October 23, 2024 • 25 mins
We have a twist for your brain today. Our Brain Lady Julie was Morgan Massie's guest expert on her series, Mini Talk, where they talk about how to work with your brain and its uniqueness to get past procrastination and truly owning your singular perspective and story.
Take Julie's Brain Personality Assessment
Learn more about what Morgan does HERE.
Connect with Brain Lady Julie
Do you have a great question or topic you'd like Brain Lady Julie to cover? Think you'd be a great guest? Message our producer Kelli@BrainLadySpeaker.com and let us know.
PLEASE NOTE: The information contained in this podcast is not at any time and for any reason meant to replace the guidance and/or treatment of any health professional. Whether it be a medical doctor, psychologist, psychotherapist, or anyone in the medical field. If you are under the care of such a health professional, remember this is an “added value” and not designed to replace any care you are currently under.
Take Julie's Brain Personality Assessment
Learn more about what Morgan does HERE.
Connect with Brain Lady Julie
Do you have a great question or topic you'd like Brain Lady Julie to cover? Think you'd be a great guest? Message our producer Kelli@BrainLadySpeaker.com and let us know.
PLEASE NOTE: The information contained in this podcast is not at any time and for any reason meant to replace the guidance and/or treatment of any health professional. Whether it be a medical doctor, psychologist, psychotherapist, or anyone in the medical field. If you are under the care of such a health professional, remember this is an “added value” and not designed to replace any care you are currently under.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome back to brain Lady Speaks with your
host Julie brain Lady Anderson I am the pinky to
Julie's brain. Kelly Cooper here to introduce a slightly different
show for today. Julie was a guest speaker on Mini Talk,
a part of Morgan Macy's Right Start program Right as
(00:29):
in your writing a book, right get it? And while
this twenty ish minute interview focuses on how to work
with your brain to overcome things like writer's block or
procrastination when it comes to writing a book, Julie as
always drop some amazing information about our brains, like did
(00:50):
you know that we each have a unique brain print
that is more unique than our fingerprint? Right? Crazy? I know?
So enjoy someone interviewing our brain Lady for a change
here on Brain Lady Speaks.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Take it Away, Morgan, Hello everyone, and welcome to this
special mini talk in our Right Start program. Today, we're
going to be diving into the intersection between writing and
mindfulness and mindset, which is kind of a critical component
for a lot of authors and writers, especially when it
comes to maintaining our creativity, our focus, preseverance. Throughout this
(01:28):
whole book, writing and self publishing process. And I have
a special guest today. I'm happy to introduce Julie brain
Lady Anderson. She's the owner of Your Best Mind, a
professional speaker, a trainer on all things neuropsychology, and she's
one of the nation's top experts on the brain personality
connection and the creator of the most comprehensive personality assessing
(01:51):
tool available on the market today, the Brain Personality Assessment.
She's a highly sought after international professional speaker, a corporate keynote,
business communication and relationship consultant, and international best selling author,
which is why I thought it would be great to
have her on to tell us a little bit about
what she knows about connecting brain science with the tips
(02:15):
and tidbits that might be useful to us as an author. So, Julie,
thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Thank you for having me. This will be really fun.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Great, I'm excited about it. Well. So, first, to kick
it off, could you tell us a little bit more
about your background and what led you to become known
as the brain Lady.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Sure, I was.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
I've always been a very curious person, always been a studier,
always loved reading books on science or things that self
improvement all that kind of stuff, and I actually started
down the down I wanted to have a degree in
natural health's I was going for a PhD in that,
and one of this was in my early thirties, about
(02:55):
thirty years ago, and one of the courses was on
psychonea am I, which is this really big word that
is just the connection between the thought process in your head,
how in your mind right, how that affects the chemistry
and your brain, which all this kind of plays into
the mindset piece of being an author, and then how
that affects your immune system, which was just fascinating to
(03:18):
me that they could show through scientific research that connection.
So that kind of derailed me from natural health and
just sent me down down the path of neuroscience.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
And I just started aggregating.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
And studying all of these different things to really whatever
neuroscience can show us can help us to live happier,
healthier lives. That's what I wanted to find out about.
And that led me down. One of my clients, or
I shouldn't say one of my clients. One of my
podcast listeners called me the brain lady first, and so
it was that.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Kind of stuck.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
And that's how I became the brain Lady, was just
someone who was used to listening.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Oh you're the brain Lady. I'm like, oh, okay, that fits.
So that's how I became the brain Lady.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
And yeah, I just love love reading and expanding my
knowledge on all things neuroscience and neuropsychology.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
That's wonderful and you've kind of applied it to get
to where you are today, and that's great. So you're
walking your own talk totally. Yeah. Well, so as a writer,
as a best selling author, what have you found tips
or tricks based off of your research on brain science
that have really helped you to maybe tap into your creativity,
(04:30):
especially when we're talking about tackling something as ambitious as
writing and publishing a book.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
Yeah, I think the biggest thing is to think out,
is to get yourself outside of the box. We're kind
of programmed. So the brain gets programmed right from the
day you're conceived. It's programmed in different ways by influences
or hormones or whatever.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
And when we are in.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Growing up in school, we are taught to do things
a certain way. And John Madeena, who wrote book Brain Rules,
wonderful book. He says, if you want to create a
learning environment that's directly opposed to what the brain wants
to learn or it likes to learn. You create what
we have in the United States and Western culture. And
I bring that up because that feeds.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Over into the mindset around writing.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Right.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
We are taught in school you write in complete sentences.
You have to have the proper punctuation, you have to
have the subject, and you have to have the predicate,
all those things things right to have that all and
it has to be done correctly. And whether or not
we did well in those subjects in school, or we
(05:42):
even think that affects us now, it does. It does
because during very formative years, this is what was drilled
into our heads, and that is oftentimes what blocks through
creativity in the brain because we become so worried about
having that complete sentence, having that paragraph that makes sense,
(06:04):
having the paragraphs in the right order, that we get
stuck in those little details and that doesn't open up
the right brain creativity that we want it to do.
So the best way to get away from that is
to just I tell people brain dump it. Literally, just
(06:25):
dump on a blank sheet of paper your thoughts or
mind map it. I'm a huge mind mapper. Right, just
start throwing words, concepts, ideas, perhaps events. You know, if
you're sharing stories, what are the stories you want to share?
And you don't have to write, like I said, the
complete sentence. You go, oh, that's summer of sixty five.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
No, that's way back.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
That's when I was born, summer of eighty five, right,
Like you just just put those onto a page and
just get all of that's going to really get your
creation of juice is flowing, because then you can stand
back and look at it and start breaking that down
and going, oh, yeah, that was a great lesson that
I learned, and oh wait a minute, that was connected
(07:09):
to this and this taught me that, or this is
the message I want to hear, or this was that
lesson that I learned, because now your brain is focusing
on the idea generation as opposed to how I'm writing
it right? And am I putting a did I put
a period? Or did I put an exclamation point?
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Which one?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah, that's so bogged down on all the details, all
wantly exactly.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
That's what the editor's for, right, or that's what the
editing software is for, or that's now what we can
ask AI to do, right, that can be done later
the actual writing and getting that content down. You want
to just let those creative juices flowing and then you
can stand back and rearrange. Oh wait a minute, this
story actually should go before this, and you know then
you can do all that.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Just just let it go, Just let it go.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
It's kind of like finding your flow. Oh yeah, yeah, totally.
I love that practice of just that brain dump on paper,
and I think that's how we find over the long term,
that's how we find our voice as a writer too.
We start to look at what are those little messages
there and the words that we uniquely use to describe
our story or expertise or whatever it is that we're
(08:20):
trying to share through our writing. You don't pick up
that nuance. If you're just so formally stuck to writing
pen to paper, full sentences, capitalization, punctuation, you kind of
lose that trueness of you.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
Yeah, exactly, exactly, Yeah, So just just break away.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
From all the rules you've been taught. I just let
it go.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Yeah. Yeah. This is where writing's more of an art
than a science, and it's just doing it. And that
kind of leads into procrastination because if we suggest that
we just do a brain dump, maybe do some mind mapping,
and get really creative with putting our ideas and thoughts
onto paper. It's finding the time to do that, you know,
and a lot of us, you know, we're already working
(09:03):
full time jobs. Maybe we're moms, grandma's wives, husbands, you know,
family member's friends. We have all these different hats that
we wear, and so I know that this is something
I fall into. I procrastinate until the last minute. So
are there any brain based techniques that can help us
break that cycle and build a more consistent writing routine. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
Absolutely, there's really two reasons. While I shouldn't say two reasons,
there's one reason why you procrastinate. That's because of brains
trying to break you away from doing something that it
feels is going to be damaging in some way.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
It is either scary, it is threatening.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Is it activates that lower region, right, it activates the
amygdala and that whole series of things that goes on there.
So you have to kind of a identify if there
is an emotional reason, right, is there a story you're
going to tell? Is there a message you want to
write that for some reason, your brain is pushing back
from it's one you know, that's that's its own challenge
(10:04):
that you have to attack from a certain direction. Most
of the time, it's like, oh, I don't have the
time to do that, because your brain is thinking it's
this big project.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Oh I have to.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Write a whole book, or oh I have to write,
you know, a thousand word chapter or a fifteen hundred
word chapter, and I just don't, I just I just
I just don't that. When you break it into smaller chunks,
then it doesn't become frightening to the brain. Right now,
the brain's going, oh, I just have to write one paragraph.
That's all I have to write. Oh, that's only going
to take me five minutes. I can do that, right.
(10:36):
That's that's how you get past procrastination is making it
a clear goal, like clearly tell your brain, this is
what I want out of this time, and making it
an achievable goal. Everybody's heard about the smart goals, right,
they have to be achievable. If it's something like Okay,
I'm going to go sit down at my desk and
I'm going to write this fifteen hundred words, you're going
(10:59):
to your brain's going to give you tons of pushback,
especially if you haven't done that ideation brain dump kind
of thing right. That is when it is the brain's
really going to freak out and go, I can't.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Do this, this is much. Let's go wash the clothes
or do the dishes or whatever.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
So make sure that there's not an emotional reason that's
push your brain's giving you a pushback. If there isn't,
then just make sure that there are bite sized chunks
a little bit out of time fifteen minutes sit downs,
twenty minutes sit downs, and what you get accomplished in
that time is what you get accomplished. Be proud of it,
praise your brain for you know, praise yourself for it. Well,
that was great I got I've got that thought out
(11:37):
of my head right, And that's going to help your
brain to support you rather than sabotage you.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
I love that the little small, bite sized chunks fifteen
twenty minutes a day, or even every other day if
a day is too much. I like the idea of
also creating a space that is, you know, makes it
comfortable and energizing for you to write, too. Like it
all those distractions away. And sometimes at my house I
have little kids running around the other room, and you
(12:05):
know it'd be I'd be hard pressed to find fifteen
minutes every single day, you know. So find something that's
realistic for you too, YAC.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, for sure, that's great.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
That's great. So I know one other thing that I
am faced with, and I know folks that I coach
have mentioned they're faced with too, is just this whole
concept of imposter syndrome. And especially when I am working
with professionals that are looking to leverage their expertise or
their experience to write a book on HR best practices
(12:35):
or my experience as a leader, or you know, something
along those lines. In the professional realm, there are hundreds
of books out there on the same topic, and maybe
some of them are buy some really big names, and
some of the advice and guidance that I have given
is well, but they're not you. They don't have your
specific knowledge and the stories and the lived experiences that
(12:57):
you have to share. So what advice do you have
for conquering this imposter syndrome, this grimlin that impacts us all?
Speaker 4 (13:07):
Yeah, you know, probably the best thing I echo ditto
to everything that you just said, and I would add
to that It's not about you, right, Like sometimes we
get so focused on oh.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Well, what are they going to think about me?
Speaker 4 (13:22):
Or oh I don't have three PhDs behind me, or
I don't have twenty five years experience in this realm.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
It's not about you. It's about the reader, right.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
It's about what they're going to be able to take
away from the message that you share. It's about how
you're going to inspire them for change, how you're going
to improve their skills as a leader by sharing your experience.
It's really about that benefit that you're bringing them. So
they are hungry for real life experience. They are hungry
(13:57):
for something tangible, something really latable.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
They don't you know.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
It's it's having all of that extra education. At the
end of the day, it's what's going to move them
and what's going to benefit them, not how much you know,
not what that supposed better educated person is. We all
have a message to share and if you're going to
change one life with that positive message, or if you're
(14:23):
going to create one better leader by sharing your knowledge
as a leader, look what you've done. You've made a
positive change in the world, and that's what you have
to start convincing your brain, and you have to literally
sometimes have that conversation, like talk to yourself, literally have
that conversation.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
The information I have is valuable this event.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Nobody had this event other than me, because every experience
that I have is unique to me, even though I
should say every perspective that I have about an experience
is unique to me, like we all may You may
have one hundred people that experience a tragedy or a
to shoot or something. I don't know why I just
thought of those, but you may have of people that
(15:06):
experienced it, but only one of your perspective, right, only
one based on your brain and the way you saw
the event or the way you experience the event, So
that can't be duplicated by anybody else.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
It's only your story.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
I love that perspective and on all the examples that
you gave, because it is truly it's outcomes based. It's
your experience that you're sharing, and you see the world
in a very unique way than anyone else. And other
people might have similar views, similar values, similar mission or
purpose in life, but you're seeing it through only your lens.
(15:47):
And they're going to be people reading your book, reading
your story. They're going to resonate one hundred percent with you,
maybe I don't know eighty nine percent with someone else,
and maybe that's someone else is a big name. But
you've just put a little spin on it, with your
own voice and your uniqueness. That's just going to knock
it out of the park for your readers. So and
(16:07):
if you didn't take the time to write it, take
those fifteen minutes, be mindful about setting that schedule and
do it, then you wouldn't have birthed that into the
world and someone wouldn't have benefited from it.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely, Yeah, we don't. We oftentimes
don't give ourselves enough credit when it comes to our
own unique brain print.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Right.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
I work with and being the brain personality assessment that
I have. Right, we group people into Okay, this is
your brain quadrant, this is your sensory modality, this is
your introversion experson level. Right, we give them these groups
in these labels. The reality is is that and that
helps you to understand people and understand yourself more. But
your brain, or I should say, and your brain print
(16:53):
is as unique, if not more unique, than your thumb print. Right,
No one even identical twin us who share DNA, They
don't brain. Their brain does not scan exactly alike, right, right,
So no one has a brain exactly like yours. Yours
is one hundred percent unique, as is all of us.
(17:15):
So that that helps you to kind of break out. Okay,
I have something, you know, and people who have brains
that are similar, they're going to resonate more with you
than than another person.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah, I love that you are. We're all unique, and
I know I think that that. Knowing that my brain
is as unique as my fingerprint, Like, I didn't even
realize that that was even possible to figure out. That
puts things in perspective for me when I'm going out
there and doing a talk or when I'm trying to
pitch the topic of another book or an article, because
(17:49):
I'll have that go on the back of my mind
of oh, you know, this has been said a hundred
times by other people at least, why should I be
the person to say this or to do this. Yes,
but we're all unique exactly. Yeah, yeah, busting through that
imposter syndrome. Just go out there and do it and
(18:11):
let your young weakness shine. The world needs it exactly
be you. Yeah you, Yeah, I did want to talk
about handling, handling criticism and rejection. And I know that
sometimes in the writing process it's a very solo activity,
but they'll be at some point where you will be
(18:32):
handing off your manuscript to get some initial feedback from
some peers or from your writer coach, or even after
you've published your book maybe on Amazon, you start to
maybe get a couple different type of reviews coming through.
And I think we all hope that we're going to
get five star, four star, five star reviews, but just
the reality the situation is not everyone's going to be
(18:54):
a fan of ours. So what kind of brain centered
strategies or what can we keep in mind to help
writers develop some resilience and turn some of this potentially
constructive feedback into some growth opportunities perhaps.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Okay, so I'm going to share with you an experience
that I had when I was giving a presentation and
I think it was to a group of.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Job seekers, I think I can't remember.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
It goes back a few years and I was sharing
this information on the brain personality connection and there was
this person during the Q and A there was this
you would call them a heckler. They weren't like literally
heckling throughout the presentation, but they were just really totally
negative about everything that I had taught. And afterwards, the
administrator who had hired me to come in there, she
(19:43):
was like, I am so sorry about that person, and
she felt horrible, and I looked at her with a
big grin on my face and I said, don't apologize,
I said, she just.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Proved my point.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
And my point was is that everybody's brain is unique,
and everybody has an opinion based on their perspective and
their brain print, their brain dan in code as I
call it.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
So it's it's just their perspective, that's all it is.
And when we take ourselves out of the equation again,
it's not all about us. It's them and their opinion
based on their perspective their brain. Maybe it's abuses they
you know, they're deflecting negative emotions onto you that they
(20:25):
have about themselves. There's all kinds of potential things, So
stand back and look at the big picture.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Right.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
If you've got a beautiful white sheet in front of you,
or a beautiful white wall, and you have a couple
of black spots on there, those maybe negative type of comments,
that doesn't mean that the wall isn't beautiful, right, It
just means there's a couple of people, or there's a
few people, or even if there's half the people, it
doesn't matter. The other half loved it or the other
(20:53):
half give you positive. Right, It's not necessarily about you.
It's about their brain and their perspective and the way
they the information that you gave. And just because they
didn't like it, it doesn't devalue you, right, because you
have your brain and your perspective. So sometimes when we
take ourselves out of the equation, it doesn't sting as bad.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Right.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
Our initial reaction is always going to be, oh, wait,
they didn't like me. That's just human nature, right, that
is human nature. But when you do and what that does,
if that drives the emotion center in the brain, and
when the emotion center in the brain is on fire, the.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Thinking portion of the brain is not.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
They can't both be highly engaged at the same time
highly engaged. They can both be engaged at the same time,
but not highly engaged. So we want to reinvigorate and
open up your thought process and go it's okay, it's
just their opinion, you know, maybe they had a bad day,
maybe they really didn't like it, and that's okay. Their
brain process it a certain way. That wasn't you know,
(21:52):
it just they it's okay. It's their opinion. It doesn't
mean I'm right or I'm wrong, or I'm good or
I'm bad. It's just simply their opinion. And that helps
a lot of times to take that sting off of
it when we get ourselves out of the equation we
think we use our thinking brain as opposed to our
emotional brain. And and remember the more the more reviews
(22:15):
you have, the more your book's going to be seen.
So even if it's not a positive review, it's kind
of like, what's that what's that old saying in Hollywood, right,
or or in politics or whatever?
Speaker 3 (22:26):
It is all press is good press.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
I'm just thinking about that.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
Yeah, I don't I can't remember what exactly what it is,
but it's like, there's that means for every one of
those reviews means there were that many people, that many
more people that read the book, that many more people
that read the story. Right, So just start trying to
get the emotion out of it and look at it,
look at it as it's just their opinion.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
It's it's who they are.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
It's interesting that you mentioned the press thing because that's
what we're seeing with larger, bigger name authors and also influencers,
is well, you know, you've hit that point where you
are an influencer when you have that divide amongst the
audience that follows you that agree with you one hundred percent,
go along with everything that you say and just love you.
(23:12):
And then you have the people that you are just
not their cup of tea. But both of these are talking,
and it's given that press and that marketing and that exposure.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Yeah, that means you're being seen by that many more people.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah, exactly, exactly, So just put a little spin to it.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Yeah, absolutely, well.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
I guess for our last question today, you know, are
there any like last minute tips or tricks that you
would give to writers to kind of keep us motivated
and keep the momentum during this project of kind of
birthing your story and your expertise into the world in
the form of a book.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
I would say, make it fun. Right, Your brain loves
doing things that are fun. So the second that you
put a stress point on it is the second your
brain's going to give you pushback. And your brain is
your subconscious is so so so powerful, and it takes control,
and it works eighty thousand to two one hundred thousand times
(24:08):
faster than your thought. Your thinking brain like will, it
will sabotage you. Anything that it is that isn't fun
or that it feels is as I mentioned earlier, it
feels has some kind of danger to it.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
So make it fun.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
Figure out what that fun is to for you, writing
outside by the plants, walking in nature, and recording part
of your story on a word device, on a recording device,
mind mapping, storyboarding with post it notes.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
I love post it notes. I should have I should
have stock and post it notes with how many I use? Right?
Put them on the wall and your thoughts and ideas
and move around. Just do something, do what's fun, and
so long as your brain is having fun, you'll have
fun and you'll enjoy the process. You don't want it.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
To be a uh an arduous thing that that you
look back and go, oh, that was like the worst
experience ever, right, You want it to you want to enjoy.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
It, So make it fun, make it fun, stay in
your creative mind and just kind of do it little
little bits and chunks and pieces. Yes, absolutely, if someone
wanted to reach out to you and learn more connect
with you, how could they? How could they do that?
Speaker 4 (25:25):
They can follow me as brain Lady Julie or I
think I'm brain Lady on x but everyplace else Instagram LinkedIn.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
TikTok.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
Have a big following on TikTok it's brain Lady Julie.
And they can always send me an email at info
at your Best Mind llc dot com. That's my company name,
Your Best Mind llc dot com and info at and yeah,
we'll stay connected.
Hello, and welcome back to brain Lady Speaks with your
host Julie brain Lady Anderson I am the pinky to
Julie's brain. Kelly Cooper here to introduce a slightly different
show for today. Julie was a guest speaker on Mini Talk,
a part of Morgan Macy's Right Start program Right as
(00:29):
in your writing a book, right get it? And while
this twenty ish minute interview focuses on how to work
with your brain to overcome things like writer's block or
procrastination when it comes to writing a book, Julie as
always drop some amazing information about our brains, like did
(00:50):
you know that we each have a unique brain print
that is more unique than our fingerprint? Right? Crazy? I know?
So enjoy someone interviewing our brain Lady for a change
here on Brain Lady Speaks.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Take it Away, Morgan, Hello everyone, and welcome to this
special mini talk in our Right Start program. Today, we're
going to be diving into the intersection between writing and
mindfulness and mindset, which is kind of a critical component
for a lot of authors and writers, especially when it
comes to maintaining our creativity, our focus, preseverance. Throughout this
(01:28):
whole book, writing and self publishing process. And I have
a special guest today. I'm happy to introduce Julie brain
Lady Anderson. She's the owner of Your Best Mind, a
professional speaker, a trainer on all things neuropsychology, and she's
one of the nation's top experts on the brain personality
connection and the creator of the most comprehensive personality assessing
(01:51):
tool available on the market today, the Brain Personality Assessment.
She's a highly sought after international professional speaker, a corporate keynote,
business communication and relationship consultant, and international best selling author,
which is why I thought it would be great to
have her on to tell us a little bit about
what she knows about connecting brain science with the tips
(02:15):
and tidbits that might be useful to us as an author. So, Julie,
thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Thank you for having me. This will be really fun.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Great, I'm excited about it. Well. So, first, to kick
it off, could you tell us a little bit more
about your background and what led you to become known
as the brain Lady.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Sure, I was.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
I've always been a very curious person, always been a studier,
always loved reading books on science or things that self
improvement all that kind of stuff, and I actually started
down the down I wanted to have a degree in
natural health's I was going for a PhD in that,
and one of this was in my early thirties, about
(02:55):
thirty years ago, and one of the courses was on
psychonea am I, which is this really big word that
is just the connection between the thought process in your head,
how in your mind right, how that affects the chemistry
and your brain, which all this kind of plays into
the mindset piece of being an author, and then how
that affects your immune system, which was just fascinating to
(03:18):
me that they could show through scientific research that connection.
So that kind of derailed me from natural health and
just sent me down down the path of neuroscience.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
And I just started aggregating.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
And studying all of these different things to really whatever
neuroscience can show us can help us to live happier,
healthier lives. That's what I wanted to find out about.
And that led me down. One of my clients, or
I shouldn't say one of my clients. One of my
podcast listeners called me the brain lady first, and so
it was that.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Kind of stuck.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
And that's how I became the brain Lady, was just
someone who was used to listening.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Oh you're the brain Lady. I'm like, oh, okay, that fits.
So that's how I became the brain Lady.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
And yeah, I just love love reading and expanding my
knowledge on all things neuroscience and neuropsychology.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
That's wonderful and you've kind of applied it to get
to where you are today, and that's great. So you're
walking your own talk totally. Yeah. Well, so as a writer,
as a best selling author, what have you found tips
or tricks based off of your research on brain science
that have really helped you to maybe tap into your creativity,
(04:30):
especially when we're talking about tackling something as ambitious as
writing and publishing a book.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
Yeah, I think the biggest thing is to think out,
is to get yourself outside of the box. We're kind
of programmed. So the brain gets programmed right from the
day you're conceived. It's programmed in different ways by influences
or hormones or whatever.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
And when we are in.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Growing up in school, we are taught to do things
a certain way. And John Madeena, who wrote book Brain Rules,
wonderful book. He says, if you want to create a
learning environment that's directly opposed to what the brain wants
to learn or it likes to learn. You create what
we have in the United States and Western culture. And
I bring that up because that feeds.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Over into the mindset around writing.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Right.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
We are taught in school you write in complete sentences.
You have to have the proper punctuation, you have to
have the subject, and you have to have the predicate,
all those things things right to have that all and
it has to be done correctly. And whether or not
we did well in those subjects in school, or we
(05:42):
even think that affects us now, it does. It does
because during very formative years, this is what was drilled
into our heads, and that is oftentimes what blocks through
creativity in the brain because we become so worried about
having that complete sentence, having that paragraph that makes sense,
(06:04):
having the paragraphs in the right order, that we get
stuck in those little details and that doesn't open up
the right brain creativity that we want it to do.
So the best way to get away from that is
to just I tell people brain dump it. Literally, just
(06:25):
dump on a blank sheet of paper your thoughts or
mind map it. I'm a huge mind mapper. Right, just
start throwing words, concepts, ideas, perhaps events. You know, if
you're sharing stories, what are the stories you want to share?
And you don't have to write, like I said, the
complete sentence. You go, oh, that's summer of sixty five.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
No, that's way back.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
That's when I was born, summer of eighty five, right,
Like you just just put those onto a page and
just get all of that's going to really get your
creation of juice is flowing, because then you can stand
back and look at it and start breaking that down
and going, oh, yeah, that was a great lesson that
I learned, and oh wait a minute, that was connected
(07:09):
to this and this taught me that, or this is
the message I want to hear, or this was that
lesson that I learned, because now your brain is focusing
on the idea generation as opposed to how I'm writing
it right? And am I putting a did I put
a period? Or did I put an exclamation point?
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Which one?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah, that's so bogged down on all the details, all
wantly exactly.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
That's what the editor's for, right, or that's what the
editing software is for, or that's now what we can
ask AI to do, right, that can be done later
the actual writing and getting that content down. You want
to just let those creative juices flowing and then you
can stand back and rearrange. Oh wait a minute, this
story actually should go before this, and you know then
you can do all that.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Just just let it go, Just let it go.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
It's kind of like finding your flow. Oh yeah, yeah, totally.
I love that practice of just that brain dump on paper,
and I think that's how we find over the long term,
that's how we find our voice as a writer too.
We start to look at what are those little messages
there and the words that we uniquely use to describe
our story or expertise or whatever it is that we're
(08:20):
trying to share through our writing. You don't pick up
that nuance. If you're just so formally stuck to writing
pen to paper, full sentences, capitalization, punctuation, you kind of
lose that trueness of you.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
Yeah, exactly, exactly, Yeah, So just just break away.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
From all the rules you've been taught. I just let
it go.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Yeah. Yeah. This is where writing's more of an art
than a science, and it's just doing it. And that
kind of leads into procrastination because if we suggest that
we just do a brain dump, maybe do some mind mapping,
and get really creative with putting our ideas and thoughts
onto paper. It's finding the time to do that, you know,
and a lot of us, you know, we're already working
(09:03):
full time jobs. Maybe we're moms, grandma's wives, husbands, you know,
family member's friends. We have all these different hats that
we wear, and so I know that this is something
I fall into. I procrastinate until the last minute. So
are there any brain based techniques that can help us
break that cycle and build a more consistent writing routine. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
Absolutely, there's really two reasons. While I shouldn't say two reasons,
there's one reason why you procrastinate. That's because of brains
trying to break you away from doing something that it
feels is going to be damaging in some way.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
It is either scary, it is threatening.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Is it activates that lower region, right, it activates the
amygdala and that whole series of things that goes on there.
So you have to kind of a identify if there
is an emotional reason, right, is there a story you're
going to tell? Is there a message you want to
write that for some reason, your brain is pushing back
from it's one you know, that's that's its own challenge
(10:04):
that you have to attack from a certain direction. Most
of the time, it's like, oh, I don't have the
time to do that, because your brain is thinking it's
this big project.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Oh I have to.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Write a whole book, or oh I have to write,
you know, a thousand word chapter or a fifteen hundred
word chapter, and I just don't, I just I just
I just don't that. When you break it into smaller chunks,
then it doesn't become frightening to the brain. Right now,
the brain's going, oh, I just have to write one paragraph.
That's all I have to write. Oh, that's only going
to take me five minutes. I can do that, right.
(10:36):
That's that's how you get past procrastination is making it
a clear goal, like clearly tell your brain, this is
what I want out of this time, and making it
an achievable goal. Everybody's heard about the smart goals, right,
they have to be achievable. If it's something like Okay,
I'm going to go sit down at my desk and
I'm going to write this fifteen hundred words, you're going
(10:59):
to your brain's going to give you tons of pushback,
especially if you haven't done that ideation brain dump kind
of thing right. That is when it is the brain's
really going to freak out and go, I can't.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Do this, this is much. Let's go wash the clothes
or do the dishes or whatever.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
So make sure that there's not an emotional reason that's
push your brain's giving you a pushback. If there isn't,
then just make sure that there are bite sized chunks
a little bit out of time fifteen minutes sit downs,
twenty minutes sit downs, and what you get accomplished in
that time is what you get accomplished. Be proud of it,
praise your brain for you know, praise yourself for it. Well,
that was great I got I've got that thought out
(11:37):
of my head right, And that's going to help your
brain to support you rather than sabotage you.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
I love that the little small, bite sized chunks fifteen
twenty minutes a day, or even every other day if
a day is too much. I like the idea of
also creating a space that is, you know, makes it
comfortable and energizing for you to write, too. Like it
all those distractions away. And sometimes at my house I
have little kids running around the other room, and you
(12:05):
know it'd be I'd be hard pressed to find fifteen
minutes every single day, you know. So find something that's
realistic for you too, YAC.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, for sure, that's great.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
That's great. So I know one other thing that I
am faced with, and I know folks that I coach
have mentioned they're faced with too, is just this whole
concept of imposter syndrome. And especially when I am working
with professionals that are looking to leverage their expertise or
their experience to write a book on HR best practices
(12:35):
or my experience as a leader, or you know, something
along those lines. In the professional realm, there are hundreds
of books out there on the same topic, and maybe
some of them are buy some really big names, and
some of the advice and guidance that I have given
is well, but they're not you. They don't have your
specific knowledge and the stories and the lived experiences that
(12:57):
you have to share. So what advice do you have
for conquering this imposter syndrome, this grimlin that impacts us all?
Speaker 4 (13:07):
Yeah, you know, probably the best thing I echo ditto
to everything that you just said, and I would add
to that It's not about you, right, Like sometimes we
get so focused on oh.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Well, what are they going to think about me?
Speaker 4 (13:22):
Or oh I don't have three PhDs behind me, or
I don't have twenty five years experience in this realm.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
It's not about you. It's about the reader, right.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
It's about what they're going to be able to take
away from the message that you share. It's about how
you're going to inspire them for change, how you're going
to improve their skills as a leader by sharing your experience.
It's really about that benefit that you're bringing them. So
they are hungry for real life experience. They are hungry
(13:57):
for something tangible, something really latable.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
They don't you know.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
It's it's having all of that extra education. At the
end of the day, it's what's going to move them
and what's going to benefit them, not how much you know,
not what that supposed better educated person is. We all
have a message to share and if you're going to
change one life with that positive message, or if you're
(14:23):
going to create one better leader by sharing your knowledge
as a leader, look what you've done. You've made a
positive change in the world, and that's what you have
to start convincing your brain, and you have to literally
sometimes have that conversation, like talk to yourself, literally have
that conversation.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
The information I have is valuable this event.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Nobody had this event other than me, because every experience
that I have is unique to me, even though I
should say every perspective that I have about an experience
is unique to me, like we all may You may
have one hundred people that experience a tragedy or a
to shoot or something. I don't know why I just
thought of those, but you may have of people that
(15:06):
experienced it, but only one of your perspective, right, only
one based on your brain and the way you saw
the event or the way you experience the event, So
that can't be duplicated by anybody else.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
It's only your story.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
I love that perspective and on all the examples that
you gave, because it is truly it's outcomes based. It's
your experience that you're sharing, and you see the world
in a very unique way than anyone else. And other
people might have similar views, similar values, similar mission or
purpose in life, but you're seeing it through only your lens.
(15:47):
And they're going to be people reading your book, reading
your story. They're going to resonate one hundred percent with you,
maybe I don't know eighty nine percent with someone else,
and maybe that's someone else is a big name. But
you've just put a little spin on it, with your
own voice and your uniqueness. That's just going to knock
it out of the park for your readers. So and
(16:07):
if you didn't take the time to write it, take
those fifteen minutes, be mindful about setting that schedule and
do it, then you wouldn't have birthed that into the
world and someone wouldn't have benefited from it.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely, Yeah, we don't. We oftentimes
don't give ourselves enough credit when it comes to our
own unique brain print.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Right.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
I work with and being the brain personality assessment that
I have. Right, we group people into Okay, this is
your brain quadrant, this is your sensory modality, this is
your introversion experson level. Right, we give them these groups
in these labels. The reality is is that and that
helps you to understand people and understand yourself more. But
your brain, or I should say, and your brain print
(16:53):
is as unique, if not more unique, than your thumb print. Right,
No one even identical twin us who share DNA, They
don't brain. Their brain does not scan exactly alike, right, right,
So no one has a brain exactly like yours. Yours
is one hundred percent unique, as is all of us.
(17:15):
So that that helps you to kind of break out. Okay,
I have something, you know, and people who have brains
that are similar, they're going to resonate more with you
than than another person.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah, I love that you are. We're all unique, and
I know I think that that. Knowing that my brain
is as unique as my fingerprint, Like, I didn't even
realize that that was even possible to figure out. That
puts things in perspective for me when I'm going out
there and doing a talk or when I'm trying to
pitch the topic of another book or an article, because
(17:49):
I'll have that go on the back of my mind
of oh, you know, this has been said a hundred
times by other people at least, why should I be
the person to say this or to do this. Yes,
but we're all unique exactly. Yeah, yeah, busting through that
imposter syndrome. Just go out there and do it and
(18:11):
let your young weakness shine. The world needs it exactly
be you. Yeah you, Yeah, I did want to talk
about handling, handling criticism and rejection. And I know that
sometimes in the writing process it's a very solo activity,
but they'll be at some point where you will be
(18:32):
handing off your manuscript to get some initial feedback from
some peers or from your writer coach, or even after
you've published your book maybe on Amazon, you start to
maybe get a couple different type of reviews coming through.
And I think we all hope that we're going to
get five star, four star, five star reviews, but just
the reality the situation is not everyone's going to be
(18:54):
a fan of ours. So what kind of brain centered
strategies or what can we keep in mind to help
writers develop some resilience and turn some of this potentially
constructive feedback into some growth opportunities perhaps.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Okay, so I'm going to share with you an experience
that I had when I was giving a presentation and
I think it was to a group of.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Job seekers, I think I can't remember.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
It goes back a few years and I was sharing
this information on the brain personality connection and there was
this person during the Q and A there was this
you would call them a heckler. They weren't like literally
heckling throughout the presentation, but they were just really totally
negative about everything that I had taught. And afterwards, the
administrator who had hired me to come in there, she
(19:43):
was like, I am so sorry about that person, and
she felt horrible, and I looked at her with a
big grin on my face and I said, don't apologize,
I said, she just.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Proved my point.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
And my point was is that everybody's brain is unique,
and everybody has an opinion based on their perspective and
their brain print, their brain dan in code as I
call it.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
So it's it's just their perspective, that's all it is.
And when we take ourselves out of the equation again,
it's not all about us. It's them and their opinion
based on their perspective their brain. Maybe it's abuses they
you know, they're deflecting negative emotions onto you that they
(20:25):
have about themselves. There's all kinds of potential things, So
stand back and look at the big picture.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Right.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
If you've got a beautiful white sheet in front of you,
or a beautiful white wall, and you have a couple
of black spots on there, those maybe negative type of comments,
that doesn't mean that the wall isn't beautiful, right, It
just means there's a couple of people, or there's a
few people, or even if there's half the people, it
doesn't matter. The other half loved it or the other
(20:53):
half give you positive. Right, It's not necessarily about you.
It's about their brain and their perspective and the way
they the information that you gave. And just because they
didn't like it, it doesn't devalue you, right, because you
have your brain and your perspective. So sometimes when we
take ourselves out of the equation, it doesn't sting as bad.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Right.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
Our initial reaction is always going to be, oh, wait,
they didn't like me. That's just human nature, right, that
is human nature. But when you do and what that does,
if that drives the emotion center in the brain, and
when the emotion center in the brain is on fire, the.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Thinking portion of the brain is not.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
They can't both be highly engaged at the same time
highly engaged. They can both be engaged at the same time,
but not highly engaged. So we want to reinvigorate and
open up your thought process and go it's okay, it's
just their opinion, you know, maybe they had a bad day,
maybe they really didn't like it, and that's okay. Their
brain process it a certain way. That wasn't you know,
(21:52):
it just they it's okay. It's their opinion. It doesn't
mean I'm right or I'm wrong, or I'm good or
I'm bad. It's just simply their opinion. And that helps
a lot of times to take that sting off of
it when we get ourselves out of the equation we
think we use our thinking brain as opposed to our
emotional brain. And and remember the more the more reviews
(22:15):
you have, the more your book's going to be seen.
So even if it's not a positive review, it's kind
of like, what's that what's that old saying in Hollywood, right,
or or in politics or whatever?
Speaker 3 (22:26):
It is all press is good press.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
I'm just thinking about that.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
Yeah, I don't I can't remember what exactly what it is,
but it's like, there's that means for every one of
those reviews means there were that many people, that many
more people that read the book, that many more people
that read the story. Right, So just start trying to
get the emotion out of it and look at it,
look at it as it's just their opinion.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
It's it's who they are.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
It's interesting that you mentioned the press thing because that's
what we're seeing with larger, bigger name authors and also influencers,
is well, you know, you've hit that point where you
are an influencer when you have that divide amongst the
audience that follows you that agree with you one hundred percent,
go along with everything that you say and just love you.
(23:12):
And then you have the people that you are just
not their cup of tea. But both of these are talking,
and it's given that press and that marketing and that exposure.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Yeah, that means you're being seen by that many more people.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah, exactly, exactly, So just put a little spin to it.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Yeah, absolutely, well.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
I guess for our last question today, you know, are
there any like last minute tips or tricks that you
would give to writers to kind of keep us motivated
and keep the momentum during this project of kind of
birthing your story and your expertise into the world in
the form of a book.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
I would say, make it fun. Right, Your brain loves
doing things that are fun. So the second that you
put a stress point on it is the second your
brain's going to give you pushback. And your brain is
your subconscious is so so so powerful, and it takes control,
and it works eighty thousand to two one hundred thousand times
(24:08):
faster than your thought. Your thinking brain like will, it
will sabotage you. Anything that it is that isn't fun
or that it feels is as I mentioned earlier, it
feels has some kind of danger to it.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
So make it fun.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
Figure out what that fun is to for you, writing
outside by the plants, walking in nature, and recording part
of your story on a word device, on a recording device,
mind mapping, storyboarding with post it notes.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
I love post it notes. I should have I should
have stock and post it notes with how many I use? Right?
Put them on the wall and your thoughts and ideas
and move around. Just do something, do what's fun, and
so long as your brain is having fun, you'll have
fun and you'll enjoy the process. You don't want it.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
To be a uh an arduous thing that that you
look back and go, oh, that was like the worst
experience ever, right, You want it to you want to enjoy.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
It, So make it fun, make it fun, stay in
your creative mind and just kind of do it little
little bits and chunks and pieces. Yes, absolutely, if someone
wanted to reach out to you and learn more connect
with you, how could they? How could they do that?
Speaker 4 (25:25):
They can follow me as brain Lady Julie or I
think I'm brain Lady on x but everyplace else Instagram LinkedIn.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
TikTok.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
Have a big following on TikTok it's brain Lady Julie.
And they can always send me an email at info
at your Best Mind llc dot com. That's my company name,
Your Best Mind llc dot com and info at and yeah,
we'll stay connected.
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