BrainAThon with Sarah McKay : Refire to Rewire - John Assaraf

All right, welcome back. And with me is just an amazing woman, Sarah Mackay. And she's not only a master's of science from the University of Oxford, she also has her PhD from Oxford, which is one of the top universities. I think it's rated number one right now in the world. And so Sarah is a phenomenal neuroscientist who takes the latest in neuroscience and makes it easy for people like me and you to help understand how we can re fire our brain, to rewire our brain. She is the founder of the Neuroscience Academy. She's got an amazing TED talk. She really specializes in taking the deepest levels of science and with her anatomy background and working in the laboratories, she really understands the deepest levels of science in the brain and how to translate that. So you could change your life. And what is this program all about? It's all about changing your brain so you can change your life and your results. So, Sarah, thank you for coming in from Australia and I really appreciate you doing this.

Oh, thank you for inviting me. I'm delighted to be here.

Well, you know what? When you and I met and I had a chance to dive into your work, you're one of the leading neuroscientists in the world. And so you've developed an entire body of work that I resonate with so much because I, I know that we can rewire our brains so that we have more confidence, more certainty, more personal power. And your concept around re fire to rewire? Maybe we can start off right off the bat. What is that?

Well, it's sort of six steps that I've developed which allow us to tap into our capacity for adult neuroplasticity. So one thing that is really important to understand about our brains is when we're babies and when we're children, our brains are very, very plastic in that they're like a sponge. Everything that happens changes. Our brains, they are open, they need, they want to learn. And as we get a little bit older, that capacity for neuroplasticity does dial down a little bit. So that means our brains can still change, they can still rewire, but the amount of effort it takes to make those changes, to learn something new, gets that much harder as we get older. So what I've done with this, with this six step refire process, is take what I understand about the basics of neuroplasticity, and I've turned that into sort of six easy steps that people can use to implement these basics of neuroplasticity to, in a sense, rewire their brains. Now you can use this to change your mindset, to perhaps learn a new musical instrument, to conquer a new habit, or to perhaps change a behaviour.

Love it. And so is it really possible for anybody almost at any age, to rewire their brain from, let's say, disempowering beliefs or disempowering perceptions or disempowering habits that's keeping them stuck in the current level of success they're achieving?

Yeah, I mean, the way I think about it is not so much that the capacity to rewire our brain or something like neuroplasticity, as a pill we can take and then we can change, or a magic wand that we can wave. And after our brain is rewired, then we have this capacity. The plastic process of our brain changes as we follow through learning these new behaviours or making these changes. So we can't rewire and then change. Our brains change as we progressively step through the various behaviours that we're trying to learn.

I love it. So from a, say, a laboratory perspective, when you turn on that neuroplasticity switch and the neurons that fire together start wiring together, how long does it take to start really feeling the effects of change? And let's translate that more to behaving differently and seeing yourself in the world differently.

Yeah, look, I mean, that's a bit like asking how long is a piece of string? So how long does it take to implement a new habit? Well, we'd all like to believe that it takes 21 days because, you know, that would be a nice, quick, easy program to do. But it really completely varies on a whole host of things, including your intrinsic motivation, what the specific task is that you're trying to do, how often you practise, the kinds of emotions that you can tap into, if you're engaging the right people to help you learn that new task. So there have been some studies done looking at how long it can take to implement a new habit, and one was done at the University of College in London that a new habit can take anywhere from a couple of weeks up to about 250 days. So it really depends on the various steps that you implement to make that change. Change is possible, but it can be difficult.

Awesome. And so it is possible. And that means that if you do it and you invoke emotions and you invoke different methodologies, you increase your chances of getting it to stick, right?

Yeah, for sure, for sure. So it probably makes sense if I explained what the six steps in the refi process that gives us a bit of a framework to work with. Should I go ahead and do that?

Let's do the sixth step. Let's give people some killer content right off the bat.

So REIFI is really an acronym. So there's six steps. So R is for reason, T is for engage, F is for feel, I is for imagine, R is for repeat and E is for extend. So spells refine. Now I mean it's not necessarily a one to six, step by step process. I like to think more about these things as a puzzle with six pieces that we can work on. So the very first step in this is reason and this is really about finding your why. What is your goal, what is the project that you're working on? If we have a really, really clear understanding and specific idea in mind of the new behaviour we want to implement, the new habit, the mindset that we want to change, then we're going to reduce uncertainty, which always makes us feel a little bit fearful, and we're going to increase our intrinsic motivation to want to reach that goal. Although I don't really like always using the word goals. I'd rather have a project that I'm working on where you've got lots of little pieces or even a puzzle. When you're doing a puzzle, John, and you finally find the piece that fits in the right spot and you just get such a sense of satisfaction, even if it's one tiny piece in a thousand piece puzzle, well, you know, you kind of, you're getting that little bit of, a little bit of dopamine, a little bit of those feel good hormones in your brain when you put that one little piece of the puzzle in. If you have a very clear idea of the project you're working on or the goal you're working towards, you can break it down into little simple steps, close all those little feedback loops off. It's like putting that piece in that puzzle. So that's why you have to be very clear, understand your reason. That's the very first step. Now the second is engage. And I think about engage in two ways. First is around engaging yourself in this new task or behaviour that you want to learn. So, you know, you decide you want to learn to play the violin. Might be easier to learn to play the violin when you're six years old than when you're 56, but you can still learn when you're older. But you're not just going to pick up a violin and figure out how to play all by yourself. You're going to engage the skills and the knowledge of an exceptional violin. Teacher. So you have to engage a guide or a teacher or a mentor or a coach. So someone that's going to, you know, help you, help you learn how to learn that task, that's what's really important. So again, it's closing off all those little feedback loops again. And you need to engage or absorb yourself in actually learning the task. You can't just talk about it or write about it or think about it. You've actually got to engage in the task itself. So that's the second step. Now, the third step is one of my favourite steps and I call it feel. And it's really about sort of finding that sweet spot in your emotions between fear and sort of over excitement. You know, that sweet spot between perhaps boredom where you can't kind of be bothered getting up and doing anything and kind of over excitement or fear about doing it. And you might have heard about the concept of flow. And so we often learn best when we get ourselves into a flow state. And again, that's that sweet spot between sort of boredom and fear or over excitement. Now, we understand that we learn best in that state and we understand that from psychological studies of people. But if you zoom all the way into the brain and look at the level of synapse, synapses work best when they're not under excited and when they're not over excited, you're just kind of finding that sweet spot. And another kind of way to think about this is to think about our levels of stress or our levels of cortisol. Now cortisol gets a really bad rap. Everyone thinks being stressed is bad, but if you don't have a little bit of sort of neural friction or neural tension in your life, you're not going to get out of bed in the morning, you're not going to kind of engage. So you need just that slight sort of a bit of stress to knock yourself into that flow state.

I love it. So let me just make sure that I've got it right and the people are just joining us. You know, anywhere in the program that we're at is number one is reason. So have a why and having that curiosity. And that reason is step number one in the refire process. Number two is engage. So immerse yourself into that and get.

Activated, take action and engage someone else in the process, whether it be being a member of a team or having a coach or a mentor or a teacher. It's really important, right?

And then the F is the feel is get your emotions behind it as well.

Find the sweet spot in Your emotions between kind of boredom and over excitement. Just that kind of little bit of cortisol.

Love it. So a little bit of cortisol. And so that's the first three steps and the next three for the ire for refire is.

And I know you're going to like the next one because the next step is I for imagine.

Yes, I love.

And this is around mental rehearsal or visualization. Now we understand an awful lot about visualization or imagination from neuroscience research and we know that the same regions in the brain are activated when we are thinking very clearly about the task as when we're doing it in reality. So a tennis player practicing their serve will activate particular muscles in the brain, sorry, particular regions in the brain which are related to those muscles that they're using now. When they're imagining or visualizing that exact same serve, those same brain regions will be activated. So it's a way of rehearsing. When you can't rehearse. It's very important, it's very useful and it's been shown to improve performance. There's certain steps to follow to make it work really well, like kind of imagining you're in your body, doing it and engaging all of your senses. But it's a very powerful tool to be able to use and learn to use well.

I love it. We call it inner sizing to build your neuro muscles. So it's great that.

Absolutely, absolutely. And there is a little bit of evidence that perhaps especially if you're visualizing moving particular muscle groups, that the signals that are being sent from the brain to those muscle groups may even send micro stimulation signals to those muscles which may in a way help strengthen those muscles or at least get them used to that movement.

Lovely. And we've discovered as well through just doing the research on the research is you can develop new belief patterns as well and habitual patterns in the brain and strength them using the exact same same process.

And you can practice how you're going to respond emotionally to a situation as well, which I think is incredibly useful. So it's not just necessarily for perfecting a motor skill for being a professional gymnast or a tennis player, but you can rehearse how you're going to respond emotionally to a situation. You know, you've got a big exam coming up, a presentation at work, a difficult conversation with your mother in law perhaps and you can practise how you're going to respond in those situations well in advance actually doing it. So when it comes to that, you feel like you've already done it 10 times beforehand.

I love it. And one of the things that we teach people is to how to develop a new money story and to how to see themselves earning more income, seeing themselves maybe starting a business or writing a book or getting a promotion, and using those mental rehearsals or imagination, develop those neural pathways that then creates that emotion that they can follow through and start taking action. We have tens of thousands of clients that are doing that all over the world. And so following these signs, yes, following.

These neurosciences, it's a really useful skill to learn to learn to do well.

Love it. And so we've got the R and the E in the re fire to rewire your brain process. So the next R is.

The next one is R for repeat. And this is probably the least fun one because this is where the hard work comes in and the grit and the determination. And this is where you've just got to practice, practice, practice. Practice makes perfect because of neuroplasticity. And it's not always fun and it's not always easy. But you are not going to get those synapses, you know, firing together to wire together unless that happens repeatedly over and over and over again. And we understand this all the way down at the level of the synapse, all the way out to the level of personal performance. And it can be really hard. And that's when sometimes you've got to kind of cycle back and perhaps engage your coach or your teacher or your mentor again, get back in touch with your reason why, get back to finding your sweet spot between boredom and fear, and tap into all of those steps leading up to the repeat and the repeat and the repeat again, because that's really where the magic happens. But it's also the really, really difficult bit. And it's the place where people can give up.

Right? And actually, it used to be difficult until our technology came out. And we actually help people with doing that and really have automated the whole process to make it easy. And with that, let's shift over to the last E is.

The last E is extend, extend. And this is kind of, you know, as I said in the previous step, you've kind of got to repeat things over and over and over again until you get really good at them. But if you think about someone like, you know, a tennis player, we think about Roger Federer, who's just won Wimbledon again. Isn't he a champion? Now, he didn't get there just by, you know, continually bashing the tennis ball around. And I know I keep using tennis analogies here, but experts don't keep going until they get it right. They keep going until they can't get it wrong. And they get there by extending themselves beyond just the practice, practice, practice, practice, repeat. And again, this is when you've got to the point where you've practiced so many times, it's all coming easy. You've got to sort of, you know, sort of get yourself out of your comfort zone, get yourself right to the edge of your comfort zone, just sort of step by step. So another example I might like to use, I won't use. I know I keep using sporting analogies. I might think about something like skiing. Now, I'm in the very fortunate position of having spent a lot of time on the mountains and I'm not particularly good. But what I find is if I challenge myself to a really hard black run, I'm hopeless. I don't enjoy it. It's all very difficult. When I go back to a bit of an easier blue run after that, it just seems so much easier than it did before. I extended myself on the black run. And we find this at every kind of level, all the way from the level of the synapse to how the connections in the brain form, all the way out to our levels of performance. Sure. Practice, practice until you get it right. But then keep extending and keep practicing until you can't get it wrong.

I love that. That's actually one of the best lines I've heard in a long time is you don't practice until you get it right, you practice until you can't get it wrong. So that goes back to the, you know, the whole refires, syntax of repetition, emotion, visualize using all the tools necessary to create that neural pattern, to reinforce that neural pattern so that neural pattern becomes the new default mode network. And that's how you behave naturally.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. And I mean, this process isn't easy. And what I often recommend people do if they want to try it, it's perhaps best to start practicing this on a very, very simple motor task where you can get the immediate feed and see how you're going. Because sometimes mindset, as we know, because this is what you teach Don, is a little bit of a trickier kind of beast to get hold of. And we can't always see the results very easily. So if you are wanting to use this refi process, I've had people who've worked with me do things like teach themselves how to write with their left hand if they're right handed, or just master perhaps a new piece of music if they already play an instrument. So something very kind of simple, something not too serious. They're not trying to overcome a great psychological block that is kind of playing around with implementing these steps with something kind of fun and something where they're going to get that feedback straight away so they can see themselves improving and see how the six steps work.

I love it. So anybody can do it. Start today. You've got yourself a great six step process that you just learned from Dr. Sarah MacKay. Sarah, thank you so much for being with us from Australia. I love your work and I really appreciate you being on the brain a thon helping spread the word around the world. If you want to make a change, this is the best way to do it. Refire your brain and you'll rewire your brain to higher levels of beliefs and habits and perceptions and behaviors that will get great results. So everybody that's in the chat right now, leave a big shout out to Dr. Sarah MacKay of one thing that you've learned. Share the button right now so we get more people from around the world to watch this. We're gonna bring you the best stuff in the world throughout this entire brainathon and share it. And Brainathon, if you're on Twitter, Dr. Makai, thank you so much for being on the brainathon. Absolutely amazing content and information.

Oh, it was a delight. Thanks for asking me, John.

Have a good awesome day. Bye bye now.