Shadowing Practice: What If You Could Rewire Your Brain for Success (with science) - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

If you've ever felt stressed,

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If you've ever felt stressed,

overwhelmed, unsure where to go,

lost, overreactive, or just not happy and not satisfied with how things are going,

then keep watching this video.

With these three simple strategies that I'm going to talk through,

you can literally reprogram your mind's default operating system to rewire your brain for success

or neuro hack your way to being happier,

feeling more content, and also feeling more free to really fulfill your potential without any self-sabotaging thoughts.

If you're new here, my name's Izzy,

I'm a Cambridge graduate and a doctor.

And without further ado, let's dive in.

In this video, I'll firstly break down the science of neuroplasticity

and explain what this is and how this is the key to unlocking our own minds.

And then after that, I will dive right in to the three strategies that you can implement starting today.

Also, as a companion to the first step in the three steps,

I have created a meditation resource guide pack completely free of charge.

And it includes an exclusive guided meditation by me and all my favorite resources for it.

So if you're interested in checking that out,

then I'll leave a link down below in the description.

Again, completely free.

So up to you if you'd like that as a companion to this video.

Let's start with neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity is our brain's lifelong ability to change

and adapt through growth of new neural connections and reorganization or down regulation of existing ones.

Essentially, your brain can rewire throughout your whole life.

It's not true that our brains are fixed at all.

People used to think that after childhood, brains became more fixed now we know from the science that actually that's not true.

And for literally our whole lives,

so it's never too late,

our brains can change and rewire in response to our environment and our inputs.

This links into something called Hebbian learning,

also known as Hebb's theory or Hebb's law,

which is actually something they taught us about in medical school,

which can essentially be summarized as neurons that fire together, wire together.

Essentially, neural pathways that are used more frequently get strengthened and it's easier for them to fire again next time.

On the other hand, neural pathways

that are neglected not used start to wither away over time and become a little bit more defunct or difficult to use.

An analogy for this that I love and find is really helpful is the idea of forging a path through the jungle.

So if you imagine an overgrown jungle and you want to break a path through it,

you need to fight your way through the vegetation.

And the more that you tread down this path through the vegetation,

the clearer the path actually becomes and the easier it gets to use over time

because you cleared away some of this grass this time,

you've trampled it, so there's a clearer and and clearer path there's less vegetation over time.

On the flip side if you don't tread down

that path for a long time it starts to become more and more overgrown,

obstructed and difficult to use over time

because the vegetation kind of grows back in and makes the path more difficult to walk down.

And a very similar thing is true of the brain.

So the neuroscience behind rewiring our brain is that we need to practice the neural pathways that we want to encourage.

The ones that help us to take steps to become our higher self,

become the person that we want to be and avoid feeding any neural pathways that we actually don't want.

So those ones that self-sabotage us or that hold us back from fulfilling our potential.

So one of the things that actually down regulates neuroplasticity

and makes it more difficult to rewire our brains is being under a constant state of stress.

This is why actually when we're feeling relaxed

and comfortable we actually do our best learning

and our brains can change more rapidly because it's more open to change rather than being in a stressed state.

There's a whole bunch of other things that affect neuroplasticity.

I could include those in a future video if you're curious

so let me know if you'd like me to talk more about this topic.

Also if you're enjoying this video so far you might enjoy my newsletter which is called Letters to My Younger Self.

You might want to check it out,

I'll leave a link down below.

And I actually develop a lot of my ideas in an app called VoicePal

which is one that I've actually helped to build

which is essentially an app where you can hit record and you just start speaking into the app.

Start with the seed of an idea

and then the AI will transcribe what you've said

and then ask you follow-up questions to prompt you to develop and deepen your thinking around an idea.

And so this is a way

that I find is really helpful for me to explore my own mind the way that I'm thinking about things.

And for me personally is often how I create content

because I will have all these ideas and I want to expand them and develop them.

I want my content to flow from me,

but essentially VoicePal creates these brainstorming structures and frameworks

that prompt me to be more creative and to tap into my mind more fully.

If you're interested in trying out VoicePal,

you can try it completely free.

So back to the video.

Let's dive in to the three C's of brain change.

Number one is cultivation, and this is actively developing new neural pathways through meditation and visualization.

This means actively working on the quality of our mind through generating certain states of mind

which over time and with practice become easier and easier to access.

For me personally, I've been meditating regularly for around five years now

and I can tell you without a doubt

that there is no single habit that has changed my life more completely than meditation.

I know that sounds grandiose but it's really really true

and there is so much strong data and evidence

that backs up the power of meditation to create change in our minds

and since our minds literally create our reality

and create they form the way

that we respond to the world it's an extremely fundamental way of reprogramming our responses to things

when i initially started meditation i actually found it really difficult to connect to

and i was like am i doing this right kind of sitting here trying to focus on my breathing

but i keep getting distracted and I don't feel like this is particularly effective.

And that's very natural, especially if you're starting out meditation.

So if you're new to meditation and you're having this experience when you're trying to meditate,

don't worry, trust in the process,

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because it makes sense if we think about it from a neuroplasticity perspective,

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where it's difficult to tread these new pathways of mindfulness, focus, equanimity, compassion.

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It's difficult to train this muscle when we haven't already trod this path very clearly,

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and these neural pathways to create that state of mind are just really not developed.

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But the good news is that over time it really really becomes easier, I promise.

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And so every single time just you showing up and putting in the effort is a form of progress.

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Even if you can't notice the progress on a day-to-day level,

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you will notice this progress over time.

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Some of the numerous studies that have found benefits to meditation,

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one 2012 study in particular found that on fMRI scans,

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which essentially is an MRI scan looking at the function of the brain

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and the kind of activity occurring in the brain showed

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that the changes in brain activity in people who have learned to meditate hold steady even

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when they're not meditating so this is in terms of the actual function of the brain

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and the areas of the brain

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that are activating the lead scientist de bord took before

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and after scans of 51 subjects who learned to meditate over

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the course of two months she scanned them not only

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while they were meditating but while they were performing everyday normal tasks

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and the scans found that these changes were actually persistent even when they were just doing everyday tasks,

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showing that the benefits and the functional changes in the brain,

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this rewiring that we're talking about,

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actually persists even when you're not meditating.

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And another 2009 study compared people who meditate with people who don't meditate on lots of different measures of psychological well-being.

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Overall all of the studies and also my personal experience and

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so many people's anecdotal experiences all align

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that meditation is a really powerful fundamental way to change our brain's structure

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and change the way that it works in a default pattern.

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There are lots of different styles of meditations

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and some of them are classic mindfulness meditation but other types

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that I find go a little bit deeper include insight

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or vipassana style meditation and also metabhavana meditation which is focused on developing compassion.

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For me in particular metabhavana meditations focused on developing loving kindness and compassion for yourself and others.

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Metta essentially means loving kindness or you can also translate it as compassion and bhavana means cultivation of.

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So metta bhavana literally means the cultivation of loving kindness.

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And the first time that I sat to do this kind of meditation I had such an intense experience.

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It was actually like it felt like a huge emotional release because the first stage is actually generating a sense of metta,

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of loving kindness for yourself because if you can't generate it for yourself it's hard to generate it for other people.

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And so then when I tried to sit there and generate this sense of loving kindness for myself,

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using verbal prompts like may I be well,

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may I be happy, may I be free from suffering I just suddenly burst into tears

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and I was like tears streaming down my face as there

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was suddenly this like huge emotional release inside me where I realized

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that I lived a lot of my life not necessarily showing compassion towards myself

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or having loving kindness towards myself and so then over the several months

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that followed I would regularly practice metta bhavana meditation and gradually like developed this feeling of love for myself,

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which I'm still working on every single day.

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But having that practice gave me a way to work with the muscle of my mind

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and rewire it to be more self-compassionate.

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And that's ultimately allowed me to be more compassionate to other people as well.

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So if I were to talk to myself as a beginner in meditation,

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I would have thought that meditation was only one thing.

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But actually meditation is an approach to actively working on and cultivating our mind,

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which means that we can really cultivate in many different directions

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and it can achieve so many different things depending on the kind of meditation that you do.

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As I mentioned near the start of this video I've created

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a completely free resource pack for all the tips for beginning and meditation,

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all my favorite resources including an exclusive guided meditation

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that I recorded for you guys in case you'd like to listen to

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that so you can get that completely for free down in the description below

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because I genuinely think that the world would be a better place

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and everyone would be happier and more connected and loving to themselves

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and others if meditation was more widespread so

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that it's something i'm really passionate about getting people involved in trying hence why i've put together all this pack

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and just making this video i know i go on about meditation quite a bit on this channel

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but i'm just hoping that

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if i can inspire at least one person to pick up meditation

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and help them on

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that journey towards working actively on their mind all of this

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will be worth Another thing I mentioned in this first section of cultivation is visualization.

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And visualization is kind of like weightlifting for your brain.

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A 2003 study found

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that visualizing doing a task actually triggered similar activity in the

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same brain regions of actually doing the physical performance of the task.

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And so by very clearly visualizing yourself doing something,

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you strengthen those neural pathways and ultimately physically change your brain.

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The second C of brain change is consumption.

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And by consumption, I mean content consumption.

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Our brains literally get trained on our environment and our inputs, our stimuli.

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And so our content diet,

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the things that we absorb from around us,

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has a huge impact on actually what kinds of things our brain learns to focus on

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and what kind of connections we are encouraging.

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If you're watching junk from the algorithm that's just being spewed out at you,

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unintentionally just getting passively fed this content,

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that is actually shaping your brain.

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And so if you're watching content which is triggering comparison with others,

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or like an over focus on material goods,

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or just essentially something that you don't actually want to train your brain on,

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you will unfortunately be training your brain on that kind of content.

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On the flip side, if you actively choose wholesome,

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educational, inspiring, uplifting content to feed your mind with,

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your mind will gradually grow to reflect that.

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It's a fact of the brain that what we focus on gets magnified and the content that we consume trains our brain,

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which is why I'm so passionate about carefully curating our mental inputs through our content choices.

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So for me personally, I used to follow a bunch of celebrities

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or people who would post about an unrelatable lifestyle or had an unrealistic physique,

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whether they had had either plastic surgery or edited their photos

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or were just really like a kind of top one percent physique or they were showing off really materialistic goods,

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showing off their Birkin bags or luxury brands.

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And at some point after starting my meditation journey,

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because at that point I became much more self-aware of the contents of my own mind,

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I realized that these were actually having quite a negative impact on my brain.

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They were leading to feelings of comparison,

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unhelpful mimetic desire, essentially taking on desires that I didn't necessarily have in myself,

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and feelings of dissatisfaction with my own life,

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looking at this highlight reel of all of this flashy lifestyle,

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and I could really see how this was leading to a more unhappy mental landscape.

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So a couple of years ago,

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I actually decided to curate my content consumption diet and take control,

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take the reins of it.

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Just like a physical diet and you are what you eat

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and and all of that your mind is growing

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and is trained based on what you feed it the way i approach this now is

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that whenever i see a piece of content i put it through my good mental nutrition filter

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which is essentially asking myself is this content supporting my mind to grow in the way

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that i'd actually really like it to

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or is it kind of doing the opposite and

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so now i primarily follow accounts that fall into a couple of buckets so whether that's wholesome content or inspirational motivational content,

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educational content, and on the flip side anything that leads to kind of unwholesomeness or unhappiness,

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I just click the show less of this or mute or unfollow and just remove that from my content diet.

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So a good action point here is to try to build

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in this good mental nutrition filter each time you use social media

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and when you're selecting the kinds of people that you want to follow.

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The third C of brain change is conditioning.

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This essentially embodiment practices.

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For me, I love to have some affirmations

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that I can come back to that remind me to be positive

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and remind me to practice the muscle of those positive pathways

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that ultimately are leading me to become the person I would like to be.

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Affirmations I find are less powerful if you don't actually believe what is on the thing could potentially be true.

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There needs to be a seed of I could believe this to be true

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and also there needs to be some kind of physical engagement with it.

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So recently, because I am currently pregnant and I am coming up to the birth of our baby,

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I have been actively building in more positive affirmations around pregnancy and also birth.

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Birth is a very scary process throughout almost our whole lives.

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We're trained that birth is a really scary process and very painful.

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And so I'm kind of using affirmations

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and positive stories to try to neutralize some of this and try to rebuild some positive images around birth.

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So for example, one of these positive birth affirmations is that my baby is the perfect size for my body.

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And this is to help to create neural pathways

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that try to counteract the fear of what if my baby is too big for my body?

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I need to have all these interventions to get the baby out

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or the baby gets stuck or all of these unnecessary anxieties that don't actually help me in the moment.

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And I don't know whether they're true or not.

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For most people, their baby is actually a perfectly fine size for their body

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and they're able to give birth just fine with no issues.

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So it's almost like this conditioning around birth that I currently have

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or previously had was unhelpful for the kind of way that I want to show up and respond to the situation,

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given that it's such a low likelihood that these issues will even come to pass.

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They're looming way larger than they should in reality.

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Another way that we can really cement a more positive neural pathway in place is through power poses

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and embodying confidence, embodying positivity.

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One meta-analysis, which included almost 10,000 people in this study,

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found that when the participants took power poses or upright positions,

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they felt better and were more confident than when they took contractive or hunched body positions.

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And this was true across men and women.

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This was a robust study that really shows that the way

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that we show up in the world in terms of our posture,

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our body position, really affects our internal feeling.

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So one example from my life is

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when I was about to do a live session for 19,000 people on how to do a vision board.

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Beforehand, I didn't let myself hunch over.

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I wanted to sit up,

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shoulders back, upright position, bit of a smile on my face,

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transmuting any fear into excitement,

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or at least trying to because the main difference between fear and excitement is just a smile.

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It's just a smile and how you show up physically in the world

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and that can really change how you feel about something

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and train your mind over time to follow on from

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and take these cues from your body and really cement in

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and condition yourself to to default towards internal feelings

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which then lead to behaviors that are more in line with the person that we really want to become.

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And if you liked this video I think you might like this video over here

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which is where I talk about the neuroscience of vision boarding

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and how to practically apply it in a really powerful way to achieve your dream life

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so you can check that out over here thank you

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so much for watching as always take care of yourself and i will see you in the next video bye

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Shadowing Practice: What If You Could Rewire Your Brain for Success (with science) - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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