29: The Neuroscience of Manifesting with Dr. Sabina Brennan

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Cherie Lindberg

Hello and welcome to Cherie Lindberg’s Elevated Life Academy. Stories of hope and healing. Through raw and heartfelt conversations, we uncover the powerful tools and strategies these individuals use to not only heal themselves, but also inspire those around them. Join us on this incredible journey as we discover the human spirit's remarkable capacity to heal, find hope in the darkest of moments, and ultimately live an elevated life.

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Cherie Lindberg

Hello everyone! Thank you for.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

Coming to another episode of Elevated Life Academy, and I am your host, Cherie Lindberg, and I am really excited. Today I have Sabina Brennan. She's going to introduce yourself here in just a second. For all of you out there that love the idea of manifesting. And if you've heard anything that I've done in my trainings where I've talked about the fact that manifesting is in the brain, well, now we have someone that has written a book and has done research on this that can come and share information.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

So thank you so much for being with us, Sabina, and I'll let you enjoy yourself. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for inviting me. Yeah. My name is Sabina Brennan. I'm a psychologist and a neuroscientist. But really, that's the career I followed. Because really, out of a fascination with the human brain and how it influences our behavior. I wasn't always a neuroscientist on a psychologist.

00;01;38;20 - 00;02;00;15

Dr. Sabina Brennan

In fact, I was an actor. A soap actor here for many years. I was on Ireland. I'm based in Ireland and born in raised and I yeah, acting was very much my first love. And I played a lead role in Ireland's main soap opera. It was on five nights a week. So after that I. My character was killed.

00;02;00;18 - 00;02;18;28

Dr. Sabina Brennan

Murdered by her husband, and then I well, it was it was a really nice, challenging role to play because it was it's a long time ago now and it kind of was the first time in Ireland and Irish television that the, the topic of domestic abuse and violence was covered. So I was married to an abusive, violent man.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

So it was it was quite an interesting role. And and that's something I took very serious. It sparked much debate in the media and conversation, which is always a good thing when entertainment helps to to to highlight those kind of issues in real life. Actually, when I left back then, I thought, gosh, you know, Ireland's a very small acting sphere.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

And back then I think that was 2002. Roles for women were very, very limited. I mean, I it's wonderful to see the explosion of female led dramas, on TV now and not. And I think that that's kind of a trend that was led by the Nordic Scandinavian countries. They've always had very strong female parts, but back then there was very few parts for women.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

I was kind of told it could be a while. Your story was so big and you kind of be a boy before anything comes other. So I thought I might do a night course and I was interested in psychology. Long story short, the day I rang up to find out about the night course was the day they took the final entries from mature students.

00;03;17;03 - 00;03;41;01

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And naively, I thought that I could do a degree and act at the same time. But actually, I just was so fascinated by the the topic of psychology. I got one of the few places saved for mature students on the course, and I absolutely love studying. And for anyone who's listening, you talk about living elevated life. I didn't have the opportunity to go to university when I left school.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

So I think I was 42 when I went and I something that I would highly recommend people, whether it's university or a night course, are something find something that you love doing and invest time and it's so rewarding and activate of course, the dopamine and the reward centers in your brain. And so it really elevates and enhances your entire life.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

It's something I would highly recommend doing a PhD, which I did afterwards. I do recommend less so I do area. It's kind of can be quite a lonely, all consuming journey, you know? I mean an undergrad degree is fine if you do exams, but you're learning multiple new topics and information and it's fascinating and you can satisfy your curiosity.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

With a PhD, you're generally looking at a very, very tiny, narrow, focused piece of research. And that's your life for three years. And anyway, and I no regrets about doing it, but yeah, it's it's less enjoyable than I mean, you don't even have to do exams. Just satisfying curiosity and gaining knowledge for the pleasure and enjoyment of it.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

So I absolutely love psychology. And a lot of people thought, gosh, you've left psych, you've left acting for psychology for a huge change of career and jump. And I said, no, not at all. They're both the same. I was an actor for the same reason. I'm a psychologist. I'm interested in human behavior, and for me, acting. I prefer TV and film rather than theater.

00;05;06;17 - 00;05;27;03

Dr. Sabina Brennan

Although I was trained theatrically, you know, actually qualified drama teacher, for me, it was always understanding why someone would behave in the way that they do, and trying to get inside base to play the part, rather than going up on stage and repeating a performance over and over again. That never appealed to me. It really was the finding, the discovery, the making it happen.

