#27 The Art of Brain Change For Energy, Strength & Achievement.

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Welcome to the High Performance Gym podcast, where we discuss practical tools for high performance in everyday life.

So whether you're an athlete chasing big goals, a warrior parent, juggling kids, career, a business, and your fitness, or you're in your golden years and want to defy the aging process, we've got you covered with this podcast. So welcome to episode two of the High Performance Gym podcast. So, in case you haven't met me yet, my name is Katie Weatherspoon.

So I'm a health and performance coach, entrepreneur, and dad to three incredible young humans. So today we're going to discuss your brain's superpower.

So whether this is for weight loss, or you just want to have better physical and mental health, or you want to improve your athletic performance or your academic career or business performance, this podcast episode is definitely going to be for you. Before we go into it, I want to highlight a very key point because everything that you listen to, watch or you know, read, context matters.

So what I'm aiming to do with this podcast is to make sure that whatever we're talking about, there's context to the thing that we're talking about. And I feel as this is what's missing, and because this is missing, it's very. It creates a lot of confusion. And I'm going to use an example.

Today I've seen there was a post on social media, it was on Instagram this morning, was a young girl, probably in her 20s, I think, and she was basically saying how she'd been on a Zynpak for the past year and basically she'd been to the doctor's office and what she kind of found was that she now has osteoporosis. Okay. Because she's been taking this weight loss drug. Now on face value surface, that's like, wow, that is super, super scary.

You know, we should stop taking this drug, we should ban it and all this type of thing. People start getting scared. But what a really, incredibly smart guy called Dr. Spencer Nadolsky did.

You should definitely check out his work, by the way. He's an endocrinologist and he's kind of, he's a super smart guy. And these are the kind of people that you really want to be listening to.

But anyway, Dr.

Spencer Nadolsky, he actually used, used this post and what he went and did, he went and did a little bit of research in terms of this young girl's profile. He looked back from a year ago, which she said she started this drug and there was an image of her on social media.

Now her Image of her on social media. She was in a bikini, and she did not need to lose any kind of weight.

So the doctor, whoever prescribed this to her was actually in the wrong for prescribing this weight loss drug to this young girl. Now, take all that aside. If we then use weight loss as a metric and say, okay, like weight loss in general, weight loss is just weight loss.

So if we go into a huge calorie deficit or we start taking weight loss drugs, we are going to lose weight. Now, if you haven't got a lot of body fat to lose, guess what's going to happen. You're going to lose muscle mass. You're going to lose bone mass. Okay.

You're actually going to lose bone mass if you're in a severe calorie deficit and you're not supporting your activity and you're not doing any kind of resistance training. And that's going to happen with, with or without that drug.

So my point of this is it's like you've got to bring context to these things that you're hearing and listening to out there. So this girl, she being prescribed this drug, and she had osteoporosis because of it, but there was no context to her video. Dr.

Sponsor, Nadolski, brought that context. And that is the point.

When you kind of listen to these things, even this podcast, listen to this podcast, then, you know, bring context to your own situation. Have a look at what this actually means. So this is why I want to bring some context to everything we kind of talk about.

So when you're listening to it, it's like it's relatable, and then you can go and do your own research. You can use it, however, means you want to use that. So let's jump into neuroplasticity, then. So what is neuroplasticity?

This is your brain's superpower.

So neuroplasticity is going to set the theme to the whole podcast, because this refers to your brain's ability to adapt, rewire, and reorganize itself, and it kind of forms new connections. So you've probably heard the term fire together, wire together.

This is kind of part of neuroplasticity to a degree, and it's response to, like, learning experience and environment. So whatever environment you put yourself into, your brain will change and it will adapt. So why is this important?

So the first thing is it sets the theme to the podcast.

So everything that we're going to be talking about over the next, well, however long, certainly over the next few episodes, is going to relate to neuroplasticity, because basically, this is your brain's ability to change.

So whether you want to lose weight, whether you want to lose body fat, or you want to perform at a high level, an academic pursuit, or you want a sports performance, whatever that is, your brain has to change. You have to be.

You want to be a better parent, you know, you want to be a better parent of your kids, you have to change the way your brain is structured. And everything we talk about all comes back down to that brain change. Because life is about change, okay?

And we think about the fixed or the growth mindset. Like, we can stay how we are, and we never change in life. And this is where a lot of people stay.

