How to Break Bad Habits & Create Lasting Change | Nicole Vignola | Good Life Project

The brain will rewire itself on consistency, even just five minutes a day because you're just repeating and through repetition

That's how the brain creates and strengthens the synapses

So you have to make sure that you're doing it on a regular basis

And what that means is that eventually

Motivation will wear off and you're gonna have to rely on that consistency as well

So I always suggest people to kind of hone in on that motivation time when you've got it

Really go for it if you can and set up a practice where you're doing it on a regular basis because that is what's going to help create those pathways

Anything that requires you to put in work and effort will raise your dopamine levels, but then sustain them over time

So have you ever wished that you could just hit the reset button in your life?

What if I told you that you had the ability to rewire your brain and fundamentally change your thoughts, your behaviors, your habits, and ultimately your entire existence?

My guest today is Nicole Vanilla, a neuroscientist and organizational consultant who has made it her mission to make neuroscience tangible for everybody

In her groundbreaking book Rewire, Break the Cycle, alter your thoughts and create lasting change

Nicole provides a really revolutionary approach to harnessing the power of neuroplasticity

The brain's ability to reorganize itself and create new neural pathways

And drawing on her expertise in neuroscience and organizational psych

Nicole offers practical tools and science back methods to help you improve your mental health

Optimize reflexes and reach peak mental performance

With the BS in neuroscience for the University of Bristol and the MSC in organizational psychology from the University of West England

She has dedicated her career to empowering individuals and organizations to unlock their full potential

And in this conversation we really dive into the fascinating world of neuroplasticity

What that actually is and isn't

And we explore how you can break free from limiting beliefs from negative thought patterns

And self-sabotaging behaviors that have been holding so many of us back

So get ready to embark on a transformative journey where you'll really learn to rewire your brain and create lasting change

Paving away for a life of greater fulfillment, purpose, and possibility

So excited to share this conversation with you

I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project

Hi, this is Matt and Sean from Two Black Guys

Good credit from a local business to a global corporation

Partnering with Bank of America gives your operation access to exclusive digital tools, award-winning insights, and business solutions so powerful

You'll make every move better

Visit bankofamerica.com slash banking for business to learn more

What would you like the power to do?

Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds

At Mint Mobile, we like to do the opposite of what big wireless does

They charge you a lot, we charge you a little

So naturally, when they announce they'd be raising their prices due to inflation

We decided to deflate our prices due to not hating you

That's right, we're cutting the price of Mint unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month

Give it a try at MintMobile.com slash switch

$45 upfront for three months plus taxes and fees, promulgate for new customers for limited time, unlimited more than 40 gigabytes per month, slows, full turns at MintMobile.com

Good Life Project is supported by Dell, so seasons change

So why not your tech?

Upgrade now during the Dell Technologies Summer Sale event

And save on select PCs like the XPS16 powered by Intel Core processors

You'll be able to bring your most intensive project to life with built-in AI, minimalistic design, immersive visuals, and cinematic audio

Plus complete your dream setup with deals on select monitors, mice, and more must have electronics and accessories

When you shop at Dell.com slash deals, you'll have access to exceptional tech and electronics

Plus free shipping on everything

Amazing prices await you for a limited time only at Dell.com slash deals, that's Dell.com slash deals or just click the link in the show notes

So fundamentally, you've been studying and talking about how the brain works

With the focus on this thing that a word that I think so many of us have heard neuroplasticity

It's a way to rewire your brain, a way to change your life, a way to do all these different things

But maybe let's start in a simpler way with the question really what is neuroplasticity?

When we're talking about neuroplasticity, what are we actually talking about?

Absolutely, so firstly thanks for having me, I'm very excited to finally meet you

But neuroplasticity is the ability for our brain to change pathways

So for a long time we thought that after the age of 25 we were doomed and whatever we had adopted until then was sort of set in stone

There are about in the 90s we figured out that actually the brain is still capable of change well into old age

So the brain can reorganize itself, create pathways, undo old ones

Which means that we can undo bad behaviors and habits that we don't serve us

And we can also carve out new pathways to adopt habits and behaviors, maybe thought patterns that we would like to

And the brain does that by essentially creating new synapses

So you have a neuron and then on the sort of neuron there's synapses which are connections