00;05;27;03 - 00;05;56;28

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And then, okay, give me another challenge, you know, kind of do that. So yeah, I absolutely love my undergrad degree. After that, and my PhD, I directed a major research program at Ireland's premier university, which is called Trinity College Dublin. During my PhD, I mean, I found a lot of information in the scientific literature about ways that you could reduce your risk of developing dementia and ways to keep your brain healthy.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

And I'm kind of going. Some of these papers were more than 25 years old when I was reading them for my PhD, and I'm kind of going, how come I didn't know this? How come the general public don't know this? How come even GP's don't really know this? And so I became passionate about translating that information into, I guess, public health advice.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

This is going back now to about 2010, 2011. We hear a lot about brain health now and major risk reduction. But back then actually no, people weren't talking about this. And I applied to the European Commission for funding. And back then they gave me €1 million to develop a brain health awareness program, which really consisted of animations and websites and an app and in multiple languages.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

And it was kind of groundbreaking at the time, and particularly some I made some more animations around raising awareness about what dementia centers are, when you should be worried, what you can do. And they were called a series of films called Freedom Films, and they were so they were perky and funny, and they actually made the national news in Arabic, because it was just such a novel way to approach, taboo subject.

00;07;06;21 - 00;07;30;03

Dr. Sabina Brennan

That was actually very, very satisfied and probably quite a turning point in my career. I had been passionate about. And my, my PhD was about how the brain changes with age. And I had been passionate about raising awareness, about mention, about risk factors and about things that you can do. And also, you know, in terms of human rights, of the person with dementia and the caregivers.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

But I kind of said there was a big problem because even if someone from the Alzheimer's Association sent me of, you know, will you check out our new video to raise awareness? What do you think about I wouldn't want to open it because I just didn't want to be depressed at 3:00 in the afternoon at my desk. So I said, okay, we have a big problem here.

00;07;48;07 - 00;08;12;03

Dr. Sabina Brennan

How can we raise awareness if people actually just find the topic just too depressing? So that's where I came up with the idea to make ten fun films, fun animations about dementia. And they do kind of make you smile, but they get the message across. And I've had over the years some wonderful letters and emails and messages from people about how helpful they've been, and they've been translated into multiple languages.

00;08;12;03 - 00;08;35;17

Dr. Sabina Brennan

They're still available online, free for anybody because the information in them doesn't date or it isn't old. So yeah, then I kind of gradually I directed that dementia research for about seven years, but I found myself more and more drawn to the communication side of things and sort of track forward to 2019. I wrote my first book, which is 100 Days free on the brain.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

I became known, you know, I'm an easy conversationalist, and I suppose my background as an actor made me very comfortable on television. And so over the few years, I became known as someone, you know, a go to person to explain things about dementia or explain recent, you know, publications. I have a pet hate of, you know, where a paper is published and then the media take it and sensationalize this and say, oh, cure for dementia.

00;09;01;11 - 00;09;18;13

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And you kind of go, no. So I kind of became a go to person for those kind of things. And then over the years that has just expanded to Sabeen is the person you call to get the neurosciences of anything to do with human behavior. So I kind of moved to, you know, brain health became a big thing.

00;09;18;13 - 00;09;43;09

Dr. Sabina Brennan

I give a lot of talks, love giving talks and seminars, educating people about how their brain works and how to keep it healthy. My second book then was called Beating Brain Fog and that would you believe, was commissioned before the pandemic. And I was writing it during the pandemic. For me, one positive I take away from the pandemic is it put brain fog on the map.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

But brain fog had been around for a very, very long time. Despite proportionately affecting females, because it is commonly associated with health conditions that disproportionately affect female, so also immune conditions. But also things like multiple sclerosis, things like migraine, they all disproportionately affect women. And brain fog as a side effect. Also write fog as a side effect are a consequence, are related to fluctuations in hormones and changes in our modes.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

So your baby brain is a real thing. And then so I mean, now what's emerging is that brain fog is kind of becoming the most debilitating symptom of perimenopause and menopause. So yeah, for me that's putting a focus on how debilitating brain fog can be is a positive from the pandemic. Those first two books were a number one in Irish Times bestsellers, which was kind of, you know, it's great greatest as a sort of a and, you know, an unknown author to publish a first book and then to go pretty much straight to number one.

00;10;43;10 - 00;11;09;19

Dr. Sabina Brennan

Let me see. Yes. So during the pandemic, I actually lost my job in research. I had done part time because I wanted to focus more, you know, giving talks. And I was leading at the time of the pandemic, a study called Brain Fish, which was looking at genomics, brain health and lifestyle and dementia risk. But obviously, when the pandemic, you know, we couldn't do any of our research because it would be face to face 2.5 hours.