The stay fixed, the stay fixed in their beliefs, the stay fixed in the habits, the stay fixed on the way that they think. And that's a fixed mindset. And this is a dangerous mindset to be in. Whereas we're talking about a growth mindset. And that's what neuroplasticity is.

It's about your brain's ability to grow and adapt. And we always want to be in that state of change, no matter how old we are.

Because actually, the older, I would argue, the older we get, the more open we have to be about the way that we kind of see the world and we can access this neuroplasticity. Like I spoke about last week, at any age from the ages of 0 to 25 is when our brains are most valuable.

This is when we get the most benefit from neuroplasticity. As we kind of get older, does become a bit more hardwired and fixed, but that doesn't mean we can't change.

It is a little bit harder, but we just got to be a little bit more intentional because what it actually does, it creates hope and possibility that success in any endeavor is achievable, no matter how hard. If. If you want us kind of bad enough. And I think as that is, there is absolutely key. You have to want whatever it is that you are trying to achieve.

Like say you're trying to kind of lose those extra 20 pounds. You have to really want to lose those extra 20 pounds. You're wanting to compete in a triathlon, you have to want to compete in that triathlon.

Whether that's you want to win it, or you just want to get a personal best, or you just want to challenge yourself to actually complete. To complete it. You know, you have to want it bad enough to be able to get this neuroplasticity.

And these adaptations in your body and your brain to get you to succeed. So we can kind of give you a few examples of what neuroplasticity is vital for.

So weight loss, health and habit change, especially as the older you get, we get stuck on our ways, we get stuck in our beliefs. So we need to be able to break those beliefs. We need to be able to find new ways of changing our habits.

And neuroplasticity is absolutely vital for that.

Athletic performance, whether you're a young athlete, an old athlete, you're just starting out, whatever that is, Athletic performance, neuroplasticity is absolutely vital.

Academic performance, you know, you want to kind of, maybe, maybe you've got kids at school or maybe you're listening to this and you're at school, you're in university or whatever, access a neuroplasticity to be able to do good in your exams, do good in your assignments, get the grades that you want to get, then that is absolutely critical that we understand neuroplasticity and how that works. Business, career performance, starting a business or you're in a business, you want your business to grow, you just start in a business.

You know, there's a lot of things that you have to learn. You've got to constantly develop, you've got to constantly be innovative. It's the same whether you're in a career.

Maybe you're dealing with a lot of stress, maybe you are dealing with a lot of high level things. We've got to be able to adapt to this and we have to be able to change.

Or this is business and career performance, parenting performance, bringing kids up is very difficult. And it's probably the, probably the hardest thing that you'll ever have to do.

Because dealing with humans is the hardest thing that we ever have to do. And this is why I've touched on burnout before.

Burnout is most prevalent when you are dealing with other human beings because that's what really drains our mental energy and that's the big cause of kind of burnout. And I see burnout. I see this is a good way of looking at it.

You've got burnout on one side of the spectrum and then you have neuroplasticity on the other side of it. That is kind of where I see it. So if you kind of draw a line and you've got the bottom lines, kind of burnout, exhaustion just, you know, ruined.

And then on the other side of the scale, you then have neuroplasticity where you are adapting, you're Changing, you know, you're kind of owning your life and, you know, parenting. Go back to parenting. We've got to be the best we possibly can, right? Our kids, because we're constantly learning.

We're constantly adapting to those little people, but it also helps them as well. This is why it's kind of so, so important. So there's actual. Sorry, I'm just getting a drink. I get really thirsty when I'm talking.

Anyway, so there's actually keys to neuroplasticity. There's a key to neuroplasticity. I'm going to give you some examples here of how this kind of works.

But there's one thing, and this is, I find is critically important that we understand this. And it's the desire, okay? The desire to change and to learn. This is absolutely key because you can't just think, oh, okay, right.

I know my brain adapts and I want to learn Japanese, okay? And you go and start and learn Japanese, you're probably not going to be able to learn Japanese because you don't want it enough.

Now, let's put that in a different type of context. Let's say that you've just been given a job promotion. And, okay, this is going to change your life.

This is going to change your family's life, but it's over in Japan, okay? You have to learn Japanese to be able to go and live in Japan. Otherwise you don't get the job, okay?

Now you have a desire to learn that Japanese language, okay? If that desire is not there, if that motivation isn't there, then you are going to find it very, very difficult to learn.

And this is why, when we bring it back to kids, we should never write kids off. Because, you know, kids struggle at school because they're just not interested. There's a lot of topics that they're not interested in.

So how can we expect them to learn them if they're not interested? Okay?

Now, we've got to be able to find a way for them to maybe get interested or tie it back to a motivation or whatever it is, and we'll kind of get deep into that or we'll certainly touch on that as we kind of go back into it. But I want to give you a couple more examples just to kind of make that clear of what I mean by this sort of desire. And I'll go back to my uni days.

So when I was at school, I touched on this in the first podcast. When I was at school, I was terrible at school. I was never there. Played true all the time, failed my exams.

I was, you know, doing other things like smoking, drinking and taking drugs when I should have been in school and learning. So what I'm kind of saying is I was actually. I missed out a lot of this neuroplasticity as a young kid.

So I found learning very, very difficult as I kind of got older. And I spent nine years in a factory where I did nothing but really wrote my name on a job card and wrote the date and that was pretty much it.

There was no challenge, There was no. There was no nothing. It was just very mundane. But then when I went to university. Yeah.

So basically what happened is when I was at school, I failed my exams pretty much. I got like A's and D's in my exams. In mathematics specifically, I was absolutely terrible at it. I hated math at school, absolutely hate on math.

And I got an A, and I don't even know how I got an A. Be fair. I should have actually failed it completely, but I actually got an A in math.

Now, when I went back to university, I had to do an access course to get into university, okay? So I had no qualifications, so I had to go back to college and do an access course that allowed me to get into university.

And part of that was I had to do English and math, the two subjects that I actually failed at and hated at school. But something changed when I went to college.

For some reason, I just really started loving learning about English and math and I started to get really good at it. And it was because I knew I needed to pass it and I knew that it was a really hard subject that I struggled with at school.

I knew that if I got to learn that, that I would then get into university because we had to pass this course. So we didn't get to university. Now, bear in mind, there's a lot on the line with this. I'd sold my home and I'd quit my job. I didn't have.

Well, I didn't have any income at the time. So it was a case of like, I had to get into university. I had no choice.

If I didn't get into university, I was going to have to go back to the job that I left and probably be stuck there for the rest of my life. So there's motivation behind that.

And something really, really, really strange happened when I was at college then I actually challenged myself to do the best I could at math. And when we got the final exam, I. I came out with 97%. 97%, and I was absolutely flabbergasted how that happened. I was like, wow.

Like, how did that even, even happen? But the point is, I started to learn the process of learning. I started to love math. I started to love putting these numbers together.

And because I had a desire for it, it became actually really easy. And I'll give you another example of this as well. And this is, this is, this is actually a family member of mine.

He's actually a really, really smart kid and it's actually one of my cousin's kids. And he hated reading. He couldn't read. He struggled to read. And it was.

He was at school and his parents were trying to get him to read and he wouldn't. He just wouldn't read. Wouldn't read books. He struggled, like, say he struggled to read. And the thought he had some kind of thought he had dyslexia.

What happened was he then decided he actually loved computers and he was starting to get into computers and then decided he wanted to go to university to do computers. And one of the things his parents said was, well, you do know what you need to do, right? He was like, well, what do I need to do?

He says, well, you need to be able to read. If you can't read, then you're not going to get at university. And it was like a light bulb moment.

He started to read books and now he doesn't go out the house. And by the way, he's actually flying at university. He's going really well. But he started reading and he started to love the process of reading.

And now everywhere he goes, he carries a book around with him. He never goes anywhere without a book. And this is the thing. When we kind of, you know, we write kids off and say, oh, kids aren't great kids.

You know, the dumb or whatever it is. Definitely shouldn't call kids dumb. But the point is maybe they just haven't found their thing. Maybe we need to encourage them to find their thing.

There's kind of another couple of examples here as well. So I had a client once who he was building his personal training business and I was giving him some help and he was very anxious.

That was what was kind of holding him back was this anxiety of sort of putting himself out there. And he was very fearful. And, you know, this was kind of really affecting his business. He wasn't bringing the right clients into his business.

So all we did was we kind of changed a few things around. And I got him to see things in a different light.

And because we were able to see things in a different light, he was then be able to process this anxiety and actually channel it. And instead of it actually being debilitating, it turned around.

So instead of being an anxious experience, for him, it started being an exciting experience. Okay? And this is absolutely key because anxiety and excitement are actually the same physiological response. You know, sweaty palms, high heart rate.

From the internal side of things, your body doesn't know the difference between anxiety and excitement, really. It's just the story that you give it. So basically what we did was we give him a different story. Because we give him a different story.

He has his confidence developed, and we turn this anxiety into excitement. And then he was just able to. His business is thriving, you know, now he's kind of.

He's doubled what he was doing, and his business is doing very, very well. And again, this is why we should never write kids or anybody off.

You know, instead, what we kind of really should be doing is helping them to find their thing, if you like, you know, allow them to be curious and find out where their path is or yourself. You know, just.

I know I'm talking a lot about kids here, but for yourself as well, like, especially for the older population, maybe for my age, for example, who kind of. You get in your 40s and that type of thing, and maybe she kind of look in a life direction and thinking, where am I going in life?

And, you know, my health's bad. I can't stay like this. I need to change. You know, we do hit these periods in life where we need to change, and we know that we need to change.

And this is a time where we've really got to be curious. It's important for kids to be curious, but it's also important for us as adults to be curious, because when we're curious, it finds our path.

And when we find our path, then we can start putting these practices into place, and we can start exploring and using this neuroplasticity, your brain superpower, for purposeful change. Now, there's an actual formula, okay?

And I maybe should have mentioned this at the beginning of the podcast, but there's a natural formula to neuroplasticity. I'm not going to go too far into this because it's really not my area of expertise. It's just something that I really, really get excited about.

And I am going to bring experts onto the podcast so they can talk about this and they can talk about the real mechanisms, and we can give it context and relatability to different things. And I'm going to do that today. But I'm Going to keep it really sort of surface level. So then you can.

Then I'm trying to give you, I'm trying to wet your appetite a little bit and give you that same experience that I experienced when I start learning about neuroplasticity, where it was just about, wow, this is amazing. Like, my brain can change.

Like my, I can actually do anything that I want, provided that you put the effort into it and, you know, apply myself and do the hard work. I think, like I said last week, there was a book that I came across. It was, was, it was inspired me by an incredible lady called Shabnam.

Shabnam Reject. She definitely. Check her out on Facebook. She's an incredible lady. She's a hypnotherapist, but her kind of.

She recommended a book called the Power of Neuroplasticity by Sharad Helmstetter. Again, this is, it was very basic, but it was really good place to start. Pretty much like what this podcast is now.

It's a good place to start and to open up your, your mind. So what is the formula? So there's a formula, three step formula to neuroplasticity. And we're going to kind of touch on this now.

So the first thing is purposeful practice. And it's just kind of really what we just said there. The purposeful practice is having something that is purposeful to you.

There's no point just saying, yeah, I want to learn Japanese or, you know, I want to get in the best shape of my life, but actually you don't really want to do it or there's no desire or motivation to be able to do it. There's got to be that desire to actually tap into that dopamine. Dopamine is actually part of it.

So the motivation and pursuit hormone, we've got to be able to tap into dopamine to be able to get that purposeful practice. And this is why, you know, exploring, being curious and finding, finding your purpose. And we've got to practice this. You've got to practice.

And what I mean by practice is like there's different ways you can kind of, you can kind of look at this. But, you know, we'll take David Beckham, for example.

David Beckham, when he was younger, he would spend eight hours in his back garden practicing free kicks, okay? So he became the world's best free kick taker because of his practice, practice, practice, practice.

He was practicing that same thing over and over and over again. I think the problem we find a lot is, is that we don't really practice what's purposeful. And we just try to practice loads of different things.

There's a quote by Bruce Lee that he said that he fears. He doesn't fear the man who's practiced 10,000 different kicks.

He fears the man who's practiced the same kick 10,000 times or something along those lines. But that is really true because we kind of just try to practice loads of different things, and we're not actually really getting anywhere.

We just kind of go around in circles.

So we've got to really practice that thing that's purposeful, that thing that's really going to get us deep into practice, that's going to bring that emotional experience. We've got it. That's really key, that emotional experience. And this brings us on to number two. We have to fail, and we have to feel frustration, okay?

So the first thing is we've got to have that practice. Then we have to fail. Failure is absolutely critical. And, you know, we kind of.

We try to avoid failure, and we maybe subconsciously protect our kids from failure as well, but we have to fail. Failure in itself is absolutely key because our brain has to learn for the same.

For the most part, our brain has to learn how not to do something, okay? So if we always get things right, then we never know how to fix something when we get something wrong. So we have to fail.

We have to fail to then learn and adapt from that failure. Okay? The other side of this is frustration.

A lot of people experience frustration, and when they experience frustration, that's like, oh, I'm checking out. Nah, I'm too hard. But actually, what frustration is, it's your brain's. It's your brain telling you that we're learning something here.

Like, we need to keep going with this. And what I do, I like to tie this in. I like to kind of make this relatable to Jim. Like the gym.

So let's say you're in the gym and you're doing a set of squats or whatever it is, right? And you get to the point of failure where your muscles burning and you can't produce another rep. So you put that ball back.

We, like, we see that as a good thing. We don't see, oh, we'll fail, and we're kind of useless. Like, we see that as a good thing because we know that our body, Our muscles, sorry.

Are going to adapt and they're going to change and they're going to come back stronger, okay? You've got to say frustration is the same thing. So something that's really frustrating you, like, I don't know, it could be anything.

It could be like, you know, you just. Let's give you some examples now. Like, say you are. Let's say you are trying to achieve something in your business or in your career, and it's just.

You're trying to learn something and it's just not going in. You're not sticking. Right. You've got to keep going with that practice.

Because that frustration, that frustration is what you need to kind of your brain to kind of build it up and go, we need to figure this out. Okay, because then that brings us to the next part. When you go to sleep, when you sleep, that is when your brain figures out the problem.

That is when you create these new neurological connections. That is when your brain comes together and almost like a jigsaw, puts all the pieces together. All right, and that's absolutely critical.

And I want to touch on this as well, because two things here. Kids and adults. Okay, kids. When kids are studying for exams, what do they do?

They stay up late through the night, especially when they're at university. They stay up late through the night. They're studying up late through the night. You know what? The one thing that the sacrifice is the sleep.

So they're trying to cram in all of this study to go into an exam, but actually that's the wrong thing to do because. Because they're not getting that sleep, they're not actually going to solve the problem.

They're not going to have that information that they need to actually do well in that exam. And it's the same. And that when I got into business, I did this. When I first started my business, I stopped sleeping.

I didn't stop sleeping, but I was getting about four or five hours of sleep every night. Because in my mind, when I was sleeping then, I wasn't being productive.

What I didn't realize was actually the less work that I do, but the better quality work that I do, then the better my business is going to be. When I'm sacrificing my sleep, my cognitive function is actually going down when I sleep.

That's when all of those frustrations of the daily life and the problems that I cannot figure out, that's actually where I find the answer, you know, and this is why sleep is absolutely crucial. So those three. The formula, the basic formula is one, purposeful practice, two, failure and frustration. You have to fail.

You have to feel that frustration. Embrace the frustration. Don't see frustration as a bad thing. Don't see failure as A bad thing, see it as a good thing. All right? And then sleep.

Because when we sleep, sleep is where the magic happens. So let me give you some examples now, real life examples. Let's bring context to this superpower of neuroplasticity. So I've got four examples. Okay?

I've got four. Let's see which one of these relate to you. Number one, I'm going to use this one because this relates to me, and this is entrepreneurship.

You're an entrepreneur. You're in business, all right? Why does this matter? Okay. Entrepreneurs face constant challenges, okay?

This requires innovation, problem solving, adaptability to the market. All right? Neutral plasticity allows you to then think of new ways.

It allows you to then solve complex problems, whether that's for your business, whether that's for your clients, like, whatever that is, and improves your decision making. And, you know, it helps you tend to recover from setbacks. So let's give you a couple of examples now.

So let's say you have a team, and maybe you struggle to communicate. Maybe communication isn't a good skill of yours, but you can learn communication. You can learn how to communicate.

You can learn how to bring your team together.

Actually, instead of, you know, maybe being like a disorganized team because your communication is bad, you can improve your communication to bring that team together. Maybe it's something.

Maybe you're a solopreneur and you are trying to figure out how to build a website, or maybe you're learning how to do market research or you learn your client. You need to learn out your client's problems or whatever that is. Like, there's going to be frustration with that. There's going to be failure.

But this is neuroplasticity. And this is why we need to embrace that failure and keep practicing that. Part of.

Part of the learning, you know, we've got to be able to embrace failure and mental toughness. So examples are learning new skills and adapting to the changing market as an entrepreneur, embracing failure and mental toughness.

I'm going to touch on this at the very end, but I want you to remember mental toughness, enhancing creativity. Okay? We've got to be able to creative.

We've got to be, you know, whether you're kind of, you could be writing a blog or you could be finding creative ways to actually put your product out into the market, whatever that is, we've got to find ways to enhance creativity, and that is neuroplasticity. Let's say you're so number two. Again, example number two, a student in school or college. So why would this matter?

So students rely on neuroplasticity to require new skills, new knowledge to improve their ability, or your ability to retain and apply new information. And you know, as a student as well, we talk about things like organization, time management, all of these skills. This is all part of neuroplasticity.

So examples could include, so memory and learning. You know, you've got to be able to improve your memory and learning.

You want to get good exam results, you want to get good dissertation results, you want to get, you just want to perform at a higher level. Memory and learning is absolutely crucial. And memory and learning is neuroplasticity, problem solving and skill development.

Again, overcoming challenges and mental toughness. You're going to fail, you're going to face failure.

So you have to, you're going to face challenges, you know, you're going to have assignments, you're going to have projects that, you know, just create that. I remember when I was at university, I hated one of the topics I hated was biomechanics. And I was absolutely terrible at biomechanics.

And what I loved was physiology. But we actually had to do the both, both topics, we had to do both subjects. And I did really bad when I first started on biomechanics.

But because it was a massive challenge, I had to then push myself into it and start to understand the processes. So I get good results on my exams and projects that we had.

And actually what happened was I actually became very good at biomechanics and it became a big part of my career. So a big part of what I actually pride myself in is my ability to teach people good form with, with the techniques in the gym.

So things like Olympic lifting, all that type of thing. Olympic lift and deadlifting, like technique wise, sprinting mechanics.

Like I'm really good at teaching people these things because I was so bad at it. I actually became good at it and that actually became a big part of my craft as I kind of got older. Number three. So the athlete.

So why would it matter to an athlete?

Well, you know, things like learning new techniques, improving your physical coordination skills, achieving peak performance, dealing with stress, dealing with the training adaptations, all of these things that come with sport. Neuroplasticity is absolutely key.

So we're talking about like motor skill development, especially from a younger age, repeated practices of movements. So you know, again, a golf swing, a football pass, like whatever that is. What is the thing that you struggle with?

And I do encourage the clients that I kind of work with. It's like, yes, working on your strengths is a good thing, but maybe you also need to work on those weaknesses as well and like, have a.

Instead of like going into a football game, for example, and going, okay, well, I'm really good at free kicks. I'm going to take all the free kicks.

I'd say great, like, definitely work with your strengths, but maybe you're really bad at putting in a tackle because you don't have that confidence. So what do you want to get good at?

Well, you really want to get good at being able to tackle and get, you know, being confrontational in the pursuit of getting that ball back. This can be developed again, this comes back to neuroplasticity. You can develop these skills. So it's not shying away from your weaknesses.

It's actually embracing those weaknesses and seeing them as challenges and not limitations. Adapting to injuries.

After an injury, you know, you could have an ACL tear, you could have bone break, whatever that is, then maybe you need to find a new way to be able to adapt and change and come back even stronger and restore that motor function. That comes back to neuroplasticity. Again, mental toughness, building resilience. This is all part of any type of challenge.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you're an athlete, whether you're in academic pursuits, whatever that is, you're going to be faced with challenges. You're going to got to develop that mental strength. You've got to develop that mental toughness.

And I'm going to touch on this at the very, very end, just because there's a point that I really want to make here, and it's really cool. And the final one, a busy mother who's wanting to lose weight.

Because I know I've spoken about, like, entrepreneurs and athletes and academic performance, but let's not forget parents. Let's not forget these, like us parents and, you know, a busy mother or dad, for example, who just wants to lose some weight and want to get healthy.

They want to be better versions of themselves for, for the kids. So what? Why would neuroplasticity even matter in this context? Well, because we've got to be able to form new habits, okay?

We've got to be able to break all, all habits. So old, hardwired habits again, go back to the fixed mindset where we're fixed in a way of doing things.

So we've got to be able to break these unhealthy habits, and we've got to be able to then form new positive habits, okay? So this kind of sustains long term behavior all while juggling responsibilities. So it's not easy.

So if you're trying to kind of lose weight and get into great shape for your kids and for your, for your own health, but then you've obviously got your business or your career or you've got other just life stresses, then we have to be able to manage this. We've got to be able to adopt this in. We can almost become overwhelmed with it all and we just don't do it.

This is why you're being really purposeful. But knowing that we can actually create these neurological connections and we can actually make change real. And that's the key. Right?

So examples again. So it's habit formation and skills development. You have to destroy the old and build the new. That's the best way of looking.

You've got to just destroy these old fixed habits, build new habits. You've got to kind of unlearn what you've learned and then relearn. And this is true with anything. You've got to be able to destroy and rebuild.

Think of it that way. Let's say that you're just getting into your health, healthy regime.

Then you have to maybe learn how to lift weights or maybe you've never been in the gym before. Then you have to learn how to lift weights. All that's a learning process. You know, you've got to be able to start building strong strength.

If you've always done, say you've always been a runner and you've never built any strength, well guess how you then build strength like neuroplasticity and the neurological networks is also how you build muscle and strength. That is part of the process. Okay, maybe you start a new sport.

Like maybe, I don't know, you want to do a triathlon and you have to learn to swim or you've got to learn to run, you've got to learn to ride a bike. I don't know, whatever that is. We've got to learn these new things that are going to be relatable to our goal at the end of the day.

And this is, this is, this is really kind of. We could, I could spend all day talking about this and I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to touch on, I'm going to.

Because I'm getting, I can, I can feel myself getting deeper and deeper. So I'm just going to touch on the next bit. So emotional regulation, reducing stress and emotional eating, for example.

You know, as we kind of, we get older, we start to accumulate a Lot more stress in terms of, especially when you're sort of in your 30s, 40s, when you've got kids, you've got a business, you've got life, you've got your fitness. And then we accumulate a lot of stress and then we can then start to really be sort of overtaken by our emotions.

We then use eating as a, as a comfort to reduce kind of, you know, stress induced behaviors like drinking alcohol, binge, watching tv. All of these stress, reduce stress induced behaviors. Example, these actually destructive behaviors.

These are things that we need to then pull back on and destroy. And this is all about emotional regulation because these are all tied to our emotional state. And then there's motivation and reward.

We've said this before about, mentioned about dopamine. Like dopamine has to be a part of the neuroplasticity. It's got to be a reward from this.

Like, you know, for example, let's keep on the example of the weight loss. So like if there's no goal at the end of it or there's no sort of reward, if you like at the end of it, then what's it for?

Like, you've got to be able to tie yourself to that, that reward because that's where you kind of motivation comes from.

Now this isn't reward like which a lot of people do, which I absolutely hate, where it's kind of like, oh great, you've had six weeks of good work, now go and binge for six days, you've earned it. It's like, that's not reward, that's just going back into those destructive behaviors.

But what you could do is you could do something like, I tell you what, I'm going to stick to this plan. I'm going to have my goals in place, I'm going to have my targets.

And then six months in, if I've kind of stuck to the plan and I've done everything I've done, I've trained my best, I'm going to treat myself to a new gym outfit. Right? That could be a good way. Or a new pair of running trainers.

Like you're gonna, you're gonna reward yourself with something that's purposeful and has relatability and will actually help you in your pursuit. You know, for example, you might say, I don't know, let's say you are a student and you are studying for your dissertation.

Let's say your dissertation, say, okay, I've been training really hard for this dissertation, sorry, working hard for this dissertation. I know how hard it is. Like what is going to be that end goal? Well, that end goal could be something as simple as, like, would you know what?

I know that I'm capable of getting, say a 2:1, 60%. Well, I'm going to push myself and try and get a 70%. It could be that. That could be the reward.

That could be as much as the reward that you just want to push yourself and actually feel how good that is to get that first instead of the 2:1. Now, this is all purpose. This is all kind of individual. This is all relatable to yourself. This is just me kind of throwing out examples there.

But yeah, that's kind of where we kind of got to with that. And I'm gonna leave that there because I realize we're kind of 40 minutes in now. I do want to keep this podcast 40 minutes or below.

So if that was helpful, I hope that was. I hope you got some kind of insights for that. Hope it actually created questions because that's the thing. This is the thing.

When you listen to information, bring it, giving it context, it should develop questions and it should go away. How does this relate to me? And that's when you can ask the great questions.

All right, this is why I'm going to put my email in the show notes, and you can email me and ask me a question, anything that's come up in this podcast. And you're thinking, oh, I really need the answer to that. Then send me an email. Because this is how we learn, and this is what neuroplasticity is.

It's all about learning. It's all about changing. It's all about developing, and it's all about embracing challenge. Challenge is absolutely key.

We've got to be able to embrace challenge. If there's no challenge in life, there's no change. We can look at struggle, we can say struggle. Ok, I'm struggling. Okay?

If you say you're struggling, you are struggling, and you will always struggle. But then if you can change that and say, oh, this is a challenge.

As soon as you say this is a challenge, you're kind of basically putting a spotlight. Your brain then looking for an answer. You're putting a spotlight on this challenge, and then you are saying, how do we find the answer to this?

And then when you are challenged with the challenge, you will find the answer to that and you will find ways to get around it. And this is when you open up neuroplasticity. When you say struggle, you close your brain off. I'm struggling.

Okay, Your brain has shut off and now it's just looking for ways to soothe. Okay.

When you struggling, it's looking ways to find instant pleasure, binge watching tv, alcohol, binge eating on food, avoiding the thing that you are trying to actually achieve. Okay, so change the state of mind and say this is a challenge. Because guess what happens with challenge.

Again, this was what I wanted to touch on before and I kind of went past it. Mental toughness. We talk about mental toughness a lot, but what is mental toughness?

Well, actually there's a part of your brain called the anterior mid singular cortex which can be developed through hard things. I'm not going to go into it.

And this, because we talk about neuroplasticity, I am going to do this on a different podcast and probably bring some experts in to go in deeper with it. But there is a part of your brain that you can develop that creates that mental toughness.

So people look at David Goggins and they think, wow, this guy is absolutely insanely motivated. He's not insanely motivated. He's just developed the anterior mid singular cortex, which actually allows him to do hard things.

Okay, so athletes give you an example of this. Athletes in research are found to have a more developed part or certainly a bigger athletic anterior mid singular cortex than the obese population.

Okay, so just think about that for a second. So think about an athlete who is trying the hardest physically and mentally to achieve a pursuit.

Whether that's recreational or high level, it doesn't matter. The point is they're trying to overcome these challenges. They're trying to pursue hard things to achieve this goal.

So they're developing this anterior mid singular cortex from the obese population. They've kind of gone against that challenge.

Okay, I'm not trying to kind of stereotype at all here, but you know, from an obese population, unhealthy, there's a lot of negative effects around obesity and they have smaller anterior mid singular cortex. Okay, so they've got the avoidant hard things.

And that's kind of what that says is, by the way, we're going to leave that there because I don't want this part. I want this podcast to be inspiration. I want people to see this as I can change. I have the abilities to change my life.

At any stage of life, at any age of life, I can change. So we're going to leave that there.

So if it was, it was helpful and you enjoyed it, like you can subscribe to it, which would be great because obviously it helps me. But other than that, then my email is in. In here. My email is in the show notes.

Send me an email, ask me a question, tell me what you loved about it, Tell me what you hated about it. Because here's the thing, I don't want, like, people look for. Oh, I want to be picked up all the time.

And don't get me wrong, it's nice to have a pat on the back. You will need that. We need that confirmation that we're doing something right.

We do need that, because that, again, induces dopamine and helps us to pursue that further. But what we also need, we need that. We need that critical feedback.

We need to know that we're not doing things quite right or we need to know how we can improve. And that feedback is absolutely crucial, absolutely crucial to development.

So if you have any feedback on this again, tell me what you love, tell me what you hate it, Tell me what you think I can improve. That would be amazing. I'm going to leave it there because I feel, again, I'm going down a rabbit hole. So thank you for being here. Thank you.

I appreciate your time for listening to this. And let's embrace the power of neuroplasticity.