And the more one connection communicates with another part of the brain, the stronger that connection becomes

And if that connection doesn't communicate then it can weaken over time

Hmm, it strikes me that there's something really different about the brain and the other vital organs in the body

And when you think about the kidney or the lungs or the heart

Think about an organ that has this ability to constantly rewire itself, to reorganize itself, to create new connections

And then prune old ones is the brain really the only primary organ in the body that has the ability to do this

Our peripheral nervous system will be doing the same, which I guess is still part of the nervous system if you will

So we have the central nervous system which is your brain and spine

And then peripheral nervous system which communicates nerves signals to the rest of the body

And those can rewire as well, so what that means is that you could have somatic connections that are either strengthened or weakened

And what that means is that something that may have caused you stress in the past may be weakened over time as well

And the way that you are triggered by stress through the whole body could change as well

So yeah, as far as I know, I think it is the only organ that can change

I mean, I know that the heart and the liver and the kidneys do regenerate

But I don't think they rewire and reconnect as far as I'm aware anyway

I mean, when we talk about the brain, most people think about that organ that sits up in our head

But I'm also hearing a lot of conversation over the last decade or so about what people often call the second brain

Or the entire brain, the sort of the set of neurons that exist in our gut

And how the environment in the gut affects that

What is the connection or the feedback mechanism between that quote second brain and the brain that most of us think about when we talk about the brain

As far as I, it's still very understudied, but it's a very exciting part of neuroscience

Because yes, as you said, we've started to realise that there's this whole interic nervous system within our gut

And that the gut microbiome has its own sort of mind of its own, and quote unquote, right?

Which is actually aiding the body and the brain in every function

We've seen functions of the gut microbiome dictating mental well-being, the way that we digest, of course, serotonin production

Now, serotonin production in the gut does not correlate to serotonin production in the brain

That's a big misconception, but what serotonin in the gut may or may not do, we're not entirely sure yet

Is help communicate information from the body to the brain

So healthy gut brain connection can actually improve various functions in the brain and body

Yeah, I know that makes a lot of sense

I think there's a lot of potential around neuroplasticity

And we're going to go a lot deeper into that

In a sense, there's also a lot of hype around it also

One of my curiosities is, I hear the phrase often, well, we've learned that the brain is no plastic meaning essentially

You can just completely rewire this thing

But is that true or are there parts of it that are more susceptible and that not?

Can we really make wholesale change in the brain or is it more selective?

To some degree, there are parts of the brain that can't change

Things that are hardwired like vision, speech

You know, you're never going to lose your accent

For example, your native accent, but you can potentially learn a new one

Now, the way that plasticity works is through attention

So Dr. Michael Mersnick was one of the lead researchers in the area and back in the 90s

He discovered that there had to be attention, there had to be Nora Penephrin and a CTL-Coling present in the brain for plasticity to occur

What they did is they did a tactile discrimination activity where individuals were recording plasticity in the brain

While touching a barrel that was turning

And when they asked them to focus on something else, there was no plasticity

And when they asked them to focus on what the finger was feeling, that's when they decided to see plasticity

So what they realized is that we have to drive attention to the things that we want to ingrain as adults

When we're children, we can absorb things through, you know, not osmosis

You know, through our environment, you're watching our parents, that's observational knowledge

But as adults, we have to physically tell the brain what is and what isn't important

So the more attention you put into something, the bigger the spike in Nora Penephrin, the bigger the spike in a CTL-Coling

And then you need repetition

So to some degree, I mean, you know, it's arguable you can't change your entire brain because that would require a lot of energy and a lot of effort to do so and a lot of attention

And we have things that we need to do on a daily basis like, you know, get to work and have these wonderful conversations

So you could acquire potentially, you know, five skills a year, maybe it's ten skills a year, depending on how much effort you put in

And then depending on how much consistency you put in as well

Hmm, I'm curious too, and it sounds like when, and you write about this in the book actually, you know, like when you're really young

It seems like your brain is just so much more capable of taking in so much more and as you described it's almost like, you know, we've got the width of the lens of attention is just so much broader

And it allows so much more in the brain and it integrates that, whereas you described as an adult, it seems like it becomes a much more sort of like, I have to do this

Like do you have a sense for why that shift happens over time?

I would imagine that it's because, you know, as between the ages of zero and 25, that's the most critical developmental stage where you learn rules of how the world works

In theory, by 25, you should kind of know how the world works and perhaps skill acquisition would have been, you know, done within your primary years again

I put that in quote and quote, I don't know when you want to think that over the age of 25 you're doomed

But it is an amazing thing to learn that we can rewire our brains up until old age as well

So they actually, there's a research to show that we're using neuroplasticity as a therapeutic intervention for dementia patients to help them alleviate of cognitive decline

So improve their symptoms, you know, they may not ever be able to fully recover but maybe even stave off the neurodegeneration

Now just a side note, when we have neurons and we have synapses, we don't create new neurons in the brain

When those die off, there's no turning back, but we can create new synapses

And that's the premise of neuroplasticity in terms of therapeutic interventions for dementia is that by keeping these synapses alive

And keeping them regenerative, they can help stave off further decline

So just to make sure I understand and for our listeners, would it sort of a simplification of that being the neurons or the cells of the brain

And the synapses are these little things that connect those cells to each other so that effectively if a cell's gone, it's gone in your brain

We don't have the ability to regenerate that

But whatever's left can rewire in different ways to maybe replace or change function so that we can still preserve a lot

Yes, and you can create multiple synapses as well so you can increase the abundance of the synapses too

So it's actually synaptogenesis of scientifically correct, not neuroplasticity would be the correct term, synaptic plasticity

It's more of a mouthful for people to understand

Yeah, I'm wondering as you're describing that, you know, whether there's, and I have no idea if you know this or not

Whether there's research going on these days to try and to ask the question like, is there some modality, some new idea or mechanism that would actually be able to generate new neurons themselves?

There is a lot of research, this speculation that we can regenerate in two areas of the brain

One is the hippocampus, which has been proven in rats, but not in humans

And the other area I believe, off the top of my head, is the ventral segmental area, but I could be wrong

It's a slip of mind, but those two areas, there's speculation that we could, and if we can, at the moment it's a very minor

Does it mean that we could induce neuroplasticity in other ways like, you know, we have stem cell regeneration? Maybe, I'm not sure yet, but it's exciting

It makes me curious about, I remember years ago, reading some research about, and you read about this through a certain extent also, the impact of exercise on your brain

And how, you know, through scans, measuring sort of before and after over a window of time, it seemed like certain areas in the brain actually grew in size

Grey matter in the brain, actually, there was a lot of higher volume of that matter

But I guess then what you're describing is, you're not necessarily growing new brain cells, but maybe that increase in matter

Is coming from, is that then just laying down a ton of new synaptic connections?

Yes, exactly, and it's condensing them, if you will, so the surface area is becoming more volumous, like a dense

Yeah, now that makes sense, so you mentioned by about 25 or so, we tend to have our model of the world

Like we kind of, well, we think we know the rules of the brain

Then we think nothing, and then everything changes eventually

And it ties into this word you described to a certain extent, which is heuristics

Yes, you know, these sort of mental shortcuts, take me a little bit deeper into what these are and why these help us function

The heuristics are mental shortcuts, so it's how your brain arrives to a conclusions or decisions in the brain without having to think about it

So if you, you don't think about how you walk into the door and turn on the light or open the door or make your coffee, you just do it automatically

Because the brain is trying to save energy for more cognitively demanding tasks, if you had to spend your time thinking about all these things

It would take too much energy and then you'd probably be depleted before lunchtime

So the brain acquires a set of sort of rules and heuristics as to how the world works and how you operate based on what's been ingrained, based on what's been repeated and based on your environment as well

So those heuristics could be good for most people, for some people, it means that they adopt behaviors that don't serve them based on what they learned as a child

So a classic example is when individuals come from, you know, maybe an emotionally abusive household and then they carry that pattern into their life

Even though they know that it's morally incorrect on a conscious level, but the subconscious brain which governs the majority of our operations, about 90 to 95% of our processes are thought to be subconscious

So what happens is that they carry those same patterns, even though consciously 5 to 10% of their brain, they know that it's wrong, but the patterns are still ingrained

Because neurobiology doesn't really have morals, it doesn't understand the difference between right or wrong, it just knows what's been repeated

