snowball and end up in an argument.

[00:07:40] And after a while, I could kind of feel like his energy just coming down because I was staying calm in a situation. And he’s really good at doing that for me as well. When I’m hyped, he stays really calm and eventually it helps me kind of regulate back down because if he starts going off as well, then I start going off and it’s just like a snowball of just chaos.

[00:07:58] Right?

[00:07:59] LM: How is it [00:08:00] happening though? Can you explain it to me in some way that I can understand it?

[00:08:04] NV: It’s still very new research. We’re not entirely sure. We don’t have neurons that actually mirror other people’s behaviors, but we do have parts of the brain that become attuned and accustomed to your emotional state, your body language.

[00:08:18] There are nuances in body language where in Holland, There’s cyclists everywhere because of the eye contact and the body language. People just kind of know when you’re going to turn. I know you’re signaling as well, but my body language, if I’m shifting this way, I’m obviously going to be turning that way.

[00:08:31] I’m not going to be going that way. And we can pick that up in the nuance of body language. That’s why human connection is so important. And that is why sometimes phones can be so detrimental to communication because you’re lacking that eye contact, the basic fundamental aspects of communication that we take for granted.

[00:08:50] LM: It makes me think about, have you ever done a workshop or something where they have you make eye contact with somebody for 30 seconds or a minute and then you’re basically in love at the end of it? Yes. Have you [00:09:00] ever done that?

[00:09:00] NV: Something similar. Would

[00:09:01] LM: that be because of whatever you’re talking about here?

[00:09:05] NV: Yes. Because we have empathy centers that basically light up. When you tell me a sad story about your life, I’ve got my empathy centers lighting up. Now Psychopaths will not be able to feel that sort of empathy for your story, but they, interestingly enough, will have empathy for themselves, so they can feel pain.

[00:09:24] If someone had to inflict pain on you, my pain centers would light up to some degree to communicate that you’re in pain, and I wouldn’t feel nice about that. But psychopaths actually have a sever in that communication, so they actually, like, don’t feel that at all. But then if they had to be inflicted with their own pain, they would feel it then.

[00:09:40] It’s really interesting. Unless you’re a psychopath.

[00:09:43] LM: Okay, so how would that make us fall in love if we’re making eye contact for 30 seconds?

[00:09:48] NV: I don’t think we’re falling in love. We’re releasing oxytocin and oxytocin is associated with that feeling of connection, deep connection and love because love is neurobiologically much bigger than just a moment.

[00:09:59] LM: But [00:10:00] making eye contact releases oxytocin?

[00:10:02] NV: We release oxytocin when we have very deep, meaningful connections. Whether it be through communication, physical touch, or a moment that we’re sharing. Like, we’re probably releasing some levels of oxytocin right now. I can feel it. Yeah. But I think if we had to like hold hands and stare into each other’s eyes.

[00:10:18] There’ll be a bigger surge of that. Is

[00:10:20] LM: there a hack there where if we want to feel close to somebody, we should make more eye contact. We should have more hand holding, shoulder grazing, etc.

[00:10:29] NV: Yes. And I can’t say for sure, but I do think that we’re steering away from touching each other. And any connection, you know, like when I go to yoga, like people will hug me and I’m like, Oh, that feels really nice.

[00:10:39] And I actually always say to my partner, you need to hug your mom more because I didn’t think she gets that much physical contact. When I see her, I’m like hug her and I really hug her. I don’t just like, Oh, Hey, I like hold her and you can kind of. feel the whole body is like, that feels really nice. And I think in, in relationships as well, you know, how often do you come home and then just scroll on your phone and you’re watching [00:11:00] TV, but you’re actually scrolling.

[00:11:01] You’re not really talking to your partner, even though you’re having communication.

[00:11:04] LM: Do you think that most of us are deficient in oxytocin in our current society? Perhaps.

[00:11:10] NV: You know, phones have their own benefits. There are people who are lonely that can feel social connection and communication through a phone, and that provides a lot of benefits.

[00:11:19] But I think with anything, we have to use it to our advantage. I don’t have a huge problem with phones, if they’re being used correctly. I will sometimes go into a hole on Instagram, and I’m having the problem of best time of my life where I’m scrolling and I’m just enjoying the moment, but it doesn’t impact my work ethic.

[00:11:35] I think when something is being used to the degree where it’s impacting you negatively, then that’s when there’s a problem.

[00:11:43] LM: You also say, while we’re talking about neurochemicals and how that’s all working on our brain, is that dopamine doesn’t want you to be happy. Can you explain that?

[00:11:51] NV: There are two different ways that dopamine is released.

[00:11:54] We call it reward prediction error. So in one way, it’s when there’s a goal. So it’s a goal [00:12:00] directed outcome. So, you know that there’s going to be a goal at the end. So when you’re working on a promotion, or you’re working to get a nicer car or buy the house, when you receive the reward, dopamine actually drops because dopamine is responsible for putting you in pursuit of the reward.

[00:12:16] It’s responsible for motivation drive. And that is why sometimes when you get what you want, when that drop comes, you don’t feel as satisfied or you think, okay, what’s the next thing? But the important part is that when that drop happens, we get a surge of serotonin and other neuro chemicals. It’s a cocktail, but what that means is that we need to really be grateful for that time and enjoy it and hone in on that present moment.

[00:12:42] Because if we don’t, we could easily just be like, oh, well, that was underwhelming. What’s the next thing? And just keep on the cycle of the arrival fallacy. So when I get there, I’ll be happy. When I get there, I’ll be happy. But then when you get there to that finish line, you realize that there’s another finish line, another finish line.

[00:12:59] So if you’re always [00:13:00] waiting for the finish line to be happy, you’ll be chasing happiness without ever really feeling it.

[00:13:05] LM: So what, Is the way to combat that other than is it enjoy the journey and then you said to be grateful in the moment that we get there, but yeah, what specifically in the most pragmatic way possible?

[00:13:15] Are we doing to combat that?

[00:13:16] NV: Yeah, the enjoyment comes from the journey. So really, again, just being present every day doing this gratitude practice way I do with my clients are small wins in the big wins. What is your small win of the week? What is your big win of the week? And when we start out, They always say, Oh, well, not that much this week.

[00:13:33] And then they start talking and I’m like, that’s a win. And they’re like, Oh yeah. And then they’ll keep talking. I’m like, that’s another one. And they’re like, Oh yeah. And then by the end of the session, they’re like, I’ve had a fantastic week because we can easily overlook the wonderful things that are going on in our daily lives.

[00:13:49] I just want to backtrack real quick and just go to the second way that dopamine is released. This is really important for phone addictions. Dopamine is also released when it’s unpredictable. So [00:14:00] that is why checking your phone can be highly addictive because you don’t know if you’re going to have a notification.

[00:14:04] You don’t know if there’s going to be a comment there that’s a bit cheeky or reply from someone you’ve messaged and that is why it can be really addictive because it reinforces that that made you feel good and you need to do that again. So two different ways. When there’s an expected outcome, dopamine drops when you get the reward.

[00:14:20] When there’s an unexpected outcome, dopamine is released. at the reward.

[00:14:23] LM: So, do you view dopamine management as mitigating those highs and lows? Do you view it as an awareness practice, a gratitude practice, which you’ve talked about? Are we trying to reduce the amount of unexpected outcomes in our lives?

[00:14:38] NV: So with phone use, for example, anything like drinking, gambling, any sort of quick fix to dopamine, the underlying rule for dopamine is that there needs to be effort in the reward. So that is why using your phone can actually increase your dopamine really high, but then it drops very quickly because there’s not a sustained level of dopamine that’s being released.

[00:14:59] If [00:15:00] you decide to go for a run or a workout or you do an ice bath instead, dopamine rises much slower. in pursuit of the reward. And then it actually remains there for a longer period of time. So it doesn’t have this volatile drop. That’s something like phone use has. And so whilst phone use is fine acutely for its intended purpose, when we go into this reward seeking type behavior, you’ll find yourself, you know, Sort of doom scrolling and you know that feeling when you check your phone and you don’t really know why you’ve just done it, you just kind of grabbed it for no particular reason.

[00:15:31] That’s your brain trying to attain a reward and it knows that it can get it from the phone. When we release dopamine like that, it’s a very quick high, a really quick low. There’s a refractory period where it goes below baseline. Which means you need more to feel just as good and that’s why by the end of the day it loses its impact and you feel like you’re on this hamster wheel of I’m just desperate for something, but I don’t know what and you know that feeling.

[00:15:55] I know that feeling. I think we all know that feeling choosing the long term [00:16:00] reward is a much better way to go about it versus the immediate reward. So I always say, like, if you want to use your phone, that’s fine. Just be mindful about it. Be conscious. Like, I’m happy to go into a little real hole and I have the best time.

[00:16:13] I’m like, this is hilarious. The internet is so great sometimes, but I don’t let it impact my ability to exercise, for example. So anyone that’s using their phone first thing in the morning, for example, and then they say, Oh, well, I don’t have the motivation to work out. We’ve just depleted all your dopamine for social media use.

[00:16:31] Of course, you’re not going to be motivated to do a workout and choosing that long term reward is much harder than if you just had the reward right there, which the brain then starts to favor. It would say something like if I was to personify the brain, why would I work out if I can get to feel just as good by scrolling on my phone and the reward is right then I don’t have to put any effort into it.

[00:16:52] LM: Would an easy hack then be to move the easy rewards to as late in the day as possible?

[00:16:58] NV: Okay. So I always say for the [00:17:00] first hour of your morning, I appreciate that it might be difficult, start with 10 minutes, start with 20, delay phone use as long as possible. When you jack up your dopamine so early on in the day, you’re essentially putting yourself in a state of motivation drive where you’re reward seeking for the rest of the day.

[00:17:16] LM: So that will impact not only your phone usage, but probably reaching for sweet treats and your motivation to do harder, deep work at your job.

[00:17:25] NV: Exactly. So my research was actually looking at how we allocate cognitive resources to various things. And my research was looking at how individuals at work grab their phones during work as a perceived break.

[00:17:38] Now, when we do that, we think we’re taking a mental break from the work at hand. But actually what we’ve seen is that it’s still drawing on these cognitive resources. So it’s kind of like we have this mental currency. You have a finite amount of currency for the day. Cognitive energy. By the end of the day, you, you start to impact your decision making skills, irritability, [00:18:00] your ability to hold concentration, or maybe even hold conversations.

[00:18:03] I have now stopped doing all podcasts past 6 p. m. because I’m just like baffling. So what we’ve seen is that It does draw energy from the brain,

[00:18:13] LM: even though it doesn’t feel like it, even though you feel like you’re getting a break, you’re actually drawing energy from your brain.

[00:18:18] NV: Exactly. So when people then sit back at their desks, they’re like, well, I’m still not motivated to work.

[00:18:24] 51 percent of our interruptions come from self generated interruptions. So you sit down and then you’re like, Oh, I’m just going to grab a coffee real quick. Let me just check that notification real quick. And we train ourselves to continuously snap away from the task at hand. We can improve that by mitigating distractions.

[00:18:43] So when I work, I, we actually have a rule like no phones in the office because otherwise your brain is a wonderful piece of machinery that works by association. If you walk into a bar, you think drinking. If you walk into the living room, you think relaxation. You walk into the bedroom, you think sleep. If I bring my phone [00:19:00] into a place of productivity, the brain’s not going to know what this room is for.

[00:19:04] This room is for work and productivity. If you want to take a break, step outside.

[00:19:09] LM: I love that. Okay. So that’s one thing. Another thing is to have your low dopamine morning so that you’re saving those quick rewards for the end of the day so that you can not need them or desire them as much throughout your day.

[00:19:20] NV: Sort of. So there’s no. The reason why you shouldn’t exercise and still raise your dopamine, but it’s about making sure that you do that in a way that has a longer lasting trajectory.

[00:19:29] LM: So yeah, it’s not the quick ones. It’s not the phone, you don’t want to wake up and eat a donut for a number of reasons.

[00:19:34] Yes, exactly. It’s sort of like how we think about our blood sugar curve, right? You don’t want it to like spike and crash. You want it to be more stable. Exactly, exactly. Okay. What is your ideal neurochemical morning routine look like?

[00:19:48] NV: So my routine is hydrate first thing in the morning. So even a 2 percent dehydration can impact our cognitive abilities temporarily and impact psychomotor activities.

[00:19:58] So your [00:20:00] ability to react, your ability to think quickly, when you go to bed at night, you sleep better. Eight to nine hours, hopefully, but you probably stopped drinking about two hours before. So that’s around 11 hours, 12 hours maybe, where you haven’t drunk anything. So your brain communicates with electrolytes and in the presence of water.

[00:20:18] So if you don’t have water, you’re going to impact the way that you can think and the way that you can start your day. So water first thing, hydrate, I know people always like to say hydrate before you caffeinate and that’s for caffeine not impacting you as much. For me, it’s actually just the fact that your brain’s dehydrated.

[00:20:33] LM: Yeah, I picture like a little shriveled up sponge. And wanting to expand it. Yeah,

[00:20:37] NV: exactly. So just like quench that sponge, , , give it all that goodness, no phones for the first hour. So that’s sometimes very hard for me, which means that I have to leave it in a different room. It’s hard, right? It’s right there.

[00:20:50] It’s association, it’s, it’s one of those things that just happens. So make it difficult for yourself. And then my non-negotiable is either meditate or move. So [00:21:00] both those activities actually increase frontal cortex activity. So what that is, is executive function, your ability to make decisions, logical thinking, et cetera.

[00:21:10] Over time, we’ve actually seen that people who exercise regularly, people who meditate regularly have better functional connectivity in the frontal cortex. What that means is that when you are then triggered by something, or you’re in an emotional state, your frontal cortex being active can actually mitigate or help you alleviate those feelings much quicker over time.

[00:21:33] So you have more emotional control. It’s not about not feeling the emotion, it’s about being able to bounce back from it a little bit quicker.

[00:21:41] LM: And then you say that instant gratification impairs our ability to reach our larger goals. Is that because that instant gratification of like checking your phone is decreasing our intention span or are there other factors at play there?

[00:21:53] NV: Yeah. And it impacts your ability to want to do things. So it’s easy to lay on the sofa and scroll for [00:22:00] two hours, but then you could be spending those two hours on something else like studying or learning or doing whatever it is you want to do to get to that next level. So if you’re replacing that.

[00:22:09] potential two hours of expanding yourself with social media, you’re impacting your motivation to then want to do that afterwards.

[00:22:17] LM: On a neurological level, you’re talking about dopamine, etc.

[00:22:21] NV: Motivation, drive, dopamine, etc.

[00:22:23] LM: Okay, that’s interesting. Can you explain neuroplasticity to me? Like I’m five years old.

[00:22:30] NV: So neuroplasticity is the ability for your brain to create new synapses and connect with different parts of the brain. When we create pathways in the brain, we do that through developmental plasticity. What that means is that when we’re growing, we are learning about our environment and we’re learning rules about the world by observing our parents and our peers in it.

[00:22:52] Sometimes that means that we observe things that may not be correct. So a classic example is maybe your parents shouted each [00:23:00] other. And you learn that in a stressful period, you need to yell to be heard, or you think that that’s a way that people communicate with one another during stressful times. It’s quite deeply ingrained.

[00:23:10] We learn beliefs as well, but what we’ve seen is that we can actually divert the synapses to create new pathways. So what that means is that. If one neuron communicates with another neuron, and it does that often, those two neurons become quote unquote married, so they’re now best friends. But we can actually sever that communication so that the synapses and the connection between them becomes weaker.

[00:23:35] We have long term potentiation, which is the creation of new synapses and connections. And we have long term depression, it’s got nothing to do with clinical depression, all it is is that it’s the weakening of synapses. So what that means is that we can undo behaviours that are no longer serving us, if those neurons are not communicating with each other often enough.

[00:23:56] So an example would be, I love using this example because I used to [00:24:00] be such an angry driver. Not so much anymore. The other day someone cut me off and I actually gave them a thumbs up and I was like, You’ve changed, girl. This is really good.

[00:24:10] LM: I have a lot of mental health struggles of my own, but road rage is not something I even can get my head around because the Time changes in getting to your destination feel so minute based on whether somebody drives in front of you, somebody drives in front of my husband, if somebody’s driving really slow in front of him, he’ll just be like going crazy and it’s like a little bit, but I just like, I’m just like, it’s, we’re talking about three minutes at max.

[00:24:31] NV: Yes, I know. That’s such a good way of looking at it. But. If your automatic reaction is to shout and yell, if you take a pause and you maybe do the physiological sigh and then you either don’t shout and yell or divert into something like a reframe, it’s only probably adding on 10 seconds to this journey.

[00:24:50] Over time, the reaction won’t be to yell anymore. Because you have like a trigger and then what comes subsequently after that is the shout, the yell, because [00:25:00] that’s what’s been practiced. So sometimes people do that without even realizing that they’re doing it’s automaticity. They just do it without thought.

[00:25:07] And if you take that pause, you can then change over time, the communication between those neurons, between the trigger and the response. Weakens over time.

[00:25:17] LM: How many times do we have to consciously rewire it to have it become automatic?

[00:25:23] NV: Hard to say . So habits, and we’re talking about habits now can take anywhere between 18 to 254 days.

[00:25:31] And what that tells us is that it’s dependent on how many habits you’re trying to break, how much effort you’re putting in, how motivated you are to the habit, and how difficult the habit is. So what I would say is that the brain likes repetition. It likes to repeat something and then over time it will either become strengthened or weakened because you’re undoing a pathway.

[00:25:54] So you might not be faced with road rage every single day. Someone might not cut you off every single day, [00:26:00] but if they did, you could go on an intensive course of rewiring in a week or two. And sometimes you will say to me like, that pause doesn’t feel like it’s there. And I can appreciate that. Sometimes you do just react to it.

[00:26:12] And then, you know, yell. But the more you practice and the more you pay attention to it, the bigger that space does become. And I know that it sounds almost impossible, but it does. The brain has self correcting areas. We call it the error detection areas. We’re actually really good at saying, Oh, actually we didn’t do that right.

[00:26:31] Let’s change it next time. We just don’t give ourselves enough credit.

[00:26:35] LM: My struggle is, let’s say I’m trying to work on negative self talk and I catch it. You know, 10 times a day, but then there’s 50 times a day that I’m just not even aware that it’s happening. It’s running on this automatic loop. And wouldn’t that be reinforcing the marriage of the neurons that I don’t want so much more than I’m able to actually catch it and rewire [00:27:00] and make the marriages that I do want?

[00:27:02] NV: What I would say is the brain is plastic, not elastic, and that is that if you are practicing something and then you don’t practice it, that’s not going to go away. Those synapses are still there. It’s just that over time you need to reinforce them even more so you don’t fall off the bandwagon and just revert back to old habits in a day, just in the same way that you didn’t build them overnight.

[00:27:24] LM: So any type of practicing this rewiring is going to be net helpful.

[00:27:29] NV: Exactly.

[00:27:30] LM: And that’s true even if we have these patterns that have been ingrained over years and years? Yes. Okay. Yeah. I did a therapy program and one of the things that they have you do is Visualize the way that you wish you had acted in a circumstance, because our brain can’t tell the difference between visualizations and what we’re living in reality.

[00:27:49] Mm, yes. What is your perspective on that in a neuroscience way?

[00:27:53] NV: Yeah. Visualization essentially helps you create a blueprint for how you want to conduct your life, and I love that they did [00:28:00] that in terms of like. Practicing how you wanted to respond. This is a seven step process on how to rewire. And there’s two that I’ll talk about.

[00:28:07] So one is visualization and two is preparing for setbacks, which by the sounds of it you did together, which is perfect. So let me backtrack a little bit. They did a study in 1995 where they took two groups, well, actually three, but one group didn’t do anything. One group learned to play a five finger piece on the piano.

[00:28:26] And group number two had to imagine that they were playing that five finger piece on the piano. And what they saw is that there were similar levels of brain activity in the motor cortex. Motor cortex is responsible for initiating movement or conducting movement. And that’s wild, right? Because they were already priming the brain to create these synapses to then be able to play the piano.

[00:28:47] What we’ve seen in any visualization research, especially in athletic performance, is that it has to be followed by physical activity. So I am not opposed to anyone visualizing themselves in the future being a multi millionaire or whatever, [00:29:00] but generally speaking, it needs to be more specific. So what you were doing is perfect because you were being very specific about how you wanted the outcome to change so that then in that moment you, you’ve primed those neurons and now you can change it in the moment and if you don’t get it right the first time, you’ll get it right.

[00:29:16] Second, third, fourth time visualization is really so powerful and helping you kind of create a blueprint for where you want to go. And then you can add on the action afterwards and reinforce it. Now, the second step is preparing for setbacks. So. In the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Michael Phelps, he broke the world record.

[00:29:37] He won eight gold. And on the 200 meter fly, when he dove in, his goggles came off and they got filled with water. And he wins anyway. And when they talked to him and his coach, they said, Oh, no, no, no. We took into consideration everything. Every single thing that could go wrong. So we knew that his goggles could come off or be filled with water.

[00:29:55] And he knew exactly how many strokes to take before he had to tumble turn, can make it back and [00:30:00] win. So you practicing how you want to do something differently is hugely powerful because in that moment you have like a plan B in your back pocket. You’re like, ah, I’ve been here in my head and this is the way that I normally do things, but I’m actually going to pull out that B card and I’m going to do it this way.

[00:30:16] LM: Okay, so you said that the visualizations only work when they’re coupled with physical activity, correct? They work better when they’re coupled with physical activity. Does the physical activity need to be related to the thing that we are trying to rewire? So like, as an example, one of the visualizations that I do that I’m trying to rewire is my fear of flying.

[00:30:34] So I’ll picture, you know, myself on the plane, sitting there really calmly, enjoying the view, et cetera. What physical activity would go with that?

[00:30:44] NV: Actually doing that on a flight. So going on the flight and being calm and then reinforcing that pattern that you’ve practiced in your mind.

[00:30:52] LM: But whenever I try to do that, I feel like all of the memories are coming back and I’m feeling that physical, I don’t want to feel like nauseous [00:31:00] and shaking all these things on a plane, but I feel like those take over.

[00:31:02] So I sit there at home on my couch and I can picture and I can do the visualization, but I can’t bring it into the reality on the plane.

[00:31:10] NV: Is it making the reality better though, maybe even to a very small degree? I

[00:31:15] LM: mean, I

[00:31:16] NV: fly, so.

[00:31:19] LM: I don’t know. It’s interesting. So the physical activity, though, doesn’t need to be directly after the visualization?

[00:31:24] NV: No. Okay. It’s just that we would need to reinforce it in real life practice. And it probably is having an effect to some degree. This is what I wanted to come back to, is the compassion side of things. So we tend to overlook our progress and focus on how we’re not there yet. Like, oh, but I’m still anxious on my flight.

[00:31:41] If we look at it, perhaps maybe that might not be the case with you. You’re actually probably better in that situation than you were maybe a year ago, but the brain still likes to look at the fact that we’re not there yet. We’re still not, not anxious.

[00:31:54] LM: Okay. So the best way to rewire my brain, for instance, let’s say totally random example, definitely not something from my [00:32:00] own life, but I have a hard time saying sorry to my husband.

[00:32:04] NV: I can resonate.

[00:32:06] LM: The best way to rewire my brain would be to sit there on the couch and really picture like walking into the room and saying, I’m sorry, babe, I was in the wrong. Yes. And then after that, to go into the room with my husband and say, I’m sorry, babe, I was in the wrong. Yes. But I get a little bit of benefits if I just do it on the couch?

[00:32:24] Yes. But

[00:32:25] NV: I also encourage you to

[00:32:26] LM: say

[00:32:26] NV: sorry.

[00:32:28] LM: Okay, so when possible, do the visualization first and then you’re already turning on those motor neurons. Yeah. You’re, you’re laying, essentially. A

[00:32:36] NV: foundation. The

[00:32:37] LM: foundation for the pathway, but the thing that’s going to cement the pathway. And then the idea is.

[00:32:41] The next time I need to say sorry to my husband, that pathway is more there. So it will be easier for me to take.

[00:32:47] NV: Yeah. Okay.

[00:32:48] LM: That’s cool. I like that.

[00:32:49] NV: And then saying sorry will become easier, I think.

[00:32:52] LM: For this random person that we’re talking about. Yeah. Is there a way to get rid of deep underlying beliefs that are at [00:33:00] the roots of these types of patterns?

[00:33:02] I have a deep underlying belief as an example that I’m not safe and that I have to be in control to feel safe. And that shows up with my fear of flying and all these other places in my life.

[00:33:11] NV: I do think that it’s also our personalities, not that that needs to be your personality, but I’m quite controlling in my life because it might also stem from a fear of wanting to be safe because I wasn’t as a child.

[00:33:23] So I would say like reframe that as a positive attribute to you because that means that I can, you know, come to the U. S. and do a book tour all by myself and then go to New York and I’ve like run two businesses because I am who I am. So, honoring the positive aspect of that personality type, or that belief, or whatever it is, and then, yeah, trying to not let it affect you negatively as much as possible, exhuming the traits, and then just make them as best as we can with the ones that we’ve got.

[00:33:51] Of course, we can rewire, we can change, but I guess that answers your question. I don’t think we can fully change everything, to a lot of the degree [00:34:00] we shouldn’t change everything. So, I have this activity called It’s Always Been You. I’m going to do it with you and we’ll see if it works out. So I want you to describe, maybe in your head or you can outline if you want to, the dictionary meaning of an ideal person, who your ideal person is.

[00:34:19] Um,

[00:34:21] LM: kind, warm, curious, generous, Excited, loving, interested, interesting. How many things do you have in common with this

[00:34:35] NV: ideal person?

[00:34:36] LM: Oh, I feel like a fair amount. I think that I’m very curious and I think that I’m generous. I think I could work on all of those things, but I would say they’re my ideal because I am aspiring towards those

[00:34:49] NV: things.

[00:34:49] And like, what’s the biggest difference would you say?

[00:34:52] LM: that I feel like I have to work on them. Okay. I feel like the ideal person would maybe have more of an effortlessness [00:35:00] about

[00:35:00] NV: them. Okay. Okay. So would you say that you either describe the version of yourself that’s in the future or someone that’s completely different?

[00:35:08] LM: I think of, Ideally a version of myself in the future,

[00:35:12] NV: because most people, when they do that, they realize that they’ve just described themselves, maybe not the perfect version of themselves, but one that is still them. People realize that actually they’re not so far removed from the person that they aspire to be, because we always put emphasis on like, I want to be like her.

[00:35:27] I want to be like them. But then when we really describe it, we realize we’re describing ourselves. Maybe we’re not there yet. And our negativity bias will make us see all the worst in ourselves. And like, you’re not there yet, you’re still, you know, anxious when you fly. But actually, if we look at the positive side of things, you are your own version of the ideal person.

[00:35:49] Because it’s always been you.

[00:35:50] LM: Oh, I love that. I encourage everybody at home to do that. I do think that’s a powerful way. As you said, when you contextualize it in the context of like our negativity [00:36:00] bias and we are. Okay, let’s see what this

[00:36:07] NV: one looks like. Yeah. Um, Um, Okay, This is this is It makes you. Yes, fine.

[00:36:20] It makes you anxious. We can work on that. But it means that you’re Liz Moody. Like, you’ve got a podcast. Like, people aspire to, or they read, I love all your content. And you inspire people. So it’s like, that’s also what makes you who you are in that respect.

[00:36:32] LM: And notice the progress you are making. And it is true.

[00:36:35] I did this whole book tour that I don’t know if I could have done five years ago. I was flying almost every other day.

[00:36:41] NV: Yeah. Um, so I

[00:36:42] LM: do think we don’t. notice our own progress. And I think there’s something really lovely about that. Talk to me about confirmation bias and negativity bias and how that turns these thoughts that we have into our reality in this very science grounded way.

[00:36:57] NV: If I say to you, how many gray [00:37:00] things are in your environment right now? And you start counting, you’re like, okay, and then I go, Liz, how many orange things are in the environment? You’re going to say, well, I don’t know, because I wasn’t looking for that. I was only looking for the gray stuff. And that’s kind of how negativity bias comes into our lives.

[00:37:13] We wake up and we say, we’re not worthy, I’m not good enough, I don’t deserve the promotion, I’m having a really bad day. And then that is what your brain is going to see because it’s not energy efficient for us to be incorrect. The brain wants to be correct. And so we have this confirmation bias. To confirm everything that we believe.

[00:37:31] So you walk into a coffee shop and the barista is awkward with you because you’re awkward and you’re like, okay, I really am weird. And that confirms your belief. Or, you know, I use the example in the book, like a classic one is when you think someone’s looking at you, but they may not be looking at you, they’re probably just looking at something.

[00:37:46] But if you think that there’s something wrong with you, you’re going to interpret that as something being off. And what’s really interesting is that we’ve seen studies where. They used hypnosis to basically help people believe that their [00:38:00] hand was either five times bigger or five times smaller. Hypnosis uses visualization to help you imagine your hand being bigger.

[00:38:08] When they gave them two pinpricks on the hand, they felt as though they were really far apart. When they visualized the hand being smaller, they couldn’t differentiate from the pinpricks, even though they were placed in very different parts of the hand. And that’s really interesting because our belief can impact our perception of how we interpret the world around us.

[00:38:28] LM: How does that impact how you go about your day on a daily basis or how do you help your clients based on that information?

[00:38:33] NV: One example with one of my clients, she works in a very male dominant environment and she’s one of the only women in her position. She’s quite high up. And so she makes herself smaller.

[00:38:45] So that she isn’t seen or she’s sometimes scared of saying things because she’s scared that someone’s going to say something back and what we’ve unpacked is that they are actually not saying anything back. It’s just her perception of the environment. They actually, [00:39:00] from the sounds of it, encouraging her to.

[00:39:03] Stand out more and that could be due to maybe upbringing or women are discriminated against in work environments and maybe she’s lucky that she isn’t in this one, but she still maybe has this belief underlying that she is and so we’re practicing her entering the room with her chest big and her body language saying I’m here and I’m not making myself smaller.

[00:39:22] And what’s really interesting is that over time, we’ve seen her perception of her environment change. Her perception of what’s going on around her has changed because she’s changing inside of herself.

[00:39:33] LM: Oh, that’s so interesting, which would then reinforce this positive cycle to everything we were

[00:39:37] NV: talking about earlier.

[00:39:38] To the degree where when someone does say something to her or a man, she’s not impacted by it as much. And she sees it as more like constructive communication where they need to find a solution together rather than a sort of scrutiny on her personality.

[00:39:52] LM: An intervention that would take advantage of this be, let’s say you’re going to go into a social situation, you’re like, Oh, maybe nobody will like me.

[00:39:59] [00:40:00] I’m a weirdo. I’m shy. I’m nervous about talking to people to almost say, how would I like this interaction to go and go into it as if that were the truth?

[00:40:11] NV: Yes, you could practice yourself being more confident in that environment, maybe even proudly saying, yeah, you are a bit weird. We all are to some degree, and highlighting those parts of you, but then also making sure that you’re staying regulated with that stress system so that you’re not then spiraling and reinforcing negative parts of the day.

[00:40:30] Because you could go into it with a calm central nervous system, you know, reinforcing these beliefs about yourself in a positive way and saying, okay, fine, I’m a little bit stranger. I’m shy. Okay. There are lots of people in the world that are shy, so I’m just going to do the best that I can with the situation and I’ll probably end up making a friend that maybe feels the same way that I do.

[00:40:48] Instead of going in there and saying, well I’m shy, I’m a weirdo, and then the stress hormones are increasing and you go in and you’re like, I see, nobody likes me, I told you, I’m just a freak, and then it reinforces the negative side of the [00:41:00] personality type.

[00:41:01] LM: I have a girlfriend who does something that she calls best case scenario journaling, and so she’ll journal, this is what my best day would look like.

[00:41:07] This is what the best case scenario would be for this project. This is what the best case scenario for my dating life would be. Based on the science you just shared, would that make the best case scenario more likely to be the case?

[00:41:19] NV: Yeah, and I love that because you’re opening up the opportunity for the best case scenario because if you don’t, you’re likely to go down the not so best case scenario and then see it.

[00:41:30] LM: Literally, you’re just priming your brain to see all of these things, which is crazy. And what I’ve loved about it forever, without even understanding the science behind it, is that you’re defining what the best case scenario even is, and I think a lot of us feel like we are lacking something, but we haven’t even defined what we would specifically want.

[00:41:46] Okay, so I want to go through, I have like a list of behaviors that are wired in, and I would love one intervention for each of them. Okay. What about feeling jealous?

[00:41:57] NV: I like to play fact or fiction. [00:42:00] Is it fact that what’s happening is warranting this behavior or this feeling or emotion? Or is it fiction?

[00:42:07] Is it your mind playing tricks on you and saying that you should be jealous about something when there’s nothing there? So fact or fiction is a good one.

[00:42:12] LM: I love that. Staying up late scrolling on our phones.

[00:42:15] NV: Yes. Oh my gosh. Okay. Huge one. So I have this countdown thing where I go, okay, five, four, three, two, one, get off your phone.

[00:42:24] And it’s like quite an abrupt way of doing it because we have a salience network in our brains that determines what’s important in your environment right now. So there are loads of things in our periphery, but my brain is saying, Liz, you’re important to me right now. But I I could, if someone was talking, hone in on what they were saying in the background.

[00:42:43] You can actually shift your auditory cortex to listen to someone else’s words and I would not pay attention to you. That’s kind of what’s happening with the phone. You’re going to this like trance like state where the brain is honed in on the situation. So I actually stomp my foot, I go five, four, three, two, one, I stomp my foot and I get off it.[00:43:00]

[00:43:00] Because the stomping of the foot and the countdown shifts your direction into something else that you can snap out of it. I love

[00:43:06] LM: that. That’s so interesting about the auditory thing. It’s one of the frustrations I have at a dinner party where you can like hear the conversation here and you’re in a conversation and you’re like, I just want to be engaged in this conversation, but you can hear it.

[00:43:17] Yes. I need the dinner party where we’re all talking at the table together and not having a separate conversation.

[00:43:23] NV: So stomp your foot five, four, three, two, one, stomp the foot. Cause the stomping of the foot is going to, it’s like if someone had to drop something right now, our heads would turn

[00:43:29] LM: and pay attention.

[00:43:30] NV: It interrupts the conversation.

[00:43:32] LM: that process. I love that. Procrastinating. You’ve given us some tips, but give us a new one.

[00:43:37] NV: Okay. Procrastination. Yeah. So a really good one, talking about this from a dopamine perspective, is if you do something very small and you tick it off, your brain’s going to go, Oh, that feels really good.

[00:43:48] And then you can do another one, tick it off. Once you’ve done that, you’re in this drive to want to feel better and do more. So I always say like, put the really easy stuff in the beginning. And make it really simple. Like, I always joke, it’s like free [00:44:00] dopamine. I’m like, put the fact that you sat down on the chair, sat down at my desk, even thought about doing work, tick, tick, tick.

[00:44:06] And it sends you in this trajectory to want to keep going.

[00:44:11] LM: How do you think about that in the context of like, we’re saving our dopamine rewards for later in the day so that we keep our motivation? Is the idea with this, they’re not quite rewards, they’re things we want to do. So we want those little dopamine microbursts?

[00:44:23] Yes.

[00:44:23] NV: Yes. Because they productive. They’re getting you somewhere. Okay. But

[00:44:27] LM: we’re still saving our phone usage, we’re saving our snacks, all of that, until the end of the day. Okay. Feeling tired all the time?

[00:44:35] NV: Oh, I would say what is the quality of the sleep you’re getting? Because some people get eight hours of sleep, but they’re not getting good quality sleep.

[00:44:43] And that generally happens for a variety of reasons, but I can guarantee it’s almost always the same thing. People scroll late at night. So if you are on your phone and you have this artificial light coming into your eyes, there’s a part of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus that is [00:45:00] supposed to communicate with the rest of your brain and body that we are either in the daytime or at nighttime.

[00:45:05] When you’re in the nighttime, it starts communicating that we need to release melatonin. We need to start slowing everything down. If you’re looking at a phone, the brain is quote unquote confused and kind of like, well, It’s dark outside, but we’ve still got this light in our eyes, so we don’t need to shut down yet.

[00:45:22] And then people turn off the phones, roll over, lie in bed, and then they struggle to sleep. And then when they do fall asleep, they’re not getting to those deep sleep stages of really slow wave, delta brainwave sleep, where it’s the most restorative. So they’ll still get eight hours, but it’s like superficial sleep.

[00:45:38] And then you wake up and you’re still feeling tired. So that’s one aspect of it is check the quality of your sleep. That could also be with your. stress system. So if you’re dealing with trauma or you’re dealing with overwhelm at work, or maybe you’re going through a divorce, those are all things that are going to be impacting your central nervous system and that’s not [00:46:00] helping you recover because you’re always in a state of heightened arousal.

[00:46:03] It’s going to be tiring for you to be in that state all the time. What do

[00:46:06] LM: we

[00:46:07] NV: do

[00:46:07] LM: in the latter

[00:46:08] NV: instance? You need to obviously address the root cause and maybe get professional help with someone who can help you, again, get into that nitty gritty. So if it isn’t stress related, then generally it’s sleep related.

[00:46:21] LM: Can you talk to me a little bit about the science of sleep? I understand sleep is important, but until I read your book, I didn’t understand on a Okay. Neurological level, why it was so important.

[00:46:31] NV: So we’ve got REM sleep and we’ve got deep sleep and the brain cyclically goes through both phases of them during the night.

[00:46:39] Deep sleep happens in the first two cycles of the night. Sometimes only one in an ideal world, it would be two. And in that very deep sleep, that’s where all the restoration happens. So the body releases growth hormone, which is not just responsible for children growing Like Burley Brooks in the gym is responsible for everything all [00:47:00] the way down to repairing cells and not just that, but also helps create new synapses in the brain.

[00:47:06] Then we also have something called a glymphatic system, which is essentially a system that washes out toxin buildup in the brain. So it washes out things like tau buildup associated with Alzheimer’s, beta amyloid, again, associated with Alzheimer’s and dementia. And so. If we’re not getting that deep restorative sleep, the brain isn’t quite washing out all these toxins from the brain and body.

[00:47:31] Then we’ve got REM sleep. So REM sleep is responsible for releasing testosterone, which is not just important for men, but it’s important for both men and women, and is responsible for cognitive abilities, et cetera, and obviously muscle function. But what’s really important is that during REM sleep, we actually consolidate memories.

[00:47:51] So any information that you’ve acquired in the day During REM sleep, that is when it will be essentially consolidating, meaning that it makes it more [00:48:00] rigid, quote unquote, if you will. Because when we acquire information during the day, the memory is still fragmented in our brains. And then during REM sleep, we make it more solidified, if you will.

[00:48:11] We also have something called rapid eye movement during REM sleep. That’s why it’s called REM, so rapid eye movement sleep. During that rapid eye movement, we’re essentially mimicking EMDR therapy. Have you ever done EMDR therapy? I

[00:48:22] LM: have.

[00:48:22] NV: Yes.

[00:48:23] LM: That’s interesting. I’ve never heard anybody say that though.

[00:48:25] NV: Exactly. So that goal-directed eye of movement, is switching off or deactivating the amygdala because it’s activating the orbital frontal cortex. And what that does is it competes for resources with the amygdala. So now you can talk about your emotions and what you’re going through, the trauma in a therapeutic setting.

[00:48:45] without the fear processing involved. So that emotional friction is alleviated. And that’s what’s happening during sleep. We’re consolidating and alleviating the emotional friction from traumatic or heavily loaded information in our brains.

[00:48:58] LM: Wow. Okay. So if you’re [00:49:00] not getting enough REM sleep, you’re going to feel the weight of the trauma and stress in your life far more?

[00:49:07] NV: I can’t say far more, but you won’t be dealing with it. Sleep will help you recover from that.

[00:49:12] LM: That’s so interesting. Okay. So you shared your neuroscience approved morning routine. Can you share us a nighttime routine to get the best quality sleep that we can?

[00:49:21] NV: Yes. Everybody’s different. One of the sort of staples that works for generally everybody is having a hot shower or a hot bath, because when we go to sleep, our body temperature drops by But half a degree actually.

[00:49:35] And when we have a hot shower or a hot bath, our core body temperature is trying to mitigate the heat. And so it drops in temperatures we call a homeostasis. And that helps to signal to the brain and body that it’s time for sleep. That’s why you feel sort of lightheaded and tired after a hot bath, no phones for at least an hour.

[00:49:55] Now I’m actually a two hour kind of person because I have a genetic [00:50:00] mutation. So it’s called the Comte gene, which produces enzymes to break down dopamine. I actually have a deficiency in these enzymes, which means that I actually have an abundance of dopamine when it’s released from the synapse, which means that it lingers for a lot longer because I don’t have enough enzymes to reuptake into the synapse or break it down.

[00:50:18] LM: Is that very common?

[00:50:20] NV: I’m not sure. I’ve done a genetic test and they will tell you like how common it is. Most people will have some mutations in some way or another and it’s good. This is part of the exhuming those traits and make them work for us. But for me, it means that like I can be quite triggered at night.

[00:50:34] I’m over easily stimulated by sounds and just too much going on. And so I tend to stay away from my phone even longer, about two hours. Now, anyone that can scroll on their phone and then. Turn around and go to sleep anyway. What I would say is that artificial light is still impacting your brain negatively late at night.

[00:50:55] So we have an area called the habenula. And at nighttime, if it’s [00:51:00] being infiltrated with artificial light, it impacts your dopamine making abilities. So how you make dopamine. dopamine regeneration. So that’s why you might wake up in the morning and feel even less motivated to want to do work because the way that you create dopamine has been impacted.

[00:51:17] And then you’ve also sort of depleted it by being on your phone. No phones late at night, ideally an hour before bed, something like earplugs can be really good. Blackout curtains, blocking out any light because when we have extra stimulus coming in, the brain filters it out. As I said earlier, you’re listening to my voice.

[00:51:36] The brain is saying that I’m important. If there was background noise, your brain would be trying to filter out as much as possible. If it’s doing that when you’re sleeping, then it’s not really saving energy by being restorative because it’s still active in some ways. So reducing as much stimulus as possible so that can go down into a deep regenerative state is really important.

[00:51:56] LM: What would you say to the people who are like, I put [00:52:00] on Friends, or I put on The Office to sleep, and I won’t sleep without that, that’s like my comfort show that makes it so I can sleep, so the choice is no sleep, or sleep with this light screen sound stimulation.

[00:52:12] NV: Yeah, that’s also by association, like a comfort, and I can appreciate that, but maybe put it on a timer, so that it does switch off, so that your brain isn’t continuously then trying to filter out that information in the middle of the night.

[00:52:22] LM: Do you trust the sleep trackers? Like my aura tells me how much REM and how much deep sleep I get. Do you think that’s applicable information?

[00:52:29] NV: I think it’s good to look at trends. So the WHOOP has the best polysomnography study around sleep. I think aura is pretty, pretty close behind. Apple, not as good, but I would say that it’s good to look at trends.

[00:52:43] So for example, I’ve been traveling and I can kind of see, okay, I’m getting more sleep in the REM part of the night. So I need to maybe go to bed a little bit earlier. And looking at what’s happening across rather than making it the be all and end all of the day. Sometimes you wake up and you’re like, Oh, I only [00:53:00] got seven and a half hours and I’m at, HRV tells me that I haven’t had enough recovery.

[00:53:04] So now I’m tired. Cause that could, you know, be a spiral in itself and confirmation bias. But these tools are good to help you, especially you seem like you’re quite aware of health and you know how your body feels. And I’m the same. Like I know if I haven’t slept well or if I have slept well in my roots as I haven’t, but some people just don’t know what feeling good feels like because they’ve never really done it.

[00:53:26] LM: Yeah. That’s such a

[00:53:27] NV: powerful, sad point. And the brain and body are extremely resilient. Like we can get used to anything. And it’s the reason why. People can get used to not sleeping well, but then being able to function on it, and then your body adjusts to make that your new normal. But then you don’t realize how good you could feel when you feel good, because you just don’t know what normal is anymore.

[00:53:50] LM: Is that what you would say to somebody who’s like, I’ve been sleeping five hours for years and I’m fine? Yes.

[00:53:56] NV: Yeah, because there’s a very small genetic population. [00:54:00] I think it affects around five to six percent of the population, the whole population that we know of anyway, that have a genetic mutation that means that they can sleep for six hours but have the same benefits as someone who slept eight hours.

[00:54:11] But that’s a very, very small Yeah, it’s teeny tiny. Exactly. If you’re listening and you

[00:54:15] LM: think you’re part of it, like you are probably Probably not. Statistically not. Yeah. You

[00:54:19] NV: probably just trained yourself to feel okay. On the little bit of sleep that you do get.

[00:54:24] LM: Yeah, and I do think we don’t know how good we can feel until we can feel it.

[00:54:29] We don’t know what the view from the top of the mountain is until we get to the top of the mountain. And once you see the view from the top of the mountain, you can never forget that view. But I do think we have to get there in the first place. Can I ask in those moments where we feel a little muddled, we feel tired, we feel anxious, just in those moments where we’re not feeling our best, is there a hack to quickly pick us up if we need to perform in that moment?

[00:54:50] NV: Yes. So going back to my research, we know that phones take energy. doing something like a mindfulness meditation or a nap. I [00:55:00] call it the nine minute nap. We just close your eyes. You don’t have to fall asleep and just shut off from the world that will help replenish these cognitive resources that I was talking about earlier to help you then perform a little bit better.

[00:55:11] So they actually instill more energy so that you can then have improved psychomotor activity, attention span, And decision making skills. So it does help to replenish those stores. So if I’m tired and I have to go into a podcast or a meeting, I actually close my eyes for 10 minutes before and just shut everything down.

[00:55:30] I have no external stimulus affecting my systems that I can just replenish.

[00:55:34] LM: And you don’t need to be saying a mantra or watching your breath or anything. It’s literally just getting rid of the external stimuli.

[00:55:41] NV: Exactly. So, Those all have benefits in themselves. But what I would say to someone who’s kind of like, Oh, I roll meditation.

[00:55:47] Here we go again. It’s just about closing your eyes. It’s, I call it a strategic break. You’ll take in a break, a mental break for your brain, because if you don’t take that strategic break, your brain will take it for you in the least convenient [00:56:00] time, maybe during a meeting where you’re stumbling over your words.

[00:56:02] In

[00:56:02] LM: 10 minutes is the magic number.

[00:56:05] NV: 15 is actually the number, but 10 can also have benefits. I appreciate that 15 sounds like you’re then taking a quarter of an hour lunch break. So 10 minutes is great.

[00:56:14] LM: I just did a meditation retreat and the instructor was like, we would really like you to meditate for 15 minutes, but 15 for some reason is the hurdle where people are like, How do I fit that into my schedule?

[00:56:25] You start trying to put it into your calendar and 10 people feel like, Oh, anybody has 10 minutes.

[00:56:29] NV: Exactly. Exactly. An

[00:56:31] LM: interesting mental thing going on.

[00:56:32] NV: Exactly. And I call it the nine minute nap because your phone will have a nine minute timer when you snooze.

[00:56:38] LM: Is there a best type of meditation? There’s transcendental meditation.

[00:56:43] I just did the Zen Buddhist meditation retreat. Are there types that you prefer for our neurological health?

[00:56:50] NV: do what works for you. Because sometimes we have all the research and we’ll say, okay, well, this works in a population sample of, I don’t know, 6, 000 people. [00:57:00] But if you don’t believe it or enjoy it, then it’s going to have less effect on you.

[00:57:05] Our mindset around things is hugely influential. If you believe that the meditation you’re doing is beneficial for you versus the one that maybe I say is better, then Then that one is probably going to have more benefits and you’re going to be more inclined to want to do that one versus the one that you maybe don’t enjoy.

[00:57:22] And they both have benefits. So

[00:57:24] LM: what type do you do?

[00:57:25] NV: I actually do more self hypnosis and then I actually do more like moving meditation. So I love to move my body and like I just get really trippy and like weird with it. So I don’t really know what kind of meditation that is, but I like I have music and I just kind of like let my mind wander.

[00:57:42] Go. I love that. I also do a lot of breath work. So like slow, cyclical breathing, I do anything from like holotropic breathing to conscious connected through to sort of relaxing, um, not box breathing because I don’t love box breathing, but like physiological sighing.

[00:57:57] LM: Why don’t you love box breathing?

[00:57:59] NV: I feel [00:58:00] like I’m thinking about the numbers too much.

[00:58:02] I really love to let my mind run.

[00:58:04] LM: Like I almost want to see

[00:58:05] NV: how far it will go with the thoughts. It’s like I’m almost embarking on this creative adventure with my meditation.

[00:58:12] LM: That’s so fun. It’s something I’ve been thinking about because I’ve just started trying to do this Zen Buddhist meditation where you watch your breath, but you don’t try to control it.

[00:58:19] You’re just like breathing in, you’re breathing out. And I’ve always done more of a mantra or guided meditation in the past. And mantra meditation, I love. I have a mantra that was given to me by an instructor and it gives me something to hook on to, which makes meditation feel really easy and enjoyable.

[00:58:36] Zen Buddhist meditation, from what was explained to me at this retreat, is about noticing without trying to control. And I was like, Oh, I need that in my life. So even though this feels harder in the moment, perhaps it’s harder because it’s something I need more of in my life. So I’m doing an experiment where I see the effects of it, even though I don’t feel it.

[00:58:55] Dislike it. Yes.

[00:58:57] NV: But that’s really good you said that because you’re [00:59:00] doing what you need for you. So I would imagine that someone with ADHD would probably want to do one that helps them anchor so that they can work on the executive control and retraining that self interruption. Someone like me who maybe enjoys the creative aspects of it can say, let’s just go with it and see what happens.

[00:59:17] So depending on what you need and how you respond to it is better than saying, Oh, this meditation is better because I think they all serve a purpose. It’s just, what do you need? Take which one you need.

[00:59:27] LM: Okay, I have a few more on my list.

[00:59:28] NV: Yep. Feeling

[00:59:29] LM: bored.

[00:59:30] NV: Like anything, there’s two sides to the coin. I don’t know if I truly know anyone that’s actually bored because most people always have something to do.

[00:59:41] When else were you actually bored?

[00:59:43] LM: I feel like it’s the reason people give for why they fill every single second of their time.

[00:59:50] NV: Yeah.

[00:59:50] LM: I can’t sit with the boredom of not being on my phone, not having a podcast on two times speed while I’m driving, et cetera.

[00:59:58] NV: And that’s the other side of the coin [01:00:00] is that we need to embrace boredom and I talk about this a lot because we don’t really get to be bored so much because we have podcast, phone, blockadoco on your phone.

[01:00:09] End. Sitting with that discomfort and that boredom is a skill. It can also help with dopamine activity because when we sit in that boredom, we’re replenishing dopamine source because we’re not engaging in anything that’s taken from us. Boredom is important, but then there’s, again, the other side of the coin, someone actually is bored, then that’s not good either because you want to be stimulated.

[01:00:34] So it’s a balance with life.

[01:00:37] LM: Are there any hacks for pushing through that initial discomfort that comes with those moments of boredom?

[01:00:43] NV: Yeah. You can focus on your breath if that’s something that you like to do, do you just kind of still focusing on something, but something that’s quite low level activity.

[01:00:52] If you want to just anchor yourself to something like maybe you’ve got a dog or maybe you want to listen to the birds or maybe you want to just listen to your breathing, [01:01:00] but embracing the boredom is a really valuable skill.

[01:01:03] LM: Eating food that we don’t want to eat.

[01:01:05] NV: Five minute rule. I always say, if you wait five minutes, if you still want it, then you’re probably hungry.

[01:01:14] If you don’t want it, because generally you start to reinstate that kind of logical thinking within those five minutes. Generally speaking, when we want something that we shouldn’t be having, it’s an impulse. Just saw the cake, want it, have it. But if you just take a few minutes, then you can be mindful about it and think, okay, do I want the cake?

[01:01:32] Yes, I do want the cake because I haven’t had any cake this week. And actually, I really love cake. Then you can actually mindfully eat the cake and not beat yourself up about it. I want to talk about that, actually beating yourself up about things, or are you just doing it because it’s like an impulse reaction automaticity?

[01:01:48] I see the cake, I eat it, I just shove it down my throat and then I beat myself up about it. It’s about being conscious.

[01:01:53] LM: I love that. I also feel like after this conversation, I’m going to save my treats for late in the day, which I really like because it [01:02:00] means I can still have them.

[01:02:01] NV: Yeah.

[01:02:02] LM: But I have this dopamine motivation to just have it a little bit later.

[01:02:06] NV: Overcoming that hurdle. of wanting it now, but putting it later in a way is delaying that gratification and a good thing. So when you get it, you’ll enjoy it and you’ll be like, yes, I’ve earned this. Okay. So

[01:02:17] LM: talk to us about not beating yourself up.

[01:02:20] NV: It ties in with everything we’ve been saying because we have this tendency to have this negativity bias, but it doesn’t change behavior.

[01:02:28] We know that because every time you had a cigarette and then beat yourself up about it, you would stop the habit right there and then. But we don’t, it just keeps us stuck. So if you stop beating yourself up about it and you start looking at the positives, I always use this as an example. If you’re somebody that smokes a pack a day, that’s 20 cigarettes.

[01:02:47] Let’s say you cut down to one cigarette a day. What is likely to happen is you’re going to say, well, I’m still smoking and you’re still going to beat yourself up about that one cigarette, but you’re going to overlook the fact that you’re now smoking 19 [01:03:00] cigarettes less every single day. That’s 530 cigarettes in a month, but you’re still going to say, well, I’m still smoking and beat yourself up about that.

[01:03:08] And that keeps us stuck. Whereas if we shift that into a, I can really proud of myself. I only smoke one cigarette a day now versus 19. That’s going to motivate you to want to smoke even less. And that’s Because it’s driving you to make yourself feel better about yourself. So you go, okay, well, I know that it feels really good when I’m kind to myself.

[01:03:25] So tomorrow I’m not going to smoke at all. And then you’re going to focus on that. I didn’t smoke today. Maybe I’ll smoke tomorrow and that’s fine. But then when you do, you go, okay, but I didn’t smoke the day before. And then again, it’s this positive reinforcement of I’m working towards my goal. I’m not there yet.

[01:03:39] It doesn’t happen overnight. In the same way that you didn’t start smoking 20 a day.

[01:03:43] LM: Wait, so beating yourself up for the one cigarette a day keeps you stuck, you said. That’s because your brain is like, well, I already gave up 19 and you’re not even rewarding me for this. So why would you reward me for an additional one?

[01:03:54] Yeah,

[01:03:55] NV: to some degree. Yeah.

[01:03:56] LM: Okay. So switching the thought to focus on [01:04:00] the progress that you have made, not only will feel better in the moment, but it will technically from A neurological perspective motivate you more to continue to make progress. Yes,

[01:04:09] NV: because when we feel good, our brain releases dopamine, especially if we start to make gratitude lists and unexpected reward of, Hey, actually, Liz, you’ve had a great day.

[01:04:19] Nick, you did fantastic. That’s an unexpected reward where you’re deciding to be kind to yourself. And so that. Dopamine, because dopamine is part of putting in pursuit of reward, it’s a reward based learning mechanism that tells you, you felt good when you did this, let’s do that again. We feel good when we don’t smoke.

[01:04:37] We feel good when we say no to the extra cake. We feel good when we go for a run. Let’s continue to do that versus I didn’t go to the gym today, so I’m just going to beat myself up about it because that’s a form of trying to gain control of the situation.

[01:04:52] LM: That’s so interesting. Put it like that to me, that this is how you’re trying to keep a little bit of control.

[01:04:58] We’ve talked a lot about dopamine. [01:05:00] I want to talk about two other neurochemicals briefly, BDNF. Can you explain what that is and what function it’s serving?

[01:05:07] NV: BDNF is brain derived neurotrophic factor. It’s responsible for keeping the synapses strong. So for cell survival and helps to create new synapses.

[01:05:17] So when you’re a child, your brain is abundant with BDNF as it’s creating all these rules about the world. Now we can access BDNF when we exercise, predominantly through aerobic exercise. Aerobic exercise is that kind of feeling when you’re walking, you’re huffed and you’re puffed, but you’re not out of breath.

[01:05:34] So I think people think that exercise is this thing you have to do to like blast yourself and be super sweaty, but a nice brisk walk is also going to have benefits like releasing BDNF. We also release BDNF when we’re engaging in new activities. I’m learning to play the guitar at the moment. And what I’ve been doing is I’ve been coupling my guitar learning with better habits.

[01:05:55] So I’m trying to get better at exercising first thing in the morning. So whilst [01:06:00] I’m engaging in this guitar learning journey, I’m also trying to change another big habit in my life because there’s going to be an abundance of BDNF in my brain.

[01:06:08] LM: Oh, that’s so interesting. Can you talk to me more about how we can sort of hack our BDNF to see the results that we want to see?

[01:06:14] NV: Yeah. So BDNF gets released through the synapse when we engage in activities that are new and when we do aerobic exercise. So I would say if you’re trying to adopt a habit, doing something like aerobic exercise first thing in the morning, like going for a walk, can then prime your brain for whatever it is that you’re trying to learn on top of that.

[01:06:34] LM: Oh, that’s so interesting. Okay. And then the other one that I want to briefly touch on is serotonin. Serotonin really has a reputation for being the thing that is associated with happiness in our brain. I think largely because of SSRIs and those being the primary form of antidepressants on the market.

[01:06:50] Is that an oversimplification or is that how you view serotonin as well?

[01:06:54] NV: It’s an oversimplification. I mean, serotonin is also responsible for peristalsis in your [01:07:00] gut. That is contracting the muscles and pushing the food you’ve just digested through the tract. So saying that serotonin is only responsible for happiness, et cetera, is definitely an oversimplification.

[01:07:13] LM: Would you say it’s the primary neurochemical that we should be thinking about when we think about happiness?

[01:07:18] NV: It’s responsible for regulating emotion. So when we see a drop in serotonin, we see obsessive thoughts come through, we see irritability, and we see those cyclical thought patterns, predominantly like I’ve spoken about in the context of breakups.

[01:07:32] So even though I have oversimplified these neurochemicals in the book so that people can really get an understanding, serotonin is responsible for a variety of things, but what we see is that it’s an amalgamation of neurochemicals. To make us feel a particular way, we can hack dopamine by engaging in exercise.

[01:07:51] We can hack serotonin by engaging in meaningful conversations and laughing, et cetera, and we can hack oxytocin by staring into each other’s eyes and [01:08:00] maybe even holding hands, those can all help us to, um, Improve our lives.

[01:08:04] LM: Are there other hacks for serotonin because I’m somebody who sometimes struggles with depressive tendencies and for a number of reasons I don’t take antidepressants.

[01:08:12] Are there ways I can get some of those effects?

[01:08:15] NV: Yeah Laughter is probably one of the best ways to do that and in sunlight So, viewing sunlight helps to create serotonin in the body.

[01:08:23] LM: At any time of day or is that the morning viewing?

[01:08:26] NV: Well, morning viewing, evening viewing, but any time of the day as well.

[01:08:29] Of course, caveat, you don’t want to be sitting in the sun all day and then, you know, get burnt, etc.

[01:08:34] LM: I love that though. I feel fueled by the sun. I have a standing desk that I bring outside and I’ll just work outside all day. Yeah, perfect. I wear a hat. And do you feel better when you do? I feel so much better.

[01:08:44] Yes. It’s just weather. Like, why does it impact your mood so much? I’m like, I don’t know. It really, really makes a difference, though.

[01:08:53] NV: Because it’s helping create vitamin D. Vitamin D also helps to create serotonin. Serotonin, yes, you can hack it like [01:09:00] that. And laughter. So, maybe a comedy show, or if you have girlfriends that make you laugh.

[01:09:04] Like, my best friend’s highly hilarious.

[01:09:06] LM: Because of the synchronization that we talked about earlier, laughter. Laughter. Should we be careful who we hang out with? Like if you’re hanging out with a friend who’s mired in negativity all the time, is our brain going to pick up on that? Yes.

[01:09:19] NV: Yeah. And it’s one of the chapters in my book or one of the steps in the rewiring process is doing a spring clean.

[01:09:26] So I’ve spoken about in the context of social media and the media you consume, but it can also mean the people around you. And if it means that maybe you have to put a temporary block on somebody, not physical block on Instagram, but like maybe. limiting your contact with them for now until you get to a point where this person doesn’t affect you.

[01:09:43] LM: I do think it’s an under discussed thing. We’re all here listening to these podcasts, reading these books, trying to implement all these habits, but we’re so loathe to change the people that surround us. It’s scary for so many. very valid reasons, but it’s also this huge hack to make all of this other [01:10:00] effort that you’re putting in pay off so much more.

[01:10:03] NV: Yeah. And if we look at it from a different context, so let’s say you’re trying to stop drinking. If you walk into a bar and you’re in the midst of trying to change, it’s going to be very difficult for you to be able to say no to a drink, right? So you would probably not want to go to those places for the time being the same with friends, but you could get to a point where you go to the bar and don’t feel because you’ve changed your perception of it.

[01:10:25] you’ve changed within yourself. And so then you can sort of be the light in the friendship group where you’re affecting them positively to be more like you, but you have to be there already. It’s almost like

[01:10:38] LM: be extra careful while you are paving these new neural pathways, but when the road is done and they’re strong, you can be a little bit more flexible.

[01:10:46] Are there any other neuroscience hacks for happiness or calm or just feeling good on a day to day basis that you could share with us?

[01:10:54] NV: One of the happiness hacks that I love doing is, so you know how we have this negativity spiral where if you [01:11:00] start paying attention to all the negative things in your life, you start going into this negativity bias.

[01:11:04] The opposite is true. So when you start making a list of all the things that you’re grateful for, that can hack you or hack your systems, that you go into a state of bliss where you’re like, actually, everything’s really great. You start smiling at someone, they smile back, you’re like, that feels great.

[01:11:18] Everything is uplifted. So doing that on a regular basis. When you’re feeling low. Try it.

[01:11:24] LM: I love that. Can you tell us a little bit in your own words about your beautiful book?

[01:11:27] NV: Yes. So we all have thoughts, habits, behaviors that are holding us back. And what science tells us is that these thoughts and behaviors, they reside within the wiring of our brain.

[01:11:37] We now know that we can rewire our brains. We can change at any age, and that’s why I’ve called the book Rewire. And so we can change these habits and behaviors that are no longer serving us. If you are somebody that has been defined by a narrative that’s been given to you by somebody else, the book challenges you to really address whether that programming is really yours.

[01:11:59] And if it [01:12:00] isn’t, I want you to know that you can change it. So it’s a three phase program. Phase one, ditch the negative. We attack things like stress, anxiety, thoughts of worry, negativity, bias, breakups as well. I’ve got a big chapter on breakups. Then phase two, shift your narrative. It’s a seven step process.

[01:12:17] And then phase three is boost the positive. So. How to maintain these habits that you’ve just created. If you follow the book from front to back, the whole book, you’ll be able to reach peak mental well being and break free from all of those things that are holding you back from reaching your full potential.

[01:12:32] LM: Yeah, I love it. It has so much great science and also just really great exercises to bring that science to life.

[01:12:37] NV: Yes, even though I recommend reading it from front to back. It has also been designed so that you can dip in and out as you need to with anything that you’re struggling with. So I’ve got the sleep chapter.

[01:12:47] I’ve got the negativity bias breakups that you can just go back to when you need to, and you’ve got the hacks in there.

[01:12:53] LM: Love it. Well, thank you so much, Nicole. Thanks so much for having me. That’s all for this episode of the Liz Moody [01:13:00] Podcast. If you loved this episode, one of the best ways that you can support the pod is by sending a link to your friends, your family, your partner, your coworkers, you name it.

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[01:13:50] Oh, just one more thing. It’s the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a [01:14:00] substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional.