In this 52-minute episode, I sit with Ravinder Taylor, seasoned mind science researcher and author. We discuss her book, "Mind Training: The Science of Self-Empowerment," exploring the transformative power of neuroplasticity and how our beliefs shape our identities and behaviors. Ravinder emphasizes the importance of self-responsibility and the role of repetition in changing negative thought patterns. We delve into practical tools for personal growth, such as the impact of smiling, gratitude journaling, and mindfulness techniques. Additionally, we examine the mind-body connection, the placebo effect, and how cultural beliefs influence our perceptions of health and happiness. Ravinder shares her personal journey with self-healing and the significance of faith and optimism in fostering resilience. This episode is filled with insights and actionable strategies for anyone looking to enhance their self-empowerment and well-being.
To connect with Ravinder Taylor:https://ravindertaylor.com/index.html
♾ In a fast-paced world like the one we live in, time is one of our most important assets. For a few minutes every episode, I, Tannaz Hosseinpour, will be discussing topics that aim to enhance the quality of your life, by helping you feel empowered to take inspired action on your personal growth journey.
Connect with me for daily insights on:
www.instagram.com/MinutesOnGro...
www.facebook.com/MinutesOnGrow...
More resources available on www.minutesongrowth.com
This podcast is for educational purposes only. The host claims no responsibility to any person or entity for any liability, loss, or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly as a result of the use, application, or interpretation of the information presented herein.
To connect with Ravinder Taylor:https://ravindertaylor.com/index.html
♾ In a fast-paced world like the one we live in, time is one of our most important assets. For a few minutes every episode, I, Tannaz Hosseinpour, will be discussing topics that aim to enhance the quality of your life, by helping you feel empowered to take inspired action on your personal growth journey.
Connect with me for daily insights on:
www.instagram.com/MinutesOnGro...
www.facebook.com/MinutesOnGrow...
More resources available on www.minutesongrowth.com
This podcast is for educational purposes only. The host claims no responsibility to any person or entity for any liability, loss, or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly as a result of the use, application, or interpretation of the information presented herein.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
You're listening to the Minutes on Growth Podcast, the show
that brings you mindfully curated insights into relationships, spirituality, personal development,
and everything in between with your hosts Tenas the Same Poor.
Welcome back, Soul Friends. It's Tanasa the Same Poor, with
(00:25):
another episode of the Minutes on Growth Podcast. Today, we
have a very special guest for Vender Taylor. She is
the lead author of a very exciting book that I
highly recommend everyone to read called Mind Training The Science
of Self Empowerment. Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Thank you so much for having me on Tonaws. It's
an honor to be with you, and I look forward
to just, you know, a really fun conversation about how
we can improve ourselves.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
I love that because you know, we're living in appeared
in time where hashtag self growth, personal development, mindset is
becoming more and more talked about, which is great, especially
because you know, when I was growing up, my parents
would be like, Oh, if this person is over a
certain age, they're not going to change. And I was
(01:20):
so curious about that of like why they thought that way,
because you know, when we were in school, there was like, oh,
we're talking about neuroplasticity and how the mind can change.
And then I did some research and I realized, ah,
like up until a couple of decades ago, that's what
like the scientists thought. So let's let's talk about that
(01:41):
that shift of mind being fixed to now saying no,
we can create new neural pathways.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Absolutely. The fact is, you know, neuroplasticity is basically our
ability to learn, and it is a whole lot stronger
when we're younger. It's a lot easier to learn everything.
And then you know, there was this idea that got
put out there. You can't teach an old dog nutrix.
(02:10):
It is hard as you get old, and lots of
things become harder. You do have to work harder to
keep yourself physically fit. You reach a point where you
can't just rely on what you've always done. You have
to you have to make some changes. And so it
is with your mind as well. We learn habits, we
(02:34):
learn routines, we learn you know, who we think we are.
There is that expression neurons the fire together, wire together.
These these things get stronger and stronger, these ideas and
these beliefs, so they become automatic. A Caneman talks about,
(02:57):
you know, he's the behavioral economists who want a Nobel
price for his work. His book is The Thinking Fast
and Slow, and he talks about system one and system
two thinking. Now that's not a hard fart, that's not real,
but it does serve as a model to show us
what's going on. Because the system one thinking is the automatic,
(03:20):
we go into automatic pilot. We have these beliefs, these biases,
these you know, and we can forget where these ideas
come from. Whereas the system too thinking is that more careful,
thoughtful approach with mind training, We take that, We take
(03:41):
that approach over everything. We try to show you how
you've learned behaviors, where these ideas and beliefs come from,
and then we highlight all the places where you can
change them. Lots of our behaviors are based on old teachings,
old beliefs.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
You know.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
What may have worked for us back when we were young,
it doesn't work for us now. So we absolutely can
create changes. We just have to make a bit of
an effort. And as adults, that is totally in our
favor because we're in a place now where we can
choose who we want to be. We don't have to
(04:22):
be something that you know, society and culturation and nurturing
and genetics has put on us. There are lots of
places where we can make changes to improve our lives.
That's not going to say that you can become Michael
Jordan just because you believe that you're good at basketball.
(04:44):
It doesn't mean that at all. You're not necessarily going
to become an expert in any of these fields. But
you can become the best version of you. We have
lots of self sabotaging beliefs locked away in our subconscious mind.
Learning how to retrieve those things and then change some
of those pairings, some of those neuron firings that happen automatically, Well,
(05:10):
that's only to our benefit.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Such an empowering thought that I get to choose who
I am as an adult in this moment in my life,
regardless of who I've been in the past. What role
does repetition play in this process?
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Repetition? You know, the more you work at things, the
easier they become. Repetition. You know, we've taken on board
lots of negative beliefs when it comes to bad, bad
has a lot more power over us than good. So say,
for example, you go up for a review at work
(05:50):
and your employer tells you ten good things about you,
and then he says, but there is this area that's
the only thing you're going to think about afterwards. You know, Well,
that's what's going to churn around in your head. And
there are evolutionary psychology reasons for why we do that.
You know, we are herd animals. If we can't be special,
(06:12):
we at least want to be normal and being frowned
upon by the herd. You know that when it comes
to evolution, that could have disastrous consequences because if you
get pushed out of the herd, you're on your own
and you're totally vulnerable. Well, today we still have, you know,
those beliefs that the herd will protect us, which it does,
(06:34):
you know, society's civilization that all holds. But having these
these beliefs that we have to conform to the herd, well,
that isn't necessarily in our best interest. The fact is,
we can find lots of examples in the past where
(06:55):
the herd is actually wrong in their in their you know,
the classic example there, of course, is going to be
black slavery, but it goes a whole lot further than that.
I remember growing up in England, the sentiments towards homosexuality,
gay jokes were so normal that even when I was
(07:17):
in elementary school, everybody made these kinds of comments. Today
we know that that is wrong. So being able to
choose who we want to be today, to stop and
think again about some of the beliefs, some of the
things that we do, and then deciding again to create changes.
(07:38):
Now with the repetition these beliefs have come in because
they get repeated, and bad has a whole lot more power,
So it's going to take a whole lot more positive
to overcome that. It's going to take a lot more
positive to change that automatic wiring. So yeah, that helps,
(07:59):
But I think a bigger part of it too comes
down to willpower. Willpower wears out, and when we get tired,
it's a lot harder to make decisions to make healthy choices.
We're a lot more likely to break our resolve regarding
diets or alcohol or whatever when we're feeling tired and
(08:23):
we're feeling stressed. So with willpower, there are strategies that
you can put into place to take the willpower element
out of it. If you can create a pairing of
some kind. So again, neuron's the wire together. You know,
if you can create a pairing that works for you. So,
(08:43):
for example, if you want to get up early in
the mornings to exercise, rather than opening your eyes in
the morning and trying to decide do I feel up
to exercise today? I want to exercise, but bed feels
too comfortable. You know you've got that choice in that moment,
and you're going to fail more often than you succeed
(09:06):
if you do that because you're tired, Ben feels comfortable.
Who wants to get up? But if you've decided the
day before, the second my alarm goes off, I'm going
to jump out of bed. See for lots of us,
we might hit the snooze button, we might say just
a couple more minutes. But if you resolve ahead of
(09:27):
time as soon as this happens, I will do this,
then it's going to be a lot easier to you know,
you're going to be successful a whole lot more. And
that applies to lots of different areas. You know, like
if you're trying to stick to a particular diet, but
you're going to be going out to friends, being aware
(09:48):
of the temptation ahead of time and having a plan
in place, you create that pairing ahead and then when
it actually comes along, it's a lot easier easier to
keep it. So it takes a lot of positive to
counterwright negative, but there's additional tools that you can put
(10:09):
into play.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
I love that you shared that something that worked for
me in terms of like morning meditation, because the snoozing,
the art of snoozing is like so strong, especially in
the winter. So what I ended up doing is I
just changed my alarm to a guided meditation, so in
the morning when it goes off, I'm into meditation, like
I just I'm like pushed into it. And that worked
(10:32):
really well for me, and I always like share it
with my clients my friends. I'm like, just make it
easier for yourself. And that's pretty much we're saying, like
set yourself up for success because the chances of like
get backfiring if you don't is pretty high.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Absolutely, absolutely, And that's a brilliant idea to have a
meditation or affirmations that you wake up to. First of all,
that's a gorgeous way to start you excellent tip. I
may start incorporating that one.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Thank you, Okay, So will power forget, will power, And
as you were saying that, I thought of you know
mel Robbins, and she has she has this really nice
real where she's like, you know when you wake up
in the morning to throw yourself off the bed, and
you know that just physical shock to your body kind
of wakes you up. So really it's like these small
(11:24):
practical steps of putting yourself into action and like discipline, trumping, motivation.
What are some other tools besides repetition and just you know,
these practical steps of setting yourself up for success some
other suggestions that you might have for us.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
There are loads of tools in mind training. I wanted
to keep that very science based. I wanted to keep
it very down to earth, very solid. I wanted to
create things that truly work. Now, lots of the tools
and techniques that you have in mind training are very
simple to implement. In fact, they can become so simple
(12:05):
that people will dismiss them. There's this story that we
share around here. If I can share that with you,
I think it illustrates the point really well. We call
it time and Pomegranates. So there is this young man
who has heard about this great healer that lives up
(12:27):
in the mountains and he wants to go and learn
from the very best. So he goes up to the
mountain and goes up to this healer, begs and pleads
to be taken on as a student, and the healer agrees,
and you know, starts the training. One day, this other man,
elderly gentleman, comes up the mountain. He's got a cane,
(12:49):
his back is crooked, he has difficulty walking. And he
goes up to the healer and he explains all of
his problems that he has. And after hearing him out,
and the healer turns to him and said, there is
an chemical in pomegranates that is what your body needs.
(13:11):
Go away and eat three pomegranates a day. So the
elderly gentleman goes away, does as he's told, comes back
upright without his cane, all perfectly great. Some time goes on,
the student is still learning from the master. Some time
goes on and another gentleman comes up, looking very much
(13:35):
like the first. Again. His back is bent over, he's
got his walking cane. You know, he's got this tremble
in his hands. And as he's walking up, the student
turns to the master and says, I've got the answer.
I've got the answer, Allow me to go treat him.
And the master says, fine, go ahead, And so this
(13:56):
student runs up to this guy and says, you have
to have three pomegranates a day. Go away, three pomegranates
and you'll be well. And the patient says, you fool,
what you don't know anything you know that is just ridiculous.
Don't be stupid. I've wasted my time coming up here
(14:17):
and walks away. Now that what had happened was the
healer turned to him and said that to the student
and said, you didn't hear him out. Part of the
treatment is hearing the full problem. Being heard by your
doctor goes a long way to you taking the advice
(14:41):
of the doctor, and therefore it goes a great way
to you becoming healed. So what I've got in mind
training and how this relates, lots of the tools and
techniques are very very simple, but you're going to dismiss
them unless you have all of the proof, all of
(15:02):
the evidence, and you actually see the benefits. So a
really simple technique to nous is smile, smiling, even putting
on a fake smile by holding a pencil between your teeth,
just doing that your brain will produce endorphins. When I
(15:24):
first heard that, I thought that was crazy, That was dumb,
you know, But I dug into the research for that,
and that does exactly happen. But the benefits go well
beyond that, because when you're smiling, you are more attractive,
you attract people to you. So what they found there
(15:46):
was two different research studies that I looked at. One
looked at baseball cards and the other looked at high
school photographs. And they were able to predict, based on
this phone photograph of this individual, how long they would live,
how happy they would be, how successful they would be,
(16:10):
their financial outcome, the kinds of relationships, and it all
came down to the smile. The smile. Now what they've got.
There's different kinds of smiles. You know. There is that
small little smile and then you know it goes all
the way up to the full Duchane smile. The Duchane
smile goes all the way up to your eyes where
your eyes crinkle up, you know, So that is the
(16:34):
full Duchane smile. And when they were looking at these pictures,
they found that the people who had the full Dushane
smile would live an average of seven years longer than
those who weren't smiling. If they had just a small smile,
then they would live an average of two years longer.
(16:55):
And it isn't just as I said, it's not just
living longer. It's about having better relationships, being more financially successful.
It goes across the board, and it is such a
simple technique, so you can use it today. You know,
one of the things that I started doing ever since
(17:16):
COVID because everyone was washing their hands more thoroughly, more frequently,
and I turned hand washing into a bit of a meditation.
So I would, you know, employ some mindfulness. I would
focus on the water over my hands. I would be
focusing on appreciating it, appreciating being clean, the nice warm water.
(17:39):
But then I would look up in the mirror and
I would smile to myself and I would tell myself
something positive. You've got this revender, you can do it.
It's okay, this is fine, you're gonna do You're gonna
do great. And that sets you up to have a
much better day. That sets you up to creating success
(18:03):
not only for today but throughout your life. So it's
a really simple technique, but it's incredibly powerful. You just
have to be aware of quite how powerful it is.
I'm amazed when you start paying attention to it. I'm
amazed at the number of people who don't smile.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
In fact, then when I tell them to smile, they
think it's silly and they find it difficult to even
put on a pretense smile that looks slightly genuine. You know,
they can put on a cloud smile, you know, but
that they have difficulty doing. I'd say, practice smiling when
(18:44):
you see somebody smile at them. You know, if you
can think about how that other person feels, that can
make it easier because you'll help that other person feel better,
and that that will reflect back on you and the
kinds of interactions you're having. You know, these small interactions
make a huge difference in the world. So practice smiling
(19:08):
make it more normal. Ask your friends and family how
much of a smiler you are. As I said, I
was shocked when I started paying attention to it to
how many people don't smile, even in greeting. You know,
you get that, especially kids today, you get that head
that reverse head nod, you know, the acknowledgment that says hi.
(19:29):
You know, they're going to be super cool, and these
things again become become a habit. And so our kids
today are developing that particular habit and that's not going
to hold them in good stead. But we can make
We can make the change. We just have to choose
to make that change.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I love that you said that because my husband needs
to hear this episode. I have this big sticker on
his mirror bathroom mirror that's so smile. It's so big,
and he's like, why is there? My first buddy's like,
why is the sticker there? I'm like, just as a
reminder to smile in the mornings, because he's always smiling
throughout the day, but mornings it's like he doesn't wake
(20:09):
up with a smile. So it's great. It kind of
like reminds you and you when you read smile, I
feel like you naturally smile because it's like a you know,
like the mirror and ner on, like it's telling you
to do something. You're like, okay. But I want to
bring culture into this because when you were saying you're
so surprised that some people don't smile, you know, I
come from an Iranian culture and I heard growing up
(20:32):
and I always had like the you know, the big smile,
and my eyes would crinkle and my mom would be like,
tend of I was like, you're gonna get wrinkles. Stop
smiling like that. Or they'd be like girls like I
would hear like the older generations be like if a
girl smiles to bing, it looks desperate, it looks like
she's putting herself out there. And so I look at
(20:55):
family photos of previous generations, no one smiled, especially the
women didn't smile. So culture, cultural beliefs.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Play, wait that they play a huge role. I totally
relate to what you're what you're saying. When I was young,
my mom would tell me not to show my teeth
when I smiled. The idea too, about getting wrinkles around
your eyes, what is fascinating there. There was some research
(21:27):
down I think this was out of Cardiff University in Wales,
and what they found was women who had botox treatment
for frownlines were happier. Women who had botox treatment for
the wrinkles, the smile lines around the mouth and around
the eyes, they were more depressed. It's it's a two
(21:53):
way street here as well, So don't don't be upset
over your laughter lines, you know, they are the key.
Think about it. Think of old people, you know, beauty
in you know, your back to culture here. Culture tends
to think that young people are beautiful and older people aren't.
(22:15):
And I hate those stereotypes. I think some of the
most beautiful people, some of the most beautiful pictures I've seen,
can be that older person. Their face fully lined, but
they're laughing and those lines are just from all the
laughter that they've had in life. And I think that
(22:35):
is beauty. Isn't that the kind of old age that
we all want to aim for, where it's full of
laughter and joy. So I would say, stop worrying about
laughter lines. Wrinkles. Those wrinkles are actually going to do
you good. You know, you will produce more of the
happy brain chemicals and that has this rippling effect through
(23:00):
you through your life with your relationship, success, prosperity, health.
It is great. But in culturation plays really huge, plays
a huge role in lots of different areas. It's really
rather amazing when you look at the placebo response. The
(23:22):
placebo response can be one of the best places to
look at when you look at the power of the mind.
So there was one set of research I looked at,
and they were looking at asthmatic patients and they had
both broncho dilators and broncho constrictors. When they told the
asthmatic patient that they were being treated with a broncho dilator,
(23:46):
which would make it easier for them to breathe, but
they really gave them a broncho constrictor. The fact that
they were told it was a broncho dilator they had,
they found it easier to breathe, and vice versa. If
they gave them a broncho dilator and told them it
was a broncho constrictor, they would have difficulty breathing. The
(24:09):
placebo effect is adjusted for in all drug research. You know,
they try to make sure that it goes beyond the
placebo effect, which is fair in drug research. They want
to know exactly what it is that is causing the
positive benefit. But I think a great deal more research
(24:29):
needs to be done on activating the placebo response. But
bringing this back to culture, one of the things that
I found, so the placebo response for cardiac issues, for
blood pressure, for hypertension. That was a word that I
(24:50):
lost for a moment. The placebo response for hypertension in
Germany is particularly low. But when they looked at the
place cibo response for gastric ulcers, that was really low
in Venezuela, it was higher in Europe, it was highest.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
In when dare we just lost few, Okay, we're back, So.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah, I found it really fascinating for the placebo response.
You know, it's for gastric ulcers. As I said, it's
lowest in Venezuela, higher in Europe, highest in Germany. We
are taking on board information all the time from around us,
the enculturation that goes on, and all all the beliefs
(25:59):
that we absorb. It's up to us to make changes.
I consider myself pretty science based, but I'm open to
alternative medicine. You know, my family comes from India and
my mom was very much into herbal remedies. You know,
they always have their classic treatments for everything, and I've
(26:22):
always found that that fascinating. So for me, herbal remedies,
homeopathic remedies, these things work well on me. But when
I try to get my boys in their twenties and
thirties now, when I try to get them into these
these kinds of alternatives, their responses. Oh, that's just forcebo.
(26:44):
That's a waste of time, as though I'm being weak willed.
But the fact is I am healing myself without having
any bad side effects. These things will work on me
because I don't have the blocks in place that say
that it's not going to work. See. A great deal
(27:07):
of what goes on is we block ourselves. We create
self sabotaging behaviors. We have beliefs within us that obstruct
us on the pathway to success in lots of different areas.
We all have self destructive behaviors somewhere in our lives,
(27:27):
and all of that information comes from the subconscious mind.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Wow. I wanted to touch on this because what I noticed.
I tried out this placebo experiment with my grandmother a
couple of years ago, and over the years, she has
created an identity for herself as being a sick person,
and growing up she loved having like a mini pharmacy
(27:55):
in her house and just having a medication for everything
in this like, oh, porn, I'm always sick and there's
always something happening to me. And so she was in
Toronto and I gave her these gummies and I told
her Grandma like, take these. These are the strongest sleeping
pills in the market. And she's always been taking like
(28:15):
laurazapam and those type of medication for sleep, and it's
been long term medication. Next day, she wakes up and
I said, how is your sleep? She said, it was
the best sleep I've ever had. This is the best
medication you've given me. It's even stronger than the ones
I'm taking. And I can't lie. So I just burst
into laughter and I said, oh my god, I was
(28:36):
joking with you. These are gummy bears that night. From
that moment onwards, when I gave her gummy bears, it
did nothing for her because I think it just she
went back to that identity, those self sabotaging beliefs of
I am always sick, you know, there's always something wrong
with me, and then creating an identity around that. Can
we talk about how beliefs and identity self sabotage?
Speaker 2 (29:03):
You know, there's two elements to what you were saying there.
You know your grandmother, prior to you revealing to her
that you had lied to her about the gummies, she
must have thought very highly of you. She must have
thought highly of your intelligence. Research shows that the judgment
(29:25):
part of your mind, the prefrontal cortex, shuts down in
the presence of an authority figure, so you automatically intake
information with you and your grandmother. That was great because
that made the gummy bears work for her. It's not
necessarily so good when you go to the doctor's office
(29:46):
and they are trying to dismiss whatever symptoms that you've got,
you know, you just shut down and listen to what
they're saying. So you have that element of it that
comes into play. I would have told you, don't have
tell her the answer, you know, allow her to believe that,
because it's a lot healthier for her to take the
(30:06):
gummy bears rather than the other. But when it comes
to identity, we also, you know, the work that I've
been doing for the past thirty five years now, a
huge element of that comes down to self responsibility. There
is this idea and you've got to take it. You've
(30:27):
got to be cautious how how you take this information.
But there is this idea that lots of illness is
actually self created. It is created out of some benefit
that you can gain from it. So maybe you get
extra attention, maybe you give yourself permission to take a
(30:50):
day off of work, maybe you'd give yourself permission to
have some self care. But illness can be self created.
As I said, you take it with a pincher saw.
I'm not only use this to judge other people. You
know that isn't my place. But when you take self
(31:11):
responsibility for yourself, when you apply it just to yourself,
I should say it can open up doors of possibilities
for you. And I have my own personal story with this.
I've got two children. I'm vegetarian, I was vegetarian. I'm
(31:31):
vegan now, but I was vegetarian at the time. But
with my oldest son, I had a craving for chicken,
huge craving for chicken, and I indulged because as a
child I was brought up, you know, chicken was a
meat that my family would eat. With my second son,
I had a craving for beef. Now, my family seeks
(31:53):
not Hindus, but we've got lots of Hindu friends and
you know extended family. There's lots of Hindus there in
the hind don't eat beef, so I rarely had beef
as a child, but there I am pregnant with my
second child. I'm looking at ads in the newspaper for
beef burgers, and I'm drooling at them. I gave into
(32:17):
it once I got a McDonald's, and my husband was
absolutely amazed that I scarfed this beef burger down, absolutely
But then after that I avoided it. I replaced it
some with chicken and a great deal of salmon. After
my second child was born. Very quickly afterwards, I was
(32:43):
diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. By the time my son was
three months old, I was having difficulty even changing his
diaper because I couldn't hold his legs with one arm.
My shoulder just hurt too much. I couldn't lift his
legs with one arm to put the diaper underneath. There
were lots of situations like that. I thought dread. I mean,
(33:06):
how the heck was I going to take care of
my child with this Now. I was on meds for it,
and the meds helped a lot. I tried to bring
in the power of belief I'm going to heal myself,
and I tried to come off the meds a few times.
That did not work. Even on the meds, I could
(33:28):
have flare ups but I took this idea of self responsibility, like, Okay,
why am I doing this to myself? What do I
gain out of this? Why am I trying to punish myself?
When you start asking yourself questions like that, you can
get some pretty crazy answers coming forward. And not all
(33:51):
the answers that come forward are going to be real.
Who knows which ones are real and which ones aren't.
But in my instance, my second child was a boy.
I had wanted a girl. The pregnancy was totally different.
You know how they talk about if you carry the
baby high, it's a boy, or it's a girl and
(34:13):
vice versa, or if it's big. My second pregnancy was
totally different to my first pregnancy, so I was convinced
it was a girl. I'd always wanted a girl. All
the signs indicated that it was a girl. I had
named the girl. I was talking to the girl, and
then I had a boy. Now, before having my second child,
(34:37):
I had all of these concerns, like lots of mothers do.
How am I going to love my second child without
taking away from my first? I didn't know how I
was going to do that. But nature has the perfect
remedy for that in scientific terms, there is that big
boost of oxytocin that comes on for me my experience,
(35:01):
and it was a very spiritual experience to me, I
felt my love double, my capacity for love double. I
didn't have to take anything away from my first child.
So I give birth. I hear them say it's a boy.
There's that brief surprise shock, and then it was Welcome
William because we had chosen a name just in case
(35:23):
it was a boy. I didn't think it was going
to happen, but immediately Welcome William and I held him
and full mama bear came out. I would kill anyone
that hurt my child, you know, I was totally protective.
This was my child. The bonding with my second child
was easier than with my first child because I didn't
(35:45):
have all the nerves of a first time mother. So
I had these big, strong feelings the amount of love
for my second child. But then there was that small
part inside of me that said, am I being unfaithful
even thinking about this child, this imaginary child in my
(36:06):
head that was a girl? And am I being unfaithful
to that child that was alive in my head? It
wasn't it. I don't know if that's where the conflict
came from. But I entertained all of these different ideas.
You know, is it possible that I wanted more attention
(36:26):
from my husband after my child was born. I don't know,
but I played with all of these ideas. I also
worked with we have we have the Inner Talk subliminal programs.
This was something that my husband created. It is patented,
It's been researched by numerous independent universities and institutions and
(36:46):
being demonstrated effective at changing yourself talk. And we talked
about the repetition about canceling out negative beliefs. Well, when
you use a correctly created subliminal self help program that
can be an automatic way to get that repetition to
override those negative beliefs, you can play them. I played
(37:08):
the Accelerated Healing program all night, every night for fifteen months.
So I was constantly bombarding my subconscious mind with beliefs
that I could heal myself, that my body was perfect,
that I could do all of that. So I had
the self responsibility aspect of it. I had the repetition
and trying to reprogram the subconscious mind automatically. And then
(37:33):
I heard about a supplement that was having really good results. CMO.
You can buy this supplement Amazon now, is freely available.
But when I heard about it, doctor Sans who discovered
it was alive still and he was doing the research
(37:55):
and he was having all of these wonderful results with it,
and I could contact his office. I had to make
sure there weren't any negative aspects to it because I
was breastfeeding my child at the time. I had to
be sure of that. And I got through all of that.
I took these capsules twice a day, two in the morning,
(38:19):
two at night for two weeks. I came off of
my ra meds. A week after I had a pain
in my shoulder again. I took the ra meds morning, night,
and morning. The pain went away. I came off the
meds week after the pain came back. I took the
meds twice, came off it week after that, took the
(38:42):
meds once came off it. I've not taken ra meds
for twenty five years. It's totally clear. So the question
I don't know. I don't know the answers. I don't
know which aspect helped. It could be, as I said,
(39:03):
CMO is easily available today Amazon. You can buy it anywhere.
I do go to the place I've suggested it for
friends and family, and if I'm buying it for somebody else,
I will go back to the original. Doctor Sands had
said that see the other interesting part of CMO, And
(39:23):
again I don't know what role it played, but the
original CMO, the one that doctor Sands recommends, is an
extract of beef. I'd had this craving of beef that
I refuse to give into, and now I found my
solution in a supplement that contains beef. Now, as I said,
(39:48):
CMO is available, there aren't many people reporting being cured
of ra taking it, so is it that it worked
as a placebo for me? I just needed that additional push.
I had done the inner work, I had looked at
the psychology behind it all. I had programmed my mind
(40:10):
to expect health. But I just needed an additional push.
I don't know. I don't know the answer. Lots of
these things we're not going to know the answer. But
would I recommend someone else go through the same process
I went to. Absolutely, you do what you can to
(40:30):
improve your life and to live strong and healthy. The
mind is incredibly powerful. I found a way to get
my mind to heal itself, which aspect of the techniques
I used was the effective one. I don't know, maybe
it's a combination of all of them, but that's you know,
the power of placebo and beliefs in action.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that.
When you said it had the bf EX track, I
was like, the body is so smart, like that that voice,
that intuition, the whatever you want to call it, write
whatever resonates with you. But it's I love that you said.
I don't know, and that's usually what I tell people
(41:17):
because I'm always talking about spiritual concepts and They're like,
how do you know, I'm like, I don't know. But
what I do know is this belief makes me feel
empowered and makes me feel like I'm not alone, makes
me feel supported protected. I'd rather live in a world
where I feel protected and supported than to live in
like a jungle. This is a jungle you got to
(41:38):
like kill to survive type of life. It's literally you
just what reality do you want to live in? Tick
that one.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
There's a great deal of science behind spirituality and religion
as well. You know, you don't have to be religious,
but having these practices. There is so much work that
has been done in that area about people who are
religious or spiritual living longer, healthier, happier. Again, they don't
(42:07):
know what elements of it, cause that is it the community,
the ritual. I actually believe that, you know, faith plays
a huge role in An example I give is, you know,
imagine yourself as a child. You're in school and you're sick,
(42:28):
you're hurting. You get taken to the nurse. The nurse
is very kindly taking care of you, but it doesn't
compare to the relief you feel when Mum or dad appear,
and even better when they take you home, put you
on the sofa, put your favorite TV on. They're there,
(42:48):
They're protecting you, and you can let go. You don't
have to have all of these fears of you know,
I don't feel well, my body's not working right, this
isn't going on. I'm scared. No, you turn it over
to mom and dad to fix it. And faith has
lots of those elements as well. When you can turn
it over to God, when you have that belief, then
(43:15):
just your body chemistry, your brain chemistry, you're going to
turn off all of those stress hormones, the quarters all
you know exactly, and you'll turn on those happy brain
chemicals that help your body function better, and once again
you're in that cycle of creating a better future for yourself.
(43:38):
It's not only about today. See what you had said
was you would rather feel that way. But it doesn't
just have its effect today. It has its effect on
tomorrow and the day after that, and it has its
effect on your longevity. I've looked at a lot of
the work about positivity and optimism. Again they have the
(44:01):
same kinds of ramifications. Johns Hopkins' study looked at more
positive people and they found that if you have a
positive outlook, even if you have a family predisposition to
heart disease, you're still a third less likely to develop
heart disease. There was a longitudinal study they did on
(44:23):
nurses and they found the most optimistic of the nurses
would experience much reduced likelihoods of cardiac disease stroke. I'm
not talking about five ten percent. You know. When it
comes to infectious diseases, it was over fifty percent less
likely to die of an infectious disease just through being
(44:48):
optimistic of being positive about having a positive outlook. So
if you can find ways to ingrain more positivity in
your life, you'd said at the beginning, you know, what
kinds of simple tools are there. One of the ways
is a gratitude journal. If every night you write down
(45:09):
in your journal things that you appreciate, it changes the
focus in your mind. It has you thinking differently, so
you know, you get the good brain chemicals coming on
right now, you feel good in the moment, but it
has effects last that go on further. So they look
(45:30):
I think it was Barbara Frederickson I think at Michigan
State University termed it the upward spirals effect. So she
was looking at, you know, having some of these practices
to increase gratitude and optimism today, and then they look
down the highway. In that particular instance, she was looking
six six weeks down. They've done others where they've looked
(45:53):
years down down the highway and they've actually looked at
the number of stress events that people experience, and they
found that the more optimistic people reported fewer stressful events.
Now it's not that their lives are different, it's not
that things don't happen, but they don't interpret it as stressful.
(46:17):
It doesn't get out of control for them. They're not
feeling down because of it. So again coming back to
your idea of faith and spirituality, you bring that in,
it's going to have long term results for you. It
is so significant the spiritual that I've heard that they
(46:39):
in California they have secular churches, so they try to
bring in the elements of a classical church. You know,
you have community, you get together regularly on Sundays, maybe
you sing together, maybe you say nice things to each other,
maybe you have an inspirational talk. They actually have secular churches.
(47:05):
Now for me back to the example of the child
who is sick in school, or the faith that you
have when you can turn it over to God. There
is still a huge element missing from that, but you
do you do what you can. As I said, spirituality
doesn't have to invoke religion. It can just be the
(47:30):
feeling of awe that you you know, we're on this
tiny blue planet in the middle of you know, we're
just a tiny speck having an experience and that is
awesome too. So if you think of spirituality in those contacts,
you know, you don't have to go down the religion pathway.
(47:50):
You just there is a force out there that has
allowed you to be here, whatever that may be, and
having gratitude for that is going to hold doing good
stead too.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
I love that. I love that as you were sharing
that you know faith and just that experience. I also
want to just I know we're running out of time,
but just take it even one step further of how
it impacts the body in response to challenges we were
(48:23):
I was just in Southeast Asia for four months. I
was actually doing research on the interconnectedness of faith and
mental health, and there was an incident me and my husband,
he was visiting. He lost his keys. He in that
moment that he lost his keys started to panic and
I felt hardworate going up and he got stressed. I,
(48:44):
on the other hand, always had this belief that everything
is happening for us. So I was like, there's that
we have a word in it enforcing Arabic fair like
there's a blessing behind it. So I was like, don't
worry about it. We're just meant to be here a
little bit longer. Everything's going to be okay. And you
know just the way the body's responding. So it's the
belief of okay, this is happening for a reason. For
(49:05):
his it's oh my god, what am I going to do?
There's going to be so many problems because that foundation's
not there. Now his body is experiencing this regulation whereas
mind isn't, and then that kind of feeds into the
mind body connection and that loop. So it really can
help the whole process.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
It absolutely does. You know, when your body is under stressed,
your heart rate increases, brainwave activity starts getting frantic, and
it's hard to think clearly when you're in that place.
When you can calm your system down, when you can
slow down that brainwave activity, well that allows the answers
(49:51):
to come back. So that gives you the ability to say, okay,
well when was the last time I saw my keys?
And you can actually start remembering all the steps that
you went through, and it makes it a whole lot
more likely that you're going to find your keys being
panicked and being stressed. That shuts things down. That's the
(50:13):
fight flight response. You know you're going to run, You're
going to be in protective mode, and that isn't good
for not good for your health, not good for your body,
not good for your interactions or your stress levels. So yes,
it all adds up a bit, all accumulates. So the
best thing that you can do, and again, if you
(50:34):
can turn on turn it over to aspects of faith,
that's only going to reinforce it. But even if it's not,
you can just go totally scientific and say, if I'm
uptight and stress and I'm panicking about this, it's going
to be harder for me to remember. So just find
a way to calm down, find your happy place, you know,
(50:59):
to you ate these models in your mind. I've got
how you do a lot of hypnotherapy, progressive relaxation, see
hypnosis and meditation and mindfulness. They're all related practices, and
there's lots of work that shows the effects of meditation.
(51:22):
But just bringing all of this into play, that progressive
relaxation just calm your body down, slows down brain, weigh activity,
and it allows you to function a whole lot more efficiently.
Speaker 1 (51:36):
I love that. Thank you for sharing all these again,
like these suggestions, meditation, hypnosis, progressive muscle relaxation, all these
different tools that are at our spoiser right now and
that you know you talk about in your book, the
different strategies. So how can people purchase the book? How
(51:58):
can people connect with you.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
The book is Mind Training the Science of Self Empowerment.
You can buy it anywhere books are sold. You can
buy the Amazon, Bonds and Noble. If your local bookstore
doesn't have it, they can they can order it. So yes,
it's available everywhere. To keep in touch with me, and
I would love to hear feedback from from your audience
(52:24):
as to what they think or the kinds of results
they get. Is they put some of these techniques into place,
even if they don't get the book and look at
all the other techniques. You know, we have shared plenty
right now, and I would love to hear from them.
My website is Revender. My email is revend Revenda Taylor
dot com. That's what I was about to say. The
(52:46):
website is simply Revenda Taylor dot com. So that's our
a Viva Victor I NDFA dog Er Revender at Revenda
Taylor and dot com. If you go to my website
subscribe to our newsletter. You can also get a free
copy of our Forgiving and Letting Go in a talk program,
(53:10):
so you can actually try some of this out for
yourself and actually see feel for yourself the kinds of
effects the effects that you can get. So yes, go
to my website, Revendataylor dot com, sign up for the
newsletter there, get the free forgiving program. Try out these techniques,
(53:32):
let me know how they do for you, and if
you have any other questions, I'd love to hear from here.
You can also find of course, on Facebook and Instagram.
Just search for Revenda Taylor Amazing and I'll get.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
That all in the show notes, so it's easily accessible.
Thank you so so much for sharing your insights with us.
And yeah, it's been a pleasure hearing about all the
studies and all the techniques and strategies that you've put
into this work. Thirty five years of research. I really
really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
Thank you so much for having me on to nas it.
I've enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much, and thanks
for the opportunity, of course.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
Thank you everyone for listening. Speak soon. Thank you for
joining us this week on Minutes on Growth. If you
enjoyed today's episode, and make sure you never miss a
show by clicking the subscribe Byton now
You're listening to the Minutes on Growth Podcast, the show
that brings you mindfully curated insights into relationships, spirituality, personal development,
and everything in between with your hosts Tenas the Same Poor.
Welcome back, Soul Friends. It's Tanasa the Same Poor, with
(00:25):
another episode of the Minutes on Growth Podcast. Today, we
have a very special guest for Vender Taylor. She is
the lead author of a very exciting book that I
highly recommend everyone to read called Mind Training The Science
of Self Empowerment. Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Thank you so much for having me on Tonaws. It's
an honor to be with you, and I look forward
to just, you know, a really fun conversation about how
we can improve ourselves.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
I love that because you know, we're living in appeared
in time where hashtag self growth, personal development, mindset is
becoming more and more talked about, which is great, especially
because you know, when I was growing up, my parents
would be like, Oh, if this person is over a
certain age, they're not going to change. And I was
(01:20):
so curious about that of like why they thought that way,
because you know, when we were in school, there was like, oh,
we're talking about neuroplasticity and how the mind can change.
And then I did some research and I realized, ah,
like up until a couple of decades ago, that's what
like the scientists thought. So let's let's talk about that
(01:41):
that shift of mind being fixed to now saying no,
we can create new neural pathways.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Absolutely. The fact is, you know, neuroplasticity is basically our
ability to learn, and it is a whole lot stronger
when we're younger. It's a lot easier to learn everything.
And then you know, there was this idea that got
put out there. You can't teach an old dog nutrix.
(02:10):
It is hard as you get old, and lots of
things become harder. You do have to work harder to
keep yourself physically fit. You reach a point where you
can't just rely on what you've always done. You have
to you have to make some changes. And so it
is with your mind as well. We learn habits, we
(02:34):
learn routines, we learn you know, who we think we are.
There is that expression neurons the fire together, wire together.
These these things get stronger and stronger, these ideas and
these beliefs, so they become automatic. A Caneman talks about,
(02:57):
you know, he's the behavioral economists who want a Nobel
price for his work. His book is The Thinking Fast
and Slow, and he talks about system one and system
two thinking. Now that's not a hard fart, that's not real,
but it does serve as a model to show us
what's going on. Because the system one thinking is the automatic,
(03:20):
we go into automatic pilot. We have these beliefs, these biases,
these you know, and we can forget where these ideas
come from. Whereas the system too thinking is that more careful,
thoughtful approach with mind training, We take that, We take
(03:41):
that approach over everything. We try to show you how
you've learned behaviors, where these ideas and beliefs come from,
and then we highlight all the places where you can
change them. Lots of our behaviors are based on old teachings,
old beliefs.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
You know.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
What may have worked for us back when we were young,
it doesn't work for us now. So we absolutely can
create changes. We just have to make a bit of
an effort. And as adults, that is totally in our
favor because we're in a place now where we can
choose who we want to be. We don't have to
(04:22):
be something that you know, society and culturation and nurturing
and genetics has put on us. There are lots of
places where we can make changes to improve our lives.
That's not going to say that you can become Michael
Jordan just because you believe that you're good at basketball.
(04:44):
It doesn't mean that at all. You're not necessarily going
to become an expert in any of these fields. But
you can become the best version of you. We have
lots of self sabotaging beliefs locked away in our subconscious mind.
Learning how to retrieve those things and then change some
of those pairings, some of those neuron firings that happen automatically, Well,
(05:10):
that's only to our benefit.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Such an empowering thought that I get to choose who
I am as an adult in this moment in my life,
regardless of who I've been in the past. What role
does repetition play in this process?
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Repetition? You know, the more you work at things, the
easier they become. Repetition. You know, we've taken on board
lots of negative beliefs when it comes to bad, bad
has a lot more power over us than good. So say,
for example, you go up for a review at work
(05:50):
and your employer tells you ten good things about you,
and then he says, but there is this area that's
the only thing you're going to think about afterwards. You know, Well,
that's what's going to churn around in your head. And
there are evolutionary psychology reasons for why we do that.
You know, we are herd animals. If we can't be special,
(06:12):
we at least want to be normal and being frowned
upon by the herd. You know that when it comes
to evolution, that could have disastrous consequences because if you
get pushed out of the herd, you're on your own
and you're totally vulnerable. Well, today we still have, you know,
those beliefs that the herd will protect us, which it does,
(06:34):
you know, society's civilization that all holds. But having these
these beliefs that we have to conform to the herd, well,
that isn't necessarily in our best interest. The fact is,
we can find lots of examples in the past where
(06:55):
the herd is actually wrong in their in their you know,
the classic example there, of course, is going to be
black slavery, but it goes a whole lot further than that.
I remember growing up in England, the sentiments towards homosexuality,
gay jokes were so normal that even when I was
(07:17):
in elementary school, everybody made these kinds of comments. Today
we know that that is wrong. So being able to
choose who we want to be today, to stop and
think again about some of the beliefs, some of the
things that we do, and then deciding again to create changes.
(07:38):
Now with the repetition these beliefs have come in because
they get repeated, and bad has a whole lot more power,
So it's going to take a whole lot more positive
to overcome that. It's going to take a lot more
positive to change that automatic wiring. So yeah, that helps,
(07:59):
But I think a bigger part of it too comes
down to willpower. Willpower wears out, and when we get tired,
it's a lot harder to make decisions to make healthy choices.
We're a lot more likely to break our resolve regarding
diets or alcohol or whatever when we're feeling tired and
(08:23):
we're feeling stressed. So with willpower, there are strategies that
you can put into place to take the willpower element
out of it. If you can create a pairing of
some kind. So again, neuron's the wire together. You know,
if you can create a pairing that works for you. So,
(08:43):
for example, if you want to get up early in
the mornings to exercise, rather than opening your eyes in
the morning and trying to decide do I feel up
to exercise today? I want to exercise, but bed feels
too comfortable. You know you've got that choice in that moment,
and you're going to fail more often than you succeed
(09:06):
if you do that because you're tired, Ben feels comfortable.
Who wants to get up? But if you've decided the
day before, the second my alarm goes off, I'm going
to jump out of bed. See for lots of us,
we might hit the snooze button, we might say just
a couple more minutes. But if you resolve ahead of
(09:27):
time as soon as this happens, I will do this,
then it's going to be a lot easier to you know,
you're going to be successful a whole lot more. And
that applies to lots of different areas. You know, like
if you're trying to stick to a particular diet, but
you're going to be going out to friends, being aware
(09:48):
of the temptation ahead of time and having a plan
in place, you create that pairing ahead and then when
it actually comes along, it's a lot easier easier to
keep it. So it takes a lot of positive to
counterwright negative, but there's additional tools that you can put
(10:09):
into play.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
I love that you shared that something that worked for
me in terms of like morning meditation, because the snoozing,
the art of snoozing is like so strong, especially in
the winter. So what I ended up doing is I
just changed my alarm to a guided meditation, so in
the morning when it goes off, I'm into meditation, like
I just I'm like pushed into it. And that worked
(10:32):
really well for me, and I always like share it
with my clients my friends. I'm like, just make it
easier for yourself. And that's pretty much we're saying, like
set yourself up for success because the chances of like
get backfiring if you don't is pretty high.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Absolutely, absolutely, And that's a brilliant idea to have a
meditation or affirmations that you wake up to. First of all,
that's a gorgeous way to start you excellent tip. I
may start incorporating that one.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Thank you, Okay, So will power forget, will power, And
as you were saying that, I thought of you know
mel Robbins, and she has she has this really nice
real where she's like, you know when you wake up
in the morning to throw yourself off the bed, and
you know that just physical shock to your body kind
of wakes you up. So really it's like these small
(11:24):
practical steps of putting yourself into action and like discipline, trumping, motivation.
What are some other tools besides repetition and just you know,
these practical steps of setting yourself up for success some
other suggestions that you might have for us.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
There are loads of tools in mind training. I wanted
to keep that very science based. I wanted to keep
it very down to earth, very solid. I wanted to
create things that truly work. Now, lots of the tools
and techniques that you have in mind training are very
simple to implement. In fact, they can become so simple
(12:05):
that people will dismiss them. There's this story that we
share around here. If I can share that with you,
I think it illustrates the point really well. We call
it time and Pomegranates. So there is this young man
who has heard about this great healer that lives up
(12:27):
in the mountains and he wants to go and learn
from the very best. So he goes up to the
mountain and goes up to this healer, begs and pleads
to be taken on as a student, and the healer agrees,
and you know, starts the training. One day, this other man,
elderly gentleman, comes up the mountain. He's got a cane,
(12:49):
his back is crooked, he has difficulty walking. And he
goes up to the healer and he explains all of
his problems that he has. And after hearing him out,
and the healer turns to him and said, there is
an chemical in pomegranates that is what your body needs.
(13:11):
Go away and eat three pomegranates a day. So the
elderly gentleman goes away, does as he's told, comes back
upright without his cane, all perfectly great. Some time goes on,
the student is still learning from the master. Some time
goes on and another gentleman comes up, looking very much
(13:35):
like the first. Again. His back is bent over, he's
got his walking cane. You know, he's got this tremble
in his hands. And as he's walking up, the student
turns to the master and says, I've got the answer.
I've got the answer, Allow me to go treat him.
And the master says, fine, go ahead, And so this
(13:56):
student runs up to this guy and says, you have
to have three pomegranates a day. Go away, three pomegranates
and you'll be well. And the patient says, you fool,
what you don't know anything you know that is just ridiculous.
Don't be stupid. I've wasted my time coming up here
(14:17):
and walks away. Now that what had happened was the
healer turned to him and said that to the student
and said, you didn't hear him out. Part of the
treatment is hearing the full problem. Being heard by your
doctor goes a long way to you taking the advice
(14:41):
of the doctor, and therefore it goes a great way
to you becoming healed. So what I've got in mind
training and how this relates, lots of the tools and
techniques are very very simple, but you're going to dismiss
them unless you have all of the proof, all of
(15:02):
the evidence, and you actually see the benefits. So a
really simple technique to nous is smile, smiling, even putting
on a fake smile by holding a pencil between your teeth,
just doing that your brain will produce endorphins. When I
(15:24):
first heard that, I thought that was crazy, That was dumb,
you know, But I dug into the research for that,
and that does exactly happen. But the benefits go well
beyond that, because when you're smiling, you are more attractive,
you attract people to you. So what they found there
(15:46):
was two different research studies that I looked at. One
looked at baseball cards and the other looked at high
school photographs. And they were able to predict, based on
this phone photograph of this individual, how long they would live,
how happy they would be, how successful they would be,
(16:10):
their financial outcome, the kinds of relationships, and it all
came down to the smile. The smile. Now what they've got.
There's different kinds of smiles. You know. There is that
small little smile and then you know it goes all
the way up to the full Duchane smile. The Duchane
smile goes all the way up to your eyes where
your eyes crinkle up, you know, So that is the
(16:34):
full Duchane smile. And when they were looking at these pictures,
they found that the people who had the full Dushane
smile would live an average of seven years longer than
those who weren't smiling. If they had just a small smile,
then they would live an average of two years longer.
(16:55):
And it isn't just as I said, it's not just
living longer. It's about having better relationships, being more financially successful.
It goes across the board, and it is such a
simple technique, so you can use it today. You know,
one of the things that I started doing ever since
(17:16):
COVID because everyone was washing their hands more thoroughly, more frequently,
and I turned hand washing into a bit of a meditation.
So I would, you know, employ some mindfulness. I would
focus on the water over my hands. I would be
focusing on appreciating it, appreciating being clean, the nice warm water.
(17:39):
But then I would look up in the mirror and
I would smile to myself and I would tell myself
something positive. You've got this revender, you can do it.
It's okay, this is fine, you're gonna do You're gonna
do great. And that sets you up to have a
much better day. That sets you up to creating success
(18:03):
not only for today but throughout your life. So it's
a really simple technique, but it's incredibly powerful. You just
have to be aware of quite how powerful it is.
I'm amazed when you start paying attention to it. I'm
amazed at the number of people who don't smile.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
In fact, then when I tell them to smile, they
think it's silly and they find it difficult to even
put on a pretense smile that looks slightly genuine. You know,
they can put on a cloud smile, you know, but
that they have difficulty doing. I'd say, practice smiling when
(18:44):
you see somebody smile at them. You know, if you
can think about how that other person feels, that can
make it easier because you'll help that other person feel better,
and that that will reflect back on you and the
kinds of interactions you're having. You know, these small interactions
make a huge difference in the world. So practice smiling
(19:08):
make it more normal. Ask your friends and family how
much of a smiler you are. As I said, I
was shocked when I started paying attention to it to
how many people don't smile, even in greeting. You know,
you get that, especially kids today, you get that head
that reverse head nod, you know, the acknowledgment that says hi.
(19:29):
You know, they're going to be super cool, and these
things again become become a habit. And so our kids
today are developing that particular habit and that's not going
to hold them in good stead. But we can make
We can make the change. We just have to choose
to make that change.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I love that you said that because my husband needs
to hear this episode. I have this big sticker on
his mirror bathroom mirror that's so smile. It's so big,
and he's like, why is there? My first buddy's like,
why is the sticker there? I'm like, just as a
reminder to smile in the mornings, because he's always smiling
throughout the day, but mornings it's like he doesn't wake
(20:09):
up with a smile. So it's great. It kind of
like reminds you and you when you read smile, I
feel like you naturally smile because it's like a you know,
like the mirror and ner on, like it's telling you
to do something. You're like, okay. But I want to
bring culture into this because when you were saying you're
so surprised that some people don't smile, you know, I
come from an Iranian culture and I heard growing up
(20:32):
and I always had like the you know, the big smile,
and my eyes would crinkle and my mom would be like,
tend of I was like, you're gonna get wrinkles. Stop
smiling like that. Or they'd be like girls like I
would hear like the older generations be like if a
girl smiles to bing, it looks desperate, it looks like
she's putting herself out there. And so I look at
(20:55):
family photos of previous generations, no one smiled, especially the
women didn't smile. So culture, cultural beliefs.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Play, wait that they play a huge role. I totally
relate to what you're what you're saying. When I was young,
my mom would tell me not to show my teeth
when I smiled. The idea too, about getting wrinkles around
your eyes, what is fascinating there. There was some research
(21:27):
down I think this was out of Cardiff University in Wales,
and what they found was women who had botox treatment
for frownlines were happier. Women who had botox treatment for
the wrinkles, the smile lines around the mouth and around
the eyes, they were more depressed. It's it's a two
(21:53):
way street here as well, So don't don't be upset
over your laughter lines, you know, they are the key.
Think about it. Think of old people, you know, beauty
in you know, your back to culture here. Culture tends
to think that young people are beautiful and older people aren't.
(22:15):
And I hate those stereotypes. I think some of the
most beautiful people, some of the most beautiful pictures I've seen,
can be that older person. Their face fully lined, but
they're laughing and those lines are just from all the
laughter that they've had in life. And I think that
(22:35):
is beauty. Isn't that the kind of old age that
we all want to aim for, where it's full of
laughter and joy. So I would say, stop worrying about
laughter lines. Wrinkles. Those wrinkles are actually going to do
you good. You know, you will produce more of the
happy brain chemicals and that has this rippling effect through
(23:00):
you through your life with your relationship, success, prosperity, health.
It is great. But in culturation plays really huge, plays
a huge role in lots of different areas. It's really
rather amazing when you look at the placebo response. The
(23:22):
placebo response can be one of the best places to
look at when you look at the power of the mind.
So there was one set of research I looked at,
and they were looking at asthmatic patients and they had
both broncho dilators and broncho constrictors. When they told the
asthmatic patient that they were being treated with a broncho dilator,
(23:46):
which would make it easier for them to breathe, but
they really gave them a broncho constrictor. The fact that
they were told it was a broncho dilator they had,
they found it easier to breathe, and vice versa. If
they gave them a broncho dilator and told them it
was a broncho constrictor, they would have difficulty breathing. The
(24:09):
placebo effect is adjusted for in all drug research. You know,
they try to make sure that it goes beyond the
placebo effect, which is fair in drug research. They want
to know exactly what it is that is causing the
positive benefit. But I think a great deal more research
(24:29):
needs to be done on activating the placebo response. But
bringing this back to culture, one of the things that
I found, so the placebo response for cardiac issues, for
blood pressure, for hypertension. That was a word that I
(24:50):
lost for a moment. The placebo response for hypertension in
Germany is particularly low. But when they looked at the
place cibo response for gastric ulcers, that was really low
in Venezuela, it was higher in Europe, it was highest.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
In when dare we just lost few, Okay, we're back, So.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah, I found it really fascinating for the placebo response.
You know, it's for gastric ulcers. As I said, it's
lowest in Venezuela, higher in Europe, highest in Germany. We
are taking on board information all the time from around us,
the enculturation that goes on, and all all the beliefs
(25:59):
that we absorb. It's up to us to make changes.
I consider myself pretty science based, but I'm open to
alternative medicine. You know, my family comes from India and
my mom was very much into herbal remedies. You know,
they always have their classic treatments for everything, and I've
(26:22):
always found that that fascinating. So for me, herbal remedies,
homeopathic remedies, these things work well on me. But when
I try to get my boys in their twenties and
thirties now, when I try to get them into these
these kinds of alternatives, their responses. Oh, that's just forcebo.
(26:44):
That's a waste of time, as though I'm being weak willed.
But the fact is I am healing myself without having
any bad side effects. These things will work on me
because I don't have the blocks in place that say
that it's not going to work. See. A great deal
(27:07):
of what goes on is we block ourselves. We create
self sabotaging behaviors. We have beliefs within us that obstruct
us on the pathway to success in lots of different areas.
We all have self destructive behaviors somewhere in our lives,
(27:27):
and all of that information comes from the subconscious mind.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Wow. I wanted to touch on this because what I noticed.
I tried out this placebo experiment with my grandmother a
couple of years ago, and over the years, she has
created an identity for herself as being a sick person,
and growing up she loved having like a mini pharmacy
(27:55):
in her house and just having a medication for everything
in this like, oh, porn, I'm always sick and there's
always something happening to me. And so she was in
Toronto and I gave her these gummies and I told
her Grandma like, take these. These are the strongest sleeping
pills in the market. And she's always been taking like
(28:15):
laurazapam and those type of medication for sleep, and it's
been long term medication. Next day, she wakes up and
I said, how is your sleep? She said, it was
the best sleep I've ever had. This is the best
medication you've given me. It's even stronger than the ones
I'm taking. And I can't lie. So I just burst
into laughter and I said, oh my god, I was
(28:36):
joking with you. These are gummy bears that night. From
that moment onwards, when I gave her gummy bears, it
did nothing for her because I think it just she
went back to that identity, those self sabotaging beliefs of
I am always sick, you know, there's always something wrong
with me, and then creating an identity around that. Can
we talk about how beliefs and identity self sabotage?
Speaker 2 (29:03):
You know, there's two elements to what you were saying there.
You know your grandmother, prior to you revealing to her
that you had lied to her about the gummies, she
must have thought very highly of you. She must have
thought highly of your intelligence. Research shows that the judgment
(29:25):
part of your mind, the prefrontal cortex, shuts down in
the presence of an authority figure, so you automatically intake
information with you and your grandmother. That was great because
that made the gummy bears work for her. It's not
necessarily so good when you go to the doctor's office
(29:46):
and they are trying to dismiss whatever symptoms that you've got,
you know, you just shut down and listen to what
they're saying. So you have that element of it that
comes into play. I would have told you, don't have
tell her the answer, you know, allow her to believe that,
because it's a lot healthier for her to take the
(30:06):
gummy bears rather than the other. But when it comes
to identity, we also, you know, the work that I've
been doing for the past thirty five years now, a
huge element of that comes down to self responsibility. There
is this idea and you've got to take it. You've
(30:27):
got to be cautious how how you take this information.
But there is this idea that lots of illness is
actually self created. It is created out of some benefit
that you can gain from it. So maybe you get
extra attention, maybe you give yourself permission to take a
(30:50):
day off of work, maybe you'd give yourself permission to
have some self care. But illness can be self created.
As I said, you take it with a pincher saw.
I'm not only use this to judge other people. You
know that isn't my place. But when you take self
(31:11):
responsibility for yourself, when you apply it just to yourself,
I should say it can open up doors of possibilities
for you. And I have my own personal story with this.
I've got two children. I'm vegetarian, I was vegetarian. I'm
(31:31):
vegan now, but I was vegetarian at the time. But
with my oldest son, I had a craving for chicken,
huge craving for chicken, and I indulged because as a
child I was brought up, you know, chicken was a
meat that my family would eat. With my second son,
I had a craving for beef. Now, my family seeks
(31:53):
not Hindus, but we've got lots of Hindu friends and
you know extended family. There's lots of Hindus there in
the hind don't eat beef, so I rarely had beef
as a child, but there I am pregnant with my
second child. I'm looking at ads in the newspaper for
beef burgers, and I'm drooling at them. I gave into
(32:17):
it once I got a McDonald's, and my husband was
absolutely amazed that I scarfed this beef burger down, absolutely
But then after that I avoided it. I replaced it
some with chicken and a great deal of salmon. After
my second child was born. Very quickly afterwards, I was
(32:43):
diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. By the time my son was
three months old, I was having difficulty even changing his
diaper because I couldn't hold his legs with one arm.
My shoulder just hurt too much. I couldn't lift his
legs with one arm to put the diaper underneath. There
were lots of situations like that. I thought dread. I mean,
(33:06):
how the heck was I going to take care of
my child with this Now. I was on meds for it,
and the meds helped a lot. I tried to bring
in the power of belief I'm going to heal myself,
and I tried to come off the meds a few times.
That did not work. Even on the meds, I could
(33:28):
have flare ups but I took this idea of self responsibility, like, Okay,
why am I doing this to myself? What do I
gain out of this? Why am I trying to punish myself?
When you start asking yourself questions like that, you can
get some pretty crazy answers coming forward. And not all
(33:51):
the answers that come forward are going to be real.
Who knows which ones are real and which ones aren't.
But in my instance, my second child was a boy.
I had wanted a girl. The pregnancy was totally different.
You know how they talk about if you carry the
baby high, it's a boy, or it's a girl and
(34:13):
vice versa, or if it's big. My second pregnancy was
totally different to my first pregnancy, so I was convinced
it was a girl. I'd always wanted a girl. All
the signs indicated that it was a girl. I had
named the girl. I was talking to the girl, and
then I had a boy. Now, before having my second child,
(34:37):
I had all of these concerns, like lots of mothers do.
How am I going to love my second child without
taking away from my first? I didn't know how I
was going to do that. But nature has the perfect
remedy for that in scientific terms, there is that big
boost of oxytocin that comes on for me my experience,
(35:01):
and it was a very spiritual experience to me, I
felt my love double, my capacity for love double. I
didn't have to take anything away from my first child.
So I give birth. I hear them say it's a boy.
There's that brief surprise shock, and then it was Welcome
William because we had chosen a name just in case
(35:23):
it was a boy. I didn't think it was going
to happen, but immediately Welcome William and I held him
and full mama bear came out. I would kill anyone
that hurt my child, you know, I was totally protective.
This was my child. The bonding with my second child
was easier than with my first child because I didn't
(35:45):
have all the nerves of a first time mother. So
I had these big, strong feelings the amount of love
for my second child. But then there was that small
part inside of me that said, am I being unfaithful
even thinking about this child, this imaginary child in my
(36:06):
head that was a girl? And am I being unfaithful
to that child that was alive in my head? It
wasn't it. I don't know if that's where the conflict
came from. But I entertained all of these different ideas.
You know, is it possible that I wanted more attention
(36:26):
from my husband after my child was born. I don't know,
but I played with all of these ideas. I also
worked with we have we have the Inner Talk subliminal programs.
This was something that my husband created. It is patented,
It's been researched by numerous independent universities and institutions and
(36:46):
being demonstrated effective at changing yourself talk. And we talked
about the repetition about canceling out negative beliefs. Well, when
you use a correctly created subliminal self help program that
can be an automatic way to get that repetition to
override those negative beliefs, you can play them. I played
(37:08):
the Accelerated Healing program all night, every night for fifteen months.
So I was constantly bombarding my subconscious mind with beliefs
that I could heal myself, that my body was perfect,
that I could do all of that. So I had
the self responsibility aspect of it. I had the repetition
and trying to reprogram the subconscious mind automatically. And then
(37:33):
I heard about a supplement that was having really good results. CMO.
You can buy this supplement Amazon now, is freely available.
But when I heard about it, doctor Sans who discovered
it was alive still and he was doing the research
(37:55):
and he was having all of these wonderful results with it,
and I could contact his office. I had to make
sure there weren't any negative aspects to it because I
was breastfeeding my child at the time. I had to
be sure of that. And I got through all of that.
I took these capsules twice a day, two in the morning,
(38:19):
two at night for two weeks. I came off of
my ra meds. A week after I had a pain
in my shoulder again. I took the ra meds morning, night,
and morning. The pain went away. I came off the
meds week after the pain came back. I took the
meds twice, came off it week after that, took the
(38:42):
meds once came off it. I've not taken ra meds
for twenty five years. It's totally clear. So the question
I don't know. I don't know the answers. I don't
know which aspect helped. It could be, as I said,
(39:03):
CMO is easily available today Amazon. You can buy it anywhere.
I do go to the place I've suggested it for
friends and family, and if I'm buying it for somebody else,
I will go back to the original. Doctor Sands had
said that see the other interesting part of CMO, And
(39:23):
again I don't know what role it played, but the
original CMO, the one that doctor Sands recommends, is an
extract of beef. I'd had this craving of beef that
I refuse to give into, and now I found my
solution in a supplement that contains beef. Now, as I said,
(39:48):
CMO is available, there aren't many people reporting being cured
of ra taking it, so is it that it worked
as a placebo for me? I just needed that additional push.
I had done the inner work, I had looked at
the psychology behind it all. I had programmed my mind
(40:10):
to expect health. But I just needed an additional push.
I don't know. I don't know the answer. Lots of
these things we're not going to know the answer. But
would I recommend someone else go through the same process
I went to. Absolutely, you do what you can to
(40:30):
improve your life and to live strong and healthy. The
mind is incredibly powerful. I found a way to get
my mind to heal itself, which aspect of the techniques
I used was the effective one. I don't know, maybe
it's a combination of all of them, but that's you know,
the power of placebo and beliefs in action.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that.
When you said it had the bf EX track, I
was like, the body is so smart, like that that voice,
that intuition, the whatever you want to call it, write
whatever resonates with you. But it's I love that you said.
I don't know, and that's usually what I tell people
(41:17):
because I'm always talking about spiritual concepts and They're like,
how do you know, I'm like, I don't know. But
what I do know is this belief makes me feel
empowered and makes me feel like I'm not alone, makes
me feel supported protected. I'd rather live in a world
where I feel protected and supported than to live in
like a jungle. This is a jungle you got to
(41:38):
like kill to survive type of life. It's literally you
just what reality do you want to live in? Tick
that one.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
There's a great deal of science behind spirituality and religion
as well. You know, you don't have to be religious,
but having these practices. There is so much work that
has been done in that area about people who are
religious or spiritual living longer, healthier, happier. Again, they don't
(42:07):
know what elements of it, cause that is it the community,
the ritual. I actually believe that, you know, faith plays
a huge role in An example I give is, you know,
imagine yourself as a child. You're in school and you're sick,
(42:28):
you're hurting. You get taken to the nurse. The nurse
is very kindly taking care of you, but it doesn't
compare to the relief you feel when Mum or dad appear,
and even better when they take you home, put you
on the sofa, put your favorite TV on. They're there,
(42:48):
They're protecting you, and you can let go. You don't
have to have all of these fears of you know,
I don't feel well, my body's not working right, this
isn't going on. I'm scared. No, you turn it over
to mom and dad to fix it. And faith has
lots of those elements as well. When you can turn
it over to God, when you have that belief, then
(43:15):
just your body chemistry, your brain chemistry, you're going to
turn off all of those stress hormones, the quarters all
you know exactly, and you'll turn on those happy brain
chemicals that help your body function better, and once again
you're in that cycle of creating a better future for yourself.
(43:38):
It's not only about today. See what you had said
was you would rather feel that way. But it doesn't
just have its effect today. It has its effect on
tomorrow and the day after that, and it has its
effect on your longevity. I've looked at a lot of
the work about positivity and optimism. Again they have the
(44:01):
same kinds of ramifications. Johns Hopkins' study looked at more
positive people and they found that if you have a
positive outlook, even if you have a family predisposition to
heart disease, you're still a third less likely to develop
heart disease. There was a longitudinal study they did on
(44:23):
nurses and they found the most optimistic of the nurses
would experience much reduced likelihoods of cardiac disease stroke. I'm
not talking about five ten percent. You know. When it
comes to infectious diseases, it was over fifty percent less
likely to die of an infectious disease just through being
(44:48):
optimistic of being positive about having a positive outlook. So
if you can find ways to ingrain more positivity in
your life, you'd said at the beginning, you know, what
kinds of simple tools are there. One of the ways
is a gratitude journal. If every night you write down
(45:09):
in your journal things that you appreciate, it changes the
focus in your mind. It has you thinking differently, so
you know, you get the good brain chemicals coming on
right now, you feel good in the moment, but it
has effects last that go on further. So they look
(45:30):
I think it was Barbara Frederickson I think at Michigan
State University termed it the upward spirals effect. So she
was looking at, you know, having some of these practices
to increase gratitude and optimism today, and then they look
down the highway. In that particular instance, she was looking
six six weeks down. They've done others where they've looked
(45:53):
years down down the highway and they've actually looked at
the number of stress events that people experience, and they
found that the more optimistic people reported fewer stressful events.
Now it's not that their lives are different, it's not
that things don't happen, but they don't interpret it as stressful.
(46:17):
It doesn't get out of control for them. They're not
feeling down because of it. So again coming back to
your idea of faith and spirituality, you bring that in,
it's going to have long term results for you. It
is so significant the spiritual that I've heard that they
(46:39):
in California they have secular churches, so they try to
bring in the elements of a classical church. You know,
you have community, you get together regularly on Sundays, maybe
you sing together, maybe you say nice things to each other,
maybe you have an inspirational talk. They actually have secular churches.
(47:05):
Now for me back to the example of the child
who is sick in school, or the faith that you
have when you can turn it over to God. There
is still a huge element missing from that, but you
do you do what you can. As I said, spirituality
doesn't have to invoke religion. It can just be the
(47:30):
feeling of awe that you you know, we're on this
tiny blue planet in the middle of you know, we're
just a tiny speck having an experience and that is
awesome too. So if you think of spirituality in those contacts,
you know, you don't have to go down the religion pathway.
(47:50):
You just there is a force out there that has
allowed you to be here, whatever that may be, and
having gratitude for that is going to hold doing good
stead too.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
I love that. I love that as you were sharing
that you know faith and just that experience. I also
want to just I know we're running out of time,
but just take it even one step further of how
it impacts the body in response to challenges we were
(48:23):
I was just in Southeast Asia for four months. I
was actually doing research on the interconnectedness of faith and
mental health, and there was an incident me and my husband,
he was visiting. He lost his keys. He in that
moment that he lost his keys started to panic and
I felt hardworate going up and he got stressed. I,
(48:44):
on the other hand, always had this belief that everything
is happening for us. So I was like, there's that
we have a word in it enforcing Arabic fair like
there's a blessing behind it. So I was like, don't
worry about it. We're just meant to be here a
little bit longer. Everything's going to be okay. And you
know just the way the body's responding. So it's the
belief of okay, this is happening for a reason. For
(49:05):
his it's oh my god, what am I going to do?
There's going to be so many problems because that foundation's
not there. Now his body is experiencing this regulation whereas
mind isn't, and then that kind of feeds into the
mind body connection and that loop. So it really can
help the whole process.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
It absolutely does. You know, when your body is under stressed,
your heart rate increases, brainwave activity starts getting frantic, and
it's hard to think clearly when you're in that place.
When you can calm your system down, when you can
slow down that brainwave activity, well that allows the answers
(49:51):
to come back. So that gives you the ability to say, okay,
well when was the last time I saw my keys?
And you can actually start remembering all the steps that
you went through, and it makes it a whole lot
more likely that you're going to find your keys being
panicked and being stressed. That shuts things down. That's the
(50:13):
fight flight response. You know you're going to run, You're
going to be in protective mode, and that isn't good
for not good for your health, not good for your body,
not good for your interactions or your stress levels. So yes,
it all adds up a bit, all accumulates. So the
best thing that you can do, and again, if you
(50:34):
can turn on turn it over to aspects of faith,
that's only going to reinforce it. But even if it's not,
you can just go totally scientific and say, if I'm
uptight and stress and I'm panicking about this, it's going
to be harder for me to remember. So just find
a way to calm down, find your happy place, you know,
(50:59):
to you ate these models in your mind. I've got
how you do a lot of hypnotherapy, progressive relaxation, see
hypnosis and meditation and mindfulness. They're all related practices, and
there's lots of work that shows the effects of meditation.
(51:22):
But just bringing all of this into play, that progressive
relaxation just calm your body down, slows down brain, weigh activity,
and it allows you to function a whole lot more efficiently.
Speaker 1 (51:36):
I love that. Thank you for sharing all these again,
like these suggestions, meditation, hypnosis, progressive muscle relaxation, all these
different tools that are at our spoiser right now and
that you know you talk about in your book, the
different strategies. So how can people purchase the book? How
(51:58):
can people connect with you.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
The book is Mind Training the Science of Self Empowerment.
You can buy it anywhere books are sold. You can
buy the Amazon, Bonds and Noble. If your local bookstore
doesn't have it, they can they can order it. So yes,
it's available everywhere. To keep in touch with me, and
I would love to hear feedback from from your audience
(52:24):
as to what they think or the kinds of results
they get. Is they put some of these techniques into place,
even if they don't get the book and look at
all the other techniques. You know, we have shared plenty
right now, and I would love to hear from them.
My website is Revender. My email is revend Revenda Taylor
dot com. That's what I was about to say. The
(52:46):
website is simply Revenda Taylor dot com. So that's our
a Viva Victor I NDFA dog Er Revender at Revenda
Taylor and dot com. If you go to my website
subscribe to our newsletter. You can also get a free
copy of our Forgiving and Letting Go in a talk program,
(53:10):
so you can actually try some of this out for
yourself and actually see feel for yourself the kinds of
effects the effects that you can get. So yes, go
to my website, Revendataylor dot com, sign up for the
newsletter there, get the free forgiving program. Try out these techniques,
(53:32):
let me know how they do for you, and if
you have any other questions, I'd love to hear from here.
You can also find of course, on Facebook and Instagram.
Just search for Revenda Taylor Amazing and I'll get.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
That all in the show notes, so it's easily accessible.
Thank you so so much for sharing your insights with us.
And yeah, it's been a pleasure hearing about all the
studies and all the techniques and strategies that you've put
into this work. Thirty five years of research. I really
really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
Thank you so much for having me on to nas it.
I've enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much, and thanks
for the opportunity, of course.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
Thank you everyone for listening. Speak soon. Thank you for
joining us this week on Minutes on Growth. If you
enjoyed today's episode, and make sure you never miss a
show by clicking the subscribe Byton now
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