00;11;09;19 - 00;11;30;05

Dr. Sabina Brennan

We were also taking blood and doing physiological assessments. And I think what a lot of people don't understand, I don't know how it works in the, in the US, but so in our community here, there are sort of the idea of tenure, and a permanent job in a university doesn't really exist anymore except for a select few. And a lot of those are men going back.

00;11;30;07 - 00;11;56;09

Dr. Sabina Brennan

Is is that similar? Yeah, it's similar. So you bring in funding for your research. So I had brought in this funding for this research. So in taking the decision basically it was private funding then matched by government funding from a genomics company. And basically they decided to pull all their research. So it wasn't just my funding. They were doing research into other diseases as well, because Ireland, I'm particularly in that older cohort.

00;11;56;13 - 00;12;19;03

Dr. Sabina Brennan

We're very different now. But we had a very sort of singular genetic history. Irish people were Irish people. So that's changed now a lot with more freedom of movement around the globe. So that's why the genomics companies were very interested in looking in an nice population. So they'd pulled out and actually ended up buying data as opposed to collecting it themselves.

00;12;19;05 - 00;12;43;06

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And to be honest, I kind of felt this lonely sigh of relief. Oh, now I can focus full time on what I'm doing. Of course I was, minus the salaries I only that was the only downside to all this. And so since then, really, my focus is on kind of giving talks and writing books. A publisher came to me, and so I've done a brain gym and a box, which is like a car today.

00;12;43;06 - 00;13;06;20

Dr. Sabina Brennan

You pick eggs and I just gives a tip of something you can do for brain health and explains the neuroscience. And then I had always, to be honest, I always wanted to write a book. I just really on a mission to help people understand how their brains work so that they can understand how they work and achieve their true potential, or attain their dreams or whatever.

00;13;06;22 - 00;13;35;17

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And that actually then just became the neuroscience of manifesting. That's really what it is. It's kind of explaining how your brain works and how what you think and do influences everything. And it was a fascinating journey, actually, because I leading had to delve into the books on manifesting and what people were saying and, and really kind of I call it weeding out the world, you know, and then just get to base to that core.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

And there is a very, very strong core. There's very steps that genuinely work. And a lot of the techniques also things like visualization, gratitude, journaling, those kind of things are shown to have through scientific research to actually work, you know. So I really wanted to reach out to those people who are already involved in manifesting who may be being drawn in by some of the snake oil or, you know, the less scientific sides of this.

00;14;08;20 - 00;14;28;00

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And also there was kind of I had a few niggles around, sort of the sense that if you're not achieving your goals, you're not doing it right, or, you know, this sense of what you put out that you get back, it doesn't quite work like best. And I kind of felt that there is room for it to have very negative impact on certain vulnerable people.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

So I kind of wanted to, to reach those. But then I also really wanted to reach an audience of people who would love to manifest their dreams, who loved the idea of this, but are, you know, frightened off by the woo or the pseudoscience around just so thank you for sharing. What a journey that has led you to writing this book.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

And just to kind of give you a little background, what fascinated me is I want people to know, and you're going to be one of my references on the training that I do. I want people to know that if you've experienced trauma, that you can heal that trauma, and then you can through these practices, like you said, gratitude.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

Journal visualization. Using a brain spot where we focus, we do a focus. Mindfulness process or meditation, if you will, and we're envisioning what it is that we're looking at over and over and over again. When we do these practices that it imprints in the brain, and that helps us seek out that which we are going after. So the science behind it is very helpful.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

And guiding folks with their daily practices. I think for me, it helps if I can understand how things work. And I, you know, if it helps me expand to help other people in that way. And I think when you have that sort of understanding, that scientific understanding of, oh, my brain is doing that because I think it takes some of the how would you put it?

00;16;01;29 - 00;16;28;03

Dr. Sabina Brennan

Mindfulness is very powerful. There's lots of research behind mindfulness and meditation practices, etc., not a scientific research supporting their benefits and also how they actually change the brain. But I kind of feel that the concept of the mind is unhelpful. I prefer to just talk about the brain and behavior that there is no need for that middle man.

00;16;28;03 - 00;16;57;29

Dr. Sabina Brennan

I kind of just think because talking about the mind, it's ephemeral, you know, and it feels like there must be some sort of trick to making it work or, you know, to achieving things. Whereas I think if you make it more concrete and functional with your brain, then you realize that, oh, okay. If I repeat an action every day at the same time, every day, a new habit that I want to create, if I understand how habits work, then I get this.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

Okay, so basically the reason we can engage in habitual behavior is because, you know, our brain only weighs 2% to our bodies, but it consumes about 25% of the nutrients that are available at any one time. It's a really high energy organ. And in order to operate efficiently, it needs to make effective use of the energy available to us the crinkly outer part of our brain.