And if this is the sequence of neurons that, you know, fire and in sequence to get you to a particular action, and that's what's always been repeated, that is what the brain is going to know best

Yeah, in the way you're describing it, I think a lot of people would sort of probably recognize some of those things that themselves look at that or maybe examining the present

But they might think, well, okay, so this is a pattern I have, and there's a quote, behavioral thing

But what you're describing is not just a behavioral thing, this is a physiological thing as well

Yes, exactly, and it's one of the reasons why I use the hardware analogy in the book, because the hardware is your brain, the software is your mental health and your patterns and habits and behaviors

But essentially, you need the hardware to be in good working order for the software to upgrade, and yes, it is all down to physiology, and it's all energy as well

So every single piece of communication is neurotransmitter release, which requires energy to be released

So the brain is going to take the least energy demanding path so that it can save time or energy for more cognitively demanding ones

No, that makes a lot of sense, so when we think about we have this ability to rewire the brain, when we want to do that, we need to do it on a fundamental physiological level so that it then can change the way we think in the way we feel, the way we behave and we interact

It ripples out into our lives, right?

Yes

When you have the conversation around neuroplasticity, why do we care so much? Like, what does knowing that we can do this, how does this open up or give us a sense of possibility or change in our lives that maybe we didn't really feel like we had a grip on before

I think it reinstates hope, because a lot of people have lost that, especially if they don't understand that they can change

And when you explain it to them, you can kind of see this when I explain to people anyway, I can see this kind of like, ah, sense of relief, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be like this

For some people it maybe puts blame on them, and I don't want them to feel like that, I don't want them to think that now the emphasis is on them to change

But it does give us the opportunity to reassess the things that don't serve us and give us hope that we can change them so that we can live a better life and reach peak mental wellbeing

Yeah, as you're describing that also, I think the blame thing is a really important element here, because oftentimes people here are you saying whatever state you're in, it's quote your fault

And you know, like, there are a lot of contributors to how we each land in any moment in life

And some of it is environment, some of it is systemic, some of it is culture and family culture, like there's so many things that were, their containers that we're living within

But I think what I'm hearing from you also is that part of the hope is that even if you're in a container or an environment or an experience where you feel like it's not easy to extract yourself

That maybe there are things you can do internally to literally change the brain, the way that your brain experiences that circumstance, so that at least for the moment it becomes better

Yes

Even if you don't have the capability to really fix the external circumstance quite yet, is that right?

Yes, yes, I would completely agree with that, and I think it gives people the understanding that they can change the trajectory of whatever was programmed for them

Because if you think about it, our programming is down to our environment, soci economic circumstances, religion, and for most of the part we should keep on, we should hold on to those things

But for some people, their programming wasn't modelled very well, but then they sort of sent them on a trajectory of their life, which always blurs my mind when I think about that

We're programming the children, we're programming people, and then sending them off into the world, but it's nice to know that we can take back control of that if we wish to

Yeah, is there a genetic component here that to a certain extent both determines what the opening wiring of the brain is, and then also how neural plastic any given individual's brain is or isn't?

Yes, and that would come down to the BDNF gene, so how much BDNF can you produce?

You know, we're all capable of some may be genetically more predisposed to having more or less, there's so many other genetic factors at play, anecdotally from example, I can tell you I have a contimutation, which basically means that conti is an enzyme that breaks out dopamine, and I have a not an abundance, what's the opposite of abundance?

A deficit in these enzymes, which means that my brain doesn't break down dopamine as quickly as it should, so I'm very dopaminergic, I'm very high functioning, I can get 70 things done at once, and that's really interesting because I don't have struggles with motivation, but it's because of this mutation in my genes

Oh, that's wild

Yeah, it's interesting

So basically the enzyme doesn't break it down as quickly or as much as others, so that you effectively have more of a residual or a reservoir of dopamine that just stays in your brain longer, and it gives you these almost superpowers too, certain extent

Yeah, exactly

That's fascinating

It's the reason why I can get overwhelmed and irritable quite quickly as well, if there's too much simulation, so I wear a lot of air plugs and stuff because too much information can send me in a frenzy

Yeah, is there, I'm in now I'm curious, is there because I'm sure other people will have like varying levels of this as well, when you have something like that where there's a genetic basis for it, are there things that you can do, are there behaviors that you can do that will in some way

