In this episode of Bulletproof Radio, my guest is Tara Swart, M.D., Ph.D., a neuroscientist, medical doctor, leadership coach, and bestselling author. She works with leaders all over the world to help them improve their ability to manage stress, regulate emotions, and retain information.
She’s a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management where she runs the Neuroscience for Leadership and Applied Neuroscience programs and is an executive advisor to some of the world’s most respected leaders in media and business. She specializes in sectors that face unusual levels of stress or change. She’s also an online columnist for Fast Company and Forbes.
She helps high performers achieve their peak brain performance. I’m excited to talk to her about her new book, “The Source: The Secrets of the Universe, the Science of the Brain,” which explains how to rewire the brain’s pathways to make lasting, positive changes in people’s lives.
Part of that rewiring focuses on mental resilience and adversity capability.
“Our ability to endure and bounce back from adversity is a capability that can be built into our brain,” Dr. Swart says. “And there are certain factors that help to really incorporate that into our tool kit. Because of things like the natural loss aversion of the brain, we have to override that with a different form of thinking.
Dr. Swart also is intrigued by the three-way transmission of information between the limbic system, gut neurons and the gut microbiome.
“Bacteria are using us as avatars to get whatever nutrition or resource they need to be able to survive, to multiply, then transform,” she says. “The way that helps leaders from a pathological angle is if you’ve got an addiction or a terrible craving, understanding that it could be the bacteria in your gut that’s causing that, not you. And I think that level of separation helps people to step back and think…”
Listen on to learn more about gaining greater clarity about your own intuition and the untapped potential of your brain.
“I think that whole process of evolving and challenging your beliefs and embracing new ideas is really important,” Dr. Swart says. “I think my niche is to be able to represent based on current modern scientific thinking. How some of those things, like the law of attraction, manifestation, visualization could actually help us to have a slightly better life than the one that we have at the moment.”
Enjoy the show!
Follow Along with the Transcript
Learn How to Direct Your Brain’s Pathways – Dr. Tara Swart – #647
Links/Resources
Website: taraswart.com
Book: taraswart.com/the-source
Facebook: facebook.com/TheSourceDrTaraSwart/
Twitter: twitter.com/taraswart
Instagram: instagram.com/drtaraswart/
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/taraswart/
Key Notes
- Measuring brains during leadership 00:05:55
- The most unlikely thing Tara has found 00:08:25
- Do each bacteria have a consciousness? 00:10:00
- Helping leaders build resilience 00:12:45
- Twitchy eyelids are related to magnesium 00:13:20
- Every time you endure adversity, you build resilience 00:16:45
- Trauma and addiction 00:18:30
- Did Tara have a life-changing disruption? 00:22:50
- What does it feel like to change someone’s life 00:32:00
- The role of visualization 00:36:05
- The Tetris effect 00:37:50
- Dave’s aversion to quantum science 00:43:00
- The practical application of a vision board 00:48:00
- Can you train intuition? 00:50:40
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