00;17;23;10 - 00;17;49;05

Dr. Sabina Brennan

The neocortex, uses the most energy and the unconscious parts of our brain, such as our brain stem and what's called our limbic brain, where our emotional centers and our fear centers lie. Use less energy. They're unconscious. And so your brain is constantly scanning your behaviors for ones that are routine and repeated and have a beginning and an end.

00;17;49;05 - 00;18;14;03

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And I have a passion. And and when your brain identifies a behavior that you do in a routine way regularly, it goes, oh, that's a behavior I don't have to consciously think about and waste energy on. I can give that to the basal ganglia, which is a part of the brain in that limbic unconscious brain. Until it to, you know, carry out this routine.

00;18;14;06 - 00;18;39;24

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And thereby that's how we have these unconscious habits that we engage in. So therefore, if you want to create a new behavior, you got to consciously effort fully do this regularly, often regularly for a long enough for your brain to recognize it. And then it will become a habit, a habitual, and it will become effortless, really by nature.

00;18;39;24 - 00;19;07;13

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And I think a way I find to illustrate that. And then on how much we need habitual behaviors, I, you know, there's this balance between like being present minded. It's very, very important that we are present minded, but we can't be present minded all of the time because our brain hasn't got the capacity. So in mental health talks and mental health books and therapies, you get a lot of information about being present minded.

00;19;07;13 - 00;19;32;18

Dr. Sabina Brennan

But I don't think there's enough information about the importance of habits and how it is important to create healthy and helpful habits. Any behavior that can be done in a routine way, because the more of those you have, the more you're freeing up your conscious, complex part of your brain to be creative, to tackle challenges you know, to do your job.

00;19;32;20 - 00;19;54;24

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And I think that really became evident during the pandemic. Before the pandemic, it was estimated that about 40% of our behaviors are habitual. And then certainly here with the pandemic, you know, one day in March, we were just all told, you know, go home, figure out how to school your children. You can't walk more than two miles from two kilometers, actually, from your home.

00;19;54;27 - 00;20;29;11

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And essentially people were working from home. People said to me, I've never done so little in my life and struggled so much to just do my job that I used to do with ease. But the thing was, all of our habitual behaviors were taken away and people didn't behave in patterned ways normally. You know, you get up, shower, brush your teeth, whatever, have your coffee, you breakfast, take your train to work, you know, and often you aren't really consciously engaging in an activity to sit down on your computer and maybe read your first email.

00;20;29;13 - 00;21;00;06

Dr. Sabina Brennan

That was all taken away and you know, your brain had to make every single decision. When am I going to get dressed? Oh, what time's my first zoom meeting? Are you going to homeschool the kids now? Okay, I might take my walk at 10:00 today and do it at 3:00 tomorrow. So there's just no patterns. So all of your cognitive energy and resources were being taken up by these minuscule hundreds and thousands of decisions every day, and there's just nothing left to to do the complex work.

00;21;00;06 - 00;21;24;02

Dr. Sabina Brennan

So that's one of my big tips around brain fog is introduce as much routine as you possibly can so that you remove the stress of decision making and free up cognitive resources. I've sidetracked a little bit there, but I do think these things are interesting and understanding. And I suppose, you know, creating, you know, manifesting is about creating new habits that take you closer to your goal.

00;21;24;02 - 00;21;48;13

Dr. Sabina Brennan

So understanding how you can create those habits is kind of important. And manifesting does that really through practices like visualization and vision boards for example, to remind you this is what you've got to keep doing every day or morning? Affirmations that remind you. It's like continuing to bring you back to consciousness, to intentions, what your intentions are and is.

00;21;48;15 - 00;22;18;13

Dr. Sabina Brennan

The way that I'm thinking of it as you're talking is like building this internal, the miliar muscle. Yeah. I mean, it's behaving intentionally. Behave consciously, keeping your goal to the forefront. That's how it works. That's how your brain operates and manifesting supports that. You know, manifesting acts in a way like a supplement. Our support for your frontal lobes, you know, it helps you see your frontal lobes are involved in regulating your behavior.

00;22;18;16 - 00;22;43;10

Dr. Sabina Brennan

They're also involved in focusing your attention. And focused attention also uses up a huge amount of energy. You know that if you've been working hard and focusing on something all day, it can be absolutely exhausting and draining, and our attention naturally wanes and shifts and manifesting practices help to supplement that by kind of keeping you on track and on focus.

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Dr. Sabina Brennan

When you were doing your your research on manifesting, did you come across things about flow? Because it to me it seems like flow and manifesting and habits like they're all kind of interconnected and one way or another. Yeah, flow is a very, very exciting subject to me. You know, flow is the ultimate goal. I mean, I focus a lot in the book on a lot of manifesting.

00;23;06;16 - 00;23;33;06

Dr. Sabina Brennan

Books begin with gaining clarity about your goals, and that's really critical. And we can talk about that a little later. But understanding who you are is really important, and also understanding that, you know, you must be compassionate with yourself. But manifesting is fundamentally about change, and it's about discovering what are you really want? Because I think a lot of people think they want to manifest something.

00;23;33;06 - 00;24;00;12

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And that's why I encourage the, you know, getting to know who you are, teasing that apart. And I think when you find flow for people listening, you know, it's it's that feeling of doing something where you lose track of time. You have this lovely sense of achieving and creating and it's like time stands still. People could call you and you don't hear them.

00;24;00;12 - 00;24;22;17

Dr. Sabina Brennan

It's got lovely feelings of reward and achievement. It's a wonderful state, and I think it's a state that most people ultimately aim for, I think without maybe necessarily calling it flow. But if you're doing something that you, you're passionate about, I think that's kind of the ideal to get to that place where you have something that you love doing.

00;24;22;19 - 00;24;46;07

Dr. Sabina Brennan

Very interesting things happen in the brain during. So, I mean, there's whole books about slow, but the research, the recent research has discovered that something really rather unusual happens in the brain when we enter a state of flow. So there's networks in the brain that are connected and involved in specific activities. You know, it's groups of neurons in different places.

00;24;46;09 - 00;25;15;09

Dr. Sabina Brennan

But there's one network called the default mode network, which is a rather interesting fraction of brain activity that occurs when we're not actively engaged in a task. It occurs when we daydream, when we just let our parts wander. And weenie researchers think that this is where creativity and insight lie. And basically, I think this is why I talk a lot about conscious and unconscious activity in the brain.

00;25;15;13 - 00;25;46;29

Dr. Sabina Brennan

When we're trying to achieve something or actively working on a goal, we tend to think that the only way to do that is by using the conscious part of our brain. You know, till I find the solution, I have to work till 12 midnight, till I find the solution. But they forget and most people are probably unaware that you know there your brain is capable of so much work at an unconscious level that often.

00;25;46;29 - 00;26;10;13

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And this is what I advise when I'm giving talks, you know, give your brain the information and trust that it has the knowledge and experience to the expertise it has access to everything that you've kind of ever, you know, experienced or done. And just let is find the solution for the problem and take a break. Give your conscious brain a break.

00;26;10;15 - 00;26;39;24

Dr. Sabina Brennan

Work regular hours. Go do something that you enjoy doing. Play a sport. Take your exercise, spend time with your family, and most importantly of all, have a good night's sleep or just relax and switch off from the problem and your brain will produce the results. You know? I mean, how often and the way I demonstrate that. How often have you struggled with figuring out a solution for something and then you're in the shower, or you're in the cereal part of the supermarket and the answer comes to you.

00;26;39;25 - 00;27;04;09

Dr. Sabina Brennan

The answer comes to you because you've let it go and your brain is working away to figure out the solution. So I think people need to trust that unconscious part of their brain more. But the key is you have to be clear about what it is you want, and you have to give your brain that information first. So a lot of that activity that happens in the default mode network is unconscious.

00;27;04;09 - 00;27;31;16

Dr. Sabina Brennan

The brain working away, figuring out patterns are making connections or whatever. So then there is another network in the brain, which it's name escapes me at the moment. But basically it's more active when you're actively focused on a task, you're okay, and the two never happen at the same time. You're either actually focused on the task or your default mode network is working away and your brain is idling.

00;27;31;16 - 00;27;54;10

Dr. Sabina Brennan

I call it kind of like idling in traffic. You know, when you leave the car engine running, but you're not accelerating or you're not reversing, you're not actually driving, but your car is still working away there, you know, and it's a bit like that. Now, interestingly, what they've discovered very recently with flow is that both networks are active when we enter this state of flow.

00;27;54;12 - 00;28;33;00

Dr. Sabina Brennan

So essentially you have this wonderful capacity. So also when you're in your mode network, the parts of your brain that are involved in what we call self-referential processing. So judging yourself, criticizing yourself, regulating yourself, they're switched off. And so there's this beautiful thing of two roads that used to go in the opposite direction, are now working alongside each other with this lovely balance that allows you to be creative, that allows you to engage in an activity without criticizing yourself.

00;28;33;03 - 00;29;00;18

Dr. Sabina Brennan

That commentary of what you're doing, but also without sufficient focus to act. So it's just this lovely, lovely blend of the two together. And, and the result is this feeling of flow where you really do achieve, whether it's through art or writing or even just mundane tasks or work. It's just really just. And it's a lovely term, getting in the flow.

00;29;00;18 - 00;29;24;20

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And it is like your brain just gets in this lovely rhythm that allows you to be. And again, it's a form of being present, fully present. I absolutely love how you're describing it because and I'm feeling it as you're as you're describing it because it just feels effortless. There's no judgment. Everything just feels peaceful and it's everything's right with the world.

00;29;24;20 - 00;29;47;29

Dr. Sabina Brennan

I don't know how else to explain, but I am hearing what you're saying. Yeah. So it's very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And I think understanding yourself is a key to that. I did an interview on a podcast recently which was actually really just all about. So this particular individual actually wrote the podcast. He's just given up a very successful career in media to pursue his work as a as a meditation.

00;29;47;29 - 00;30;23;00

Dr. Sabina Brennan

What's the word? It's not guru, but, you know, that's what he does is he is trying to encourage people to live mindfully and the benefits of meditation. But he was saying, oh, sometimes it gets into flow. How can he get it to flow? And I don't think it's something that you can force. I think it's something that comes from understanding who you are and engaging in activities that interest you, that you have a natural interest for, are finding ways in a way to make something maybe mundane that you have to do, find a way to make that somehow more interesting.

00;30;23;00 - 00;30;44;07

Dr. Sabina Brennan

I mean, I used to have a boring job when I left work long before. Well, it was back in the day when computers, like people could say, where is the good news? And you kind of go, well, it's on the second floor of the building. They were the mainframe computers. And so like I used to have to, I worked in pensions and we were calculating, I mean, you had and nearly everything was done by manually by hand.

00;30;44;07 - 00;31;04;12

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And you had a calculator and you figured out and you multiply this by this and you would write it down, but then afterwards it was for employment companies. You would have to tot up every column, you know. And I mean, that's mind numbing work that could drive you insane from boredom, but I would create a way that I could get into flow to do that.

00;31;04;12 - 00;31;39;29

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And it would be over time myself, and I would try and beat the time I did it and people do stuff like that. And you read stories about people who can make boring, mundane factory jobs interesting by putting an extra little element in it. That kind of really can help immensely in life, I think. Yeah, they have a flow collective that does a lot of research here in the United States around this, and they do exactly what you are talking about, how to make things that are very boring, interesting and creative, which increases the possibility of getting in the flow with them.

00;31;39;29 - 00;32;16;04

Dr. Sabina Brennan

Yeah. Yes, yes. It's all very interesting. Yeah. So can you talk a little bit more. You brought this up earlier about the need for clarity. Yeah. Yes. Clarity is critical to attaining your goals. And that's from your brain's perspective. Your brain is bombarded by billions of bits of information every day. Brilliant as it is, it hasn't got the capacity to process every single piece of information that it is presented with.

00;32;16;06 - 00;32;46;25

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And so, I mean, the primary function of your brain is to keep you alive. And so its priority will be to filter in information that is relevant to your wellbeing and safety. So if you're walking along the street and there's thousands of cars, it is going to filter in or horn beeping or car screeching or, you know, something like that, that that could be detrimental to your health or safety.

00;32;46;27 - 00;33;07;24

Dr. Sabina Brennan

It will also filter in things that are a little bit out of the ordinary or unusual. So let's say, you know, there's a double decker bus and it's got grass and flowers growing all around it, you know, something like that, that that's kind of novel or different or it will filter in things that form a pattern. The brain does like pattern.

00;33;07;24 - 00;33;27;08

Dr. Sabina Brennan

So you'll may notice, you know, a bunch of, you know, the way radio stations sometimes do that. Well, they do here where they have, you know, cars or jeeps with their logo on it, and they drive along like in a, in a convoy. It's like advertise. It's you might know something like that. Other than that it will filter in things.

00;33;27;08 - 00;33;54;08

Dr. Sabina Brennan

But I hate to say it thinks, but it's very hard to talk about the brain without kind of, you know, using that terminology, but it will filter in things that seem to be relevant to you. So if, for example, you have a very negative view of life and say the bad things always happen to me, your brain will be very obedient and it will look for bad things to filter in and so to say, oh look, there's another bad thing that just happened to you.

00;33;54;08 - 00;34;22;04

Dr. Sabina Brennan

Oh, there's another negative thing, there's another. Because your past history had told your brain that you focus on these things, you put your attention on it so your brain filters them in. So the thing about having clarity about what you want in life and naming the thing is, manifesting is about having the clarity around your goals and then visualizing the steps that you need to take to achieve those goals.

00;34;22;04 - 00;34;52;18

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And actively taking action and developing the focus to achieve those goals. You know, I mean, it's a lot of work. It's not a passive process. So with clarity, you are giving your brain very specific information about what is important to you. So the example I use to explain it in the book actually is again around cars. And I'm not a car person, but when myself and my husband got married first, you know, we were very poor.

00;34;52;18 - 00;35;06;08

Dr. Sabina Brennan

We bought a house not very poor, but you know what I mean. We bought our house and money was all we were saving for, I can't remember, I think we were saving for a house at the time, and the car that we had was a no brainer. It went on fire in traffic one day, like, was that bad?

00;35;06;08 - 00;35;23;21

Dr. Sabina Brennan

So we had that sort of was we were saving to get married. So that meant this was an unexpected expense, and we were going to have to dip into the savings for our house to buy a car. And this is back in the day before the internet. And I remember my husband showed me a picture of a car.

00;35;23;21 - 00;35;38;22

Dr. Sabina Brennan

Cars used to be advertised in newspapers and we were buying a second hand car. You know, we hadn't got the money to buy a new car. And he said, I think we should get a Mazda three two, three was a Japanese car. I had no idea what I'm, you know, what a car looked like. I'm still not a car person.

00;35;38;22 - 00;35;57;06

Dr. Sabina Brennan

So he showed me the photo of the Mazda 323. I had never heard of it and wasn't really aware of it, so I knew what they looked like. So the next morning I'm walking past traffic into work and all I seem to see are loads of Mazda three to threes. Now I'm going to attract those into my life.

00;35;57;06 - 00;36;19;29

Dr. Sabina Brennan

Are the world. Those Mazda three to threes were all was there. There were probably there every day of the week the same people going to work. Well what I had done was activated. The salience network in my brain which said this is now important and relevant because you're thinking about buying this using scarce resources to buy this. So there's one oh, there's another one, there's another one.

00;36;19;29 - 00;36;39;28

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And this in a way, is how manifesting works. Because on top of showing them to me where I can make a judgment about whether I like them or whatever in action, it may also find, oh, look, there's one for sale. Oh, look, you didn't even know the guy you work with has one. You could talk to him and ask him, is it actually a good car?

00;36;39;28 - 00;37;12;22

Dr. Sabina Brennan

Is it a reliable car? So basically how manifesting works through clarity is it really helps activate the salience network in your brain. And so now your brain can filter in information that is relevant to your goals. And that means that more opportunities present themselves, opportunities that you may have missed before. Now, you know, manifesting just doesn't help you to see opportunity or to see things.

00;37;12;22 - 00;37;37;02

Dr. Sabina Brennan

Our brain and the way it works when it doesn't have clarity. I mean, it's hard for people to understand because you think you're looking at something and so you think you're processing everything that is there in reality, but you literally can miss something that is right in front of your face. If it's not something that your brain knows to focus on and people can look it up, they may even have heard it.

00;37;37;02 - 00;38;05;27

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And it's called inattentional blindness. And basically there's an experiment and it's on video online, people are shown a video of two teens passing a basketball around, and they're told to count the number of passes that the players in the white shirt make. So people are focusing on counting the number of passes during that. A gorilla walks in, stands in the middle of them now, and this is like a seven foot, you know, it's a man in a seven foot gorilla suit.

00;38;05;27 - 00;38;40;01

Dr. Sabina Brennan

He walks in, pounds his chest look straight at the camera, spends a total of nine seconds on camera, and 50% of the people viewing the video say what gorilla? They literally do not see it because they are focused on how counting the balls. So that's in a way, if you are focused on the negatives that happen in your life, if you are focused on the things that always go wrong, literally opportunity, good things, great things could be right in front of you and you will not see them.

00;38;40;07 - 00;39;09;02

Dr. Sabina Brennan

So that is really a way that manifesting its. I say it is attention, not attraction that really is at the core of manifesting and it takes hard work and I think that's important. It's something I felt very conscious about writing the book, is that we don't start our manifesting journey on a level playing field, and I do feel very strongly, you know, where some people are really struggling to manifest and end up beating up on themselves.

00;39;09;02 - 00;39;32;14

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And that's why, in a way, my first chapter is my self-compassion and how important, before you start any journey is to understand how important it is to be compassionate towards yourself. And in fact, you know, if you peel back whatever people want, whether they think it's 1 million pound or a great job or whatever, if you keep asking them, why do you want that?

00;39;32;14 - 00;39;57;17

Dr. Sabina Brennan

They'll ultimately say, because I want to be happy, you know, because it will make me happy. And I may be content with life. And the side effects of self-compassion are happiness and contentment. People who are compassionate talks themselves are happier and more content in life than people who aren't. And that's why I think it's a foundational step to engage in self-compassion.

00;39;57;20 - 00;40;16;00

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And that's hard. It's not easy to do. It should be easy. But it's quite a challenge. And I really see and and I think other people I'm not the first to say it, but that self-creation process, is a form of self abuse. We talk to ourselves in a way that we would never talk to another human being.

00;40;16;04 - 00;40;37;09

Dr. Sabina Brennan

You're an idiot. You don't. Why did you do that again? Oh my God, what are you like? And we get so angry at ourselves and you really would just show so much more compassion to a friend or a relative and even now, the fact or me. But even now, just illustrating that I can actually feel my heart rate has gone up.

00;40;37;12 - 00;40;59;12

Dr. Sabina Brennan

It leads to an instant depression and they all get in the way. They all get in the way of attaining your goal. So being kind to yourself has to be, I think, the very, very first step. And being kind to yourself, you know, the reason that it works, I mean, it releases serotonin. Any act of kindness towards yourself or towards other people has huge benefits.

00;40;59;12 - 00;41;19;18

Dr. Sabina Brennan

Yeah. Thank you. Sabina, I, I have said for many years and I continue to say and you're just reiterating it and I appreciate it, is the fact that the daily practices which create the attention and the focus, it's like building, you know, like if if I brought you to a gym and I said, okay, lift 100 pound weight.

00;41;19;20 - 00;41;44;13

Dr. Sabina Brennan

Well, you might be like, what? I can't do that. But if we practice that for a year and I helped you strengthen up your posture and so forth, maybe by after all the training, you would be able to lift, you know, 100 pound weight. So just reiterating the fact that it is practice. And the other piece that you're saying too, that it is hard work, it is not a quick fix.

00;41;44;13 - 00;42;17;08

Dr. Sabina Brennan

It is true. Practicing and focusing and manifesting supports you to do that hard work in a way that is compassionate and support active and things like affirmations and gratitude, journal journals and those kind of things. They have positive benefits and health benefits. And I do know some manifestos talk about neuroplasticity. And essentially, neuroplasticity is just a fancy word that describes the brain's ability to change with learning, manifesting is all about change.

00;42;17;08 - 00;42;38;13

Dr. Sabina Brennan

You want to make a change in your life. You want to change your reality. You want to change your future. And they are all plausible. But they take work. And yes, we can harness neuroplasticity to do that, but that takes work. Neuroplasticity is an incredible feature of the human brain. It's not just a unique feature of the brain.

00;42;38;13 - 00;43;13;05

Dr. Sabina Brennan

Other animals have the capacity for their plasticity. It's just the human brain seems to be particularly brilliant at us. And actually, during the teenage years, it's super brilliant us learning and growing new connections. But manifesting definitely supports neuroplasticity. It's kind of like a brain training practice. If testing is really, it's training your brain to take the steps and work in a very methodical way towards your goals whilst protecting and looking after yourself.

00;43;13;05 - 00;43;40;20

Dr. Sabina Brennan

But neuroplasticity, it's not a magical fix, you know? But that is what happens in your brain when you learn new things and do new things and have new experiences, which really is ultimately what you're doing as well. When you're working towards a goal. Well, I just want to say this is a very rich discussion, and I want to just appreciate you for coming on and sharing, and I would highly recommend this happiness book, The Neuroscience of Man Investing.

00;43;40;22 - 00;44;04;14

Dr. Sabina Brennan

And as I've said before to our listeners, if you feel that this information is helpful, please share it with a loved one. As we are trying to take all this information on this podcast and share stories of hope and healing so that folks can learn how to live an elevated life. So thank you for coming on here and sharing your wealth of knowledge with all of our listeners.

00;44;04;16 - 00;44;10;10

Dr. Sabina Brennan

Thank you so much for having me on. Have a lovely day. Thank you.

00;44;10;12 - 00;44;29;08

Cherie Lindberg

Thank you for joining us on another uplifting journey on Cherie Lindberg's Elevated Life Academy. Stories of Hope and healing. If you found resonance or connection with what you've heard today, we encourage you to share this episode and consider becoming a subscriber. Please spread the word so others can live an elevated life.