Alt or let's say you become hypersensitive to certain things or stimulus because of that, is that response viable or is that sort of like your genes are what they are

So we've got epigenetics, which means that basically in a cell you have your entire genome in there, but the cell is going to switch the genes on or off at certain points in the sequence because it needs to encode for an i-cell versus a muscle cell versus something else, soft muscle cells, for example

So what tends to happen is that sometimes they get switched on or off either incorrectly, which means that we can we can alter the genes to some degree now I'm not a geneticist and it still blows my mind, but to some degree you could change some parts of your genes

But what I would say is more important is learning how to work with what you've got, so for example, I am not one of those people that can scroll on my phone and turn around and go to sleep, my partner can do that, and that's great for him, but I have to be very meticulous

But knowing that, and I know why it's because I'm so dopaminergic, that it's something like Instagram is too stimulating for me at night

If you're the opposite, then perhaps maybe adopting a practice that helps you raise your dopamine levels in a less volatile way might be more healthy for you as well, and what I mean by that is things like social media, the smoking, alcohol, you know

Things that are quick hits that are easy to attain, there's no morals on dopamine, but the rule for dopamine is that there needs to be an effort put into for the reward, and if you put an effort, dopamine will rise, but then it won't drop as quickly

The problem with social media is that it's very quick, so it can raise your dopamine very high, but there was no effort involved, so then it drops down really quickly, and then you need more to feel good

And then you go on it again, and again, and again, and you're sort of doing this to just stay above threshold and feel normal

And things like exercise, cold water exposure, sauna, breath work, any work on your goals, anything that requires you to put in work and effort, choosing to cook versus ordering food, or raise your dopamine levels, but then sustain them over time

So if you're somebody that maybe struggles with motivation, the cast 22 is that it's going to feel better to want to grab your phone, and I can appreciate that, but maybe adopting practices that are more sustainable for the way that you operate

Yeah, I mean that's fascinating

You also mentioned this other chemical BDNF brain drive neurotropic factor, which I've heard described as sort of miracle grow for the brain

Describe a little bit more what this is and how it works and why it matters for us

Yeah, so BDNF is a molecule that is really sort of a protein actually that is released when we are children, so when we're learning, it's released throughout life, we can sort of bump it, if you will, through learning and through exercise

Now the interesting thing is that when we relax and contract our muscles and the tension, we release muscle-based proteins called myocines

And these myocines then cross it through the blood brain barrier into the brain and have positive effects on the brain

There's a wide variety of myocines, but BDNF is one of these, and it actually induces neuroplasticity, it can help increase it and amplify it, which is incredible

They've done research where they looked at the postmortem brains of older individuals, and so they looked at them under a microscope

And basically the individuals that were active throughout later in life, they had more pre-senactic BDNF in the synapses versus the individuals that didn't, which then they correlated to highest and active integrity, more cognitive and integrity as well

Yeah, and I love that as you described, you know, we actually, it's not the type of thing where it just goes away over time as you age

There are things that you can do through movement, through learning that will bring more of this back into you, and it creates almost like this benevolent cycle

That between all of it and we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors

Ryan Reynolds here from MidMobile

With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down

So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing

MidMobile unlimited, premier wireless

30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 15, 15, 15, 15, just 15 bucks a month, so...

Give it a try at midmobile.com slash switch

45 dollars left from 3 months plus taxes and fees from our new customers for limited time

Unlimited more than 40 gigabytes per month, so it's full turns at midmobile.com

Hi, this is Janice Torres from Gokiello, the Netto

From a local business to a global corporation, partnering with Bank of America gives your operation access to exclusive digital tools,

award-winning insights, and business solutions so powerful, you'll make every move matter

Visit bankofamerica.com slash banking for business to learn more. What would you like the power to do?

Good Life Project is brought to you by LinkedIn ads, so have you ever felt the challenge of reaching a key decision maker in the B2B world?

Imagine connecting with a billion professionals, including 180 million senior executives and 10 million C-level leaders.

Well LinkedIn ads provides precision targeting and measurement tools tailored for B2B marketers, outperforming other platforms with 2 to 5 times higher

Plus, 79% of B2B content marketers vouch for LinkedIn ads exceptional paid media results. What sets LinkedIn ads apart is their understanding of the complex B2B landscape.

They had built a platform to support you through intricate decision making processes. I've actually tapped the power of LinkedIn ads a number of times to help grow our work focused venture, spark endeavors, and I've been seriously impressed by the performance.

Ready to elevate your B2B marketing? Try LinkedIn ads. Make B2B marketing everything it can be and get a $100 credit on your next campaign.

Go to LinkedIn.com slash Good Life Project to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com slash Good Life Project or just click the link in the share notes. Terms and conditions apply.

Good Life Project is sponsored by Lexus GX. So have you ever owned something that inspired you to just up your game? For me, it was this high end mountain bike. I love the ultra light frame, the suspension, the precision gearing, and I realized it deserved to be ridden to its full potential.

So I started training harder so I could experience the joy it could give back to me and it paid off that by help me discover just new levels of performance and straight up joy when we own exceptional things they inspire us to do exceptional things. The all new Lexus GX has an exceptional capability that will have you seeing possibilities you never knew existed.

Its advanced technology and luxurious interior mean that wherever you go, you'll never go without. Imagine tackling rugged landscapes with the available 33 inch all terrain tires and multi terrain select then unwinding with the available front row massaging seats.

This is a vehicle that inspires you to go further to live up to its full potential. So why settle live up to the all new Lexus GX luxury beyond limits experience amazing at your Lexus dealer.

So in your book you basically lay out what's effectively a sort of like a three phase process to rewire your brain. Let's say there's something that you're struggling with. Let's say there's a behavior that like the change or relationship, whatever it may be that you're doing, you know what I would love if my brain acted differently so that I hate differently so that like the outcomes in my life were different.

And so you lay out this sort of three stage approach to it. I'd love to walk through some of the ideas and this you know like starting with the over-income is the idea of phase one is ditch the negative and you dive into this notion that negative thoughts have a very real impact.

I think a lot of us have heard this and a lot of us have probably rolled our eyes at it. It's like you know like oh come on you know like your thoughts make your world all the yada yada.

But you say there's actually a lot of reality and a lot of science behind this that we need to understand. Yes well I thought it's very powerful because they can create new sign up says which is really interesting.

And the other thing is they we actually encode negative information more easily than positive and we tend to hold on to negative information more because it suits our needs for survival.

Positive information is great and it makes us feel good but as an evolutionary species we needed to say alive and we're wired for survival.

How many generations is it going to take for us to unwire that I'm not entirely sure but I think in the future that will change her hope anyway.

So phase one is you know a variety of chapters but one of them is understanding stress, understanding your emotions anxiety and how all of these neurochemicals that pertain to all of these emotions and thoughts and behaviors drive your life.

And what you can do to take control of it. Understanding stress for example is a really important part of it because.

While stress chronic stress is bad also reframing how we see stress can be beneficial to us so you know stress.

While it has a bad rep and rightly so the stress is also necessary there will be an element of activation right now we wouldn't be able to not be some level of stress whilst having this conversation in the same way as a few exercise so understanding that stress can be adaptive can actually change our mindset towards it.

And they've done research where they looked at how stress impacts different individuals based on their beliefs so they took one group and they showed them a video of basketball players losing their cool on the pitch saying that stress is really bad and it was this whole kind of like five minute elaborate video explaining the how bad stress is.

And then they showed another group the adaptive response to stress and how good stress can be in showing these sort of players using stress as a way to win the game and what's really interesting is that they measured the blood pressure and heart rate of these individuals and heart rate variability which is your central nervous system response in the individuals and the ones that were told the stress was good had lower blood pressure and a better heart rate variability and lower heart rate as well.

Which is phenomenal because just they believe around what stresses could already help the physiology lower cortisol as well.

It blows me away how much our beliefs can affect our physiology.

And they can say not just I mean they show up in performance and I think a lot of people would get that but literally it changes the way that internally physiologically we experience different things I remember sitting down with Ellen Linger who did this incredible rain research but just the notion that simply learning how to shift your beliefs around things that you might perceive as being really negative and creating a positive frame around it will not only change the way you think about it in the way behavior on it but will literally change your physiology so that you experience it internally.

In a more positive way the exact same circumstance yes and that in itself will help rewire your brain as well because we're wide for negativity but if we reframe our thoughts we reframe our beliefs we can start to see more positive in our that lives and that can be a self fulfilling.

A snowball effect of positivity it's you know the like a positive loop if you will so many people like to hold on to the negative when you explain about this negativity bias and you start to reframe things so as an example I'll work with a client and I'll say what are the small wins and the big wins of your week and they'll start the call by saying well not much.

As we're chatting I'll go that's a win and they go oh yeah and then by the end of it they realize it actually had a fantastic week they were just focusing on the negatives and you know Jonathan if I said to you now how many blue things are you in your environment right now.

If you had to count them and then I said okay how many red things were there you're going to say well I don't know I was looking for the blue things not the red things and that's how it works with negative bias is if you say to yourself I'm having a bad day you're going to overlook all the things that you're doing.

You're going to overlook all the wonderful parts of the day and just focus on what's negative and that goes back to what you're talking about earlier in the conversation which is.

Everything really comes down to attention at the end of the day when we're talking about the brain and then you fold in the particular activating system and it's like what we tell ourselves to be attentive to we become attentive to and then we stop seeing all the other things that's what we're talking about here right yes exactly exactly that.

So interesting because it gives science to sort of like some of the pop psychology claims or spiritual claims that you've heard over time it's like no actually this is important this matters because it really changes the way that your brain functions and then it changes the way that you feel.

In life yes you also in that sort of phase um you introduce this term I never heard before creeping normality take me into this is fascinating yeah I was I was trying to explain it to my sister and this morning I had the perfect experience.

I had the perfect example for it and the next little bit of written it down I was actually meditating and I thought I'll come back to that later and I lost it but.

Creeping normality is the notion that over time we shift our perception of what is normal to suit our needs so it mainly our safety needs.

So an example is if you are in a situation where you're perhaps an emotionally abusive relationship these abuses would not really ever reach threshold for you to say well this is messed up because it's hard to draw the line so over time you shift your perception of what's normal to bring this in I remember what the example was I have a reactive dog she's a Belgian man and one and she's great I actually find her fantastic but she's reactive and it does take a lot more care and we have a friend visiting and I was saying that I prefer.

Taking her to a coffee shop even though she's reactive and has to be muscled versus my boy who's a board of coli because he's a lot more energetic and he was saying no no no I would rather have the friendly dog that I know is not going to bite anyone versus the other one and he was like I think you're desensitized and I thought to myself I think I actually.

And I thought that was my version of creeping normality I've learned to accept this which is a good thing creeping normality doesn't always have to be a bad thing but creeping normality can also mean that you end up sort of losing who you are your value started to manage your self worth started to manage based on what other people are telling you so another classic one is you know parents that parade their children and then children it's kind of constantly taking this information in and then perhaps even changing themselves to fit with this narrative because it's easier to cope like that.

So one of the activities in the book is to reconnect for those values and those those core values and who you are self beliefs.

Yeah, you offer the example of a parent who be rates a child there are going to be plenty of people who've been in adult relationships where it starts great and everything seems fantastic and then over time they start to you know one person starts to become much more dominant story and did and starts to gaslight and starts to be rate and it happens kind of slowly over time.

In this quote creeping way that you don't even really notice it until all of a sudden this becomes the nature of the relationship and you find yourself a shell of who you are but it's like normalized you don't even realize this is happening to a certain extent when that how I mean you the example with your dog your friend kind of like brought this up he's sort of like said hey wait a minute isn't this what's happening in sort of everyday life with bigger relationship dynamics where they fall

into this negative dynamic which is really affecting them. I mean what are effective mechanisms to kind of snap you out of it to a certain extent so you can step outside and look and say whoa wait a minute I've normalized this behavior and it's been internalized in my life and probably my brain now yeah and I didn't even realize this was going on so like you can't do something about it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah

[Rewiring Your Brain: The Science of Neuroplasticity and Lasting Change]-[How to Break Bad Habits & Create Lasting Change | Nicole Vignola]

📋 Summary

The Science of Neuroplasticity: Rewiring Your Life

Understanding Neuroplasticity

The Role of Attention and Repetition

Heuristics and the Subconscious Mind

Dopamine and Sustainable Motivation

Reframing Negativity and Creeping Normality

Conclusion

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript