"We Attract People Based on Psychological Wounds" #1 Neuroscientist Explains How to Manifest Love!

You know, when I'm in that mode of like everything's manifesting, I sometimes say, be careful what you wish for. My brain is limited by what it thinks I can get or I deserve. If you had to break down the.

Science of manifestation in the simplest terms, as a neuroscientist, what would you say that would be? Okay, so please help me welcome Dr. Tara Swart.

Medical doctor, neuroscientist.

A best-selling author, a podcast host.

Tara, it's so good to have you here.

Are there any secrets of neuroscience or the universe that you feel people aren't taking advantage of enough.

Some of the research that I've been looking at recently is about smell. I feel like it's one of the most underrated senses.

Really?

Yeah, smell is the most emotive sense that we have. I'm not just safe because I tell myself I'm safe, but I'm safe because I believe in something greater.

Yes.

There's a lot of people suffering. And like I said, you can sound like you're crazy. If you start talking about stuff like this.

So you think we attract people based on our psychological wounds?

100%. You meet people on the same level of psychological wound as you.

Ooh, man.

You also leave people if you evolve out of that and they haven't been able to.

Wow. For someone listening or watching this right now, what do they need to know about their brain, their mind, and how the universe works to support them? Is there anything else?

I.

Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. I'm very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Dr. Tara Swart in the house. So good to see you back.

Hi, so lovely to be back here.

I am fascinated by you as a human, but also by your brain and how you think. You're a neuroscientist, but you also study the universe and kind of the untold mysteries of the universe and how the brain actually manifest things and works within the universe, what the source of things is. And you just have such a wide range of wisdom and knowledge. And so I wanted to dive into manifestation and the science of manifestation to start. And if you had to break down the science of manifestation in the simplest terms with a few steps on how people could start to apply it to their life, as a neuroscientist, what would you say that would be?

Okay, so thank you for the lovely things that you've said about me. And one of the things I really pride myself on is making complex subjects simple and accessible. Yes. Because I genuinely think, what is the point of knowing anything if you can't help somebody to understand it and use it where it's going to make a really big difference to their life? And I actually received a similar compliment on Instagram today, and I don't, I don't always write back, I don't always have time to write back, but I said, that is the best compliment, thank you. So I'd like to approach this in a few ways. The practical road to manifestation, which is based on neuroplasticity because of my background, and that means the ability of your brain to change and grow, and therefore your ability to think differently, manage your emotions differently, act differently in the material world. So based on that, manifestation is really just setting a goal or choosing an outcome and taking the actions that you have to to make that come true. It's as simple as that. But the neuroscience process starts with raised awareness. So, you know, if your life hasn't panned out exactly like you always dreamed it would, or you find yourself stuck or or you find yourself repeatedly making the same kind of mistake, then you need to understand why, because you can't change it if you don't understand why you're not achieving the things you want or what's holding you back, what's a barrier, what's an obstacle, and indeed what you could do differently. So once you think, okay, this is not working for me, this is how I would rather my life should be.

This is my vision, this is my dream, my goal. This is the outcome that I want.

Yeah. It's not immediately a case of doing something.

Really? It's not about taking action right away.

Not right away. And, well, I will use you as an example of all the mental rehearsal that you did when you were doing the decathlon.

Yes.

You know what you want to achieve with that decathlon, let's say with the pole vaulting. Then you spend all those hours just like, playing it over in your head, then you actually go out and do the practice pole vaulting, and then you compete. So it's kind of like that.

So it's mental rehearsal, visualization, then the physical practice, then the moment.

Yeah, and that makes sense for sport, right? And I wanted to use something tangible so that people could get it, but when it might be something more to do with, I want to manage to regulate my emotions better, or I want to stop you know, choosing the same kind of guy where the relationship always ends up badly, then because it's a bit less tangible, the process that I've laid out is start with raised awareness and then a phase of being not doing, which is focused attention, which is just notice when you fall back into old habits or notice either the thought patterns or the behaviors that have been repeated over time and led to the same outcome that you don't want. Once you've gathered some data, because you have that awareness piece, but then you do kind of want to test, is this really true? Is that bad or will it change if I do something differently? Then you do the deliberate practice. So that is going out, dating, applying for jobs, or looking into starting up your own business. Maybe changing some health habits, you actually then do them and see what changes. So do you sleep better? Do you meet different types of people? Does your network increase? That kind of thing. And the last part isn't so much a stage, but it's accountability, because as we both know, people set a lot of good intentions and then don't always achieve them. So it's either that you can achieve that yourself, like, I'm really loving this app at the moment called Habit Share, And I've got 12 micro habits on it, and I have to tick them off every day. And I find that if I do that and I focus on three for each quarter of the year, then by the end of the year, I'll have at least 10 habits that I don't even think twice about anymore.

Yeah. What are three of the most important habits you're focusing on right now?

Eating more protein, doing more weight-bearing exercise, And they're all so good. I'm just trying to pick one. I think one I'm really into at the moment is like listening to chanting or doing a mantra or, you know, doing tapping or like a hypnosis audio. If I do one of those each day, I'm quite pleased with myself.

What is the ultimate mantra to start manifesting more of what you want? And do you need to Believe you're worthy of manifesting first before you can achieve it.

Yeah. So I'll pick up on that second point, because it is really, it's a really important factor in why people don't achieve the things they say they want, because deep down they don't believe.

Yeah. And if you bypass the belief, can you still manifest?

I don't think so. Or not as well, let's put it that way. So let's, I'll give you an example of visualization and vision boards. So you know I call vision boards action boards.

Action boards, yeah. I love that.

And that's to do with you going out into the real world and doing the actions that will bring your goals nearer to you, not just sitting at home fantasizing about things. But I have come across quite a few people who say, I've been through the magazines, I've cut out the pictures, I know exactly what I want, I can't bring myself to glue them onto the board. Why? Well, the first time someone said that, I challenged them really strongly and I said, I think that's because you don't believe you deserve them. So we had a whole conversation about that and it turned out to be true. So a couple of times again when I've heard people say that, or I check more now, I'm like, have you actually stuck them down and put it somewhere prominent? Because the putting it somewhere prominent is a risk as well. I don't know if you recall that my first one was in the bathroom of my apartment and I was in a one-bedroom, well, I was in a studio apartment at the time, so... You see it every moment. Yeah. But also anyone that came to my house could see it. Oh, wow. You know, it's slightly uncomfortable, particularly in Britain, to be putting, this is how much money I want to earn.

Right, this is the house I want, the dreams, the relationship, the status, all of it.

Yeah. But I said to myself, if you, you know, obviously only my like close friends were coming to my apartment, if you can't even show it to them, how can you tell yourself that that's what you really want? And that you're gonna go out into the world and say, this is what I want. And what was really lovely was actually my best friend's husband came over once and he obviously looked at it when he was in the bathroom and he said, oh, actually, I've got someone I could introduce you to about, you know, one of the things. So it already helped me that I let other people see it.

Yeah, I've heard different research of like, don't tell anyone your goals because when you tell someone, you get a false sense of accomplishment of like excitement and joy that it's like, so you don't actually have to go make it happen because you're talking about it. And then I've seen the other side where it's like, Let people know about your goals so that they can support you in accomplishing them.

Yeah, I mean, I think letting people know so they can support you is one thing, but talking about it does not necessarily mean that you don't have to go and do something. You can talk about it and go and do something. And because the brain doesn't like uncertainty, you may have some fear around actually grasping opportunities that are related to the things that you want. But if you've done the visualization, if you've talked about it, if you've felt in all your senses what it feels like for it to be true, and you've given gratitude for that, you have set your brain up to be in the love trust end of the emotional spectrum, with oxytocin flowing around your blood, making you much more willing to take a healthy risk, to collaborate, to think outside of the box, and reducing, because it's kind of a seesaw effect, The cortisol, the stress hormone, that will drive your amygdala and hippocampus, the emotional and memory centers of your brain. In fear or stress, what happens is that your brain will bring to the front of your mind every single time you ask that girl out and she said no. And it will say, Don't, don't go and ask anyone out because you remember what happened when you were that geeky teenager.

You got rejected.

Yeah, exactly. So we have to really set our brains up to override that, because that's kind of a survival safety mechanism. So gratitude moves us from cortisol to oxytocin. And talking passionately about what you want moves you from cortisol to oxytocin. Yeah.

Is there ever too much gratitude someone can express where it actually hurts you? or doesn't benefit you?

I don't think so. I mean, can you give me an example of that? I mean, I feel like it's one of those things that is just always good for you, isn't it?

Well, yeah, that's why I'm asking is, 'cause I feel like I'm incorporating gratitude throughout my entire day. From the moment I wake up to after activities, to when I see people that I'm talking to or in person, I'm expressing it, feeling it. When people say, How's your day? I say, I'm very grateful. I'm just constantly, trying to focus on an emotional state. Because I know the more gratitude that I focus on, the more abundance comes my way. I truly believe that gratitude is the gateway to abundance.

-Totally.

-It'S the gateway to peace, to health, to freedom, emotional freedom. And it creates a lot of perspective. If I'm not grateful, it means something's lacking. It means something is off. It means something's negative. Or it's neutral, which I guess is fine too. And so it does not mean I should bypass spiritually when something is broken or when something is off or I'm being emotionally triggered or abused or a boundary is being crossed. You do not just say, Ah, la-de-da, everything's okay. But it is reflecting on those painful moments and saying, oh, those were challenging and hard moments, but I'm grateful for the lessons and the wisdom now. So it's finding the meaning in the mess as well.

I was going to say exactly the same thing. So I think, I was going to use the term spiritual bypass as well. If something very bad or difficult is happening in this moment, if you are suffering in this moment, of course we are not expecting people to say, I'm grateful that I'm in emotional pain or loss. But it is about getting to the point where you can say, what did I learn from that? And one of the things I've started doing recently, I've had a gratitude practice for a long time, is when I've been feeling particularly low and thinking, I don't know what I can do now to deal with these emotions. I think, okay, what are 10 things I'm grateful for? And that really helps. So it doesn't have to be about the difficult situation itself.

Yeah. I'm not grateful for this pain that I'm going through, but I'm grateful for my dog. I'm grateful for my parents. I'm grateful for something else in your life.

I mean, to be honest, Sometimes it's just, I'm grateful to be alive and I'm grateful that my health is in good shape because that's such a, you know, if you've got those two things, people that don't have those two things would want that so, so much. -You give anything for their health.

-Exactly. -Right, yeah. I'm curious, are there any secrets? Because I feel like you study the secrets of neuroscience and the secrets of the universe and spirituality. You kind of blend them all, which I think is powerful with your book, especially the source. Are there any secrets of neuroscience or the universe that you feel people aren't taking advantage of enough that they could be?

This is a very interesting question with potentially a massive array of answers. Some of the research that I've been looking at recently through my academic position at MIT is about smell. And so I feel like it's one of the most underrated senses. But the pandemic kind of made people realize that actually when you lose it, it's noticeable. You kind of take it for granted, but then if you don't have it, it's really noticeable. And smell or olfaction, as it's called in neuroscience, is really special because of our five senses, the other four, so for example, the optic nerve has to travel from here all the way around your skull to the occipital lobe because our visual cortexes are here. Interesting. Yeah, but the olfactory bulb, which comes out to the top of our nose, the nerve only goes back about an inch to go to... It goes through this like netting area at the top of our nose called the epithelial cells or the epithelium. And then right behind that are the amygdala and hippocampus. And that's why smell is the most emotive sense that we have. So if I ask you what smell most strongly evokes a childhood memory for you, what would you say?

Oh man, let me think. I'm thinking of like hot chocolate, cookies, baking. I'm thinking of like, you know, Christmas time, something like that.

Yeah.

Like pumpkin pie, something type of smell like that.

Very warm, homely smell.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And do they remind you of your parents home or your grandparents home?

My parents home, yeah, my parents home.

So they say when you smell something that reminds you of your parents or grandparents home, you get what's called an avalanche of memory because there was so much going on in those formative years, you know, and you are learning about the world through your relationship with your primary caregivers. And so smells that take you back to that time actually release a whole torrent of memory.

That's interesting. And so I guess if you had a traumatic experience growing up around those smells, then that smell could recreate trauma within your nervous system as well, or it could recreate a nostalgic, loving, homey feeling based on the memory, correct?

Absolutely correct. And so one of the reasons that kids who got car sick when they'd had family holidays, road trips, usually hate the smell of petrol or diesel or gasoline.

Wow.

So it reminds them of that sickness.

Because they felt, yeah. Wow.

That's fascinating. So I'm one of those. I really dislike the smell because I would get car sick and, you know, on those little I love a road trip, but I hate that smell.

Interesting.

Yeah.

You gotta go electric then. You gotta get the electric car.

Yeah, I'll have to.

So what is it about smell then that we should be thinking about and how we can use it as a superpower for our life?

So there are people who are super smellers and the professor that I was talking to actually said he thinks I'm one of them, which is really interesting.

What is a super smeller? I feel like I have a very sensitive nose.

Do you?

I feel like I do, like I notice smells all the time.

Okay, that's quite unusual because more women are super, way more women are super smellers than men.

So you, I think. I think a part of it was, I don't know, nurture, because my dad used to smell everything. So maybe I started picking that up as a kid and being like, oh, let me smell everything that I'm, like, drinking or eating or just when I enter a room, I just kind of emulated the. What. What he did, I guess. So I don't know if that's nurture as well as nature, I guess.

So, I mean, that's neuroplasticity, right? So maybe. maybe you wouldn't have been such a super smeller if you hadn't learnt that as a child.

Exactly.

So interestingly, olfactory enrichment is beneficial to your brain and that means smelling lots of different things like you do. Really? Yeah, it helps to improve memory and cognition as we age. So it's actually implicated in dementia research now.

Okay, so how does someone develop the, what do you call it, a super.

Smeller or... Yeah, they call it a super smeller, but It may not necessarily get you there, but in your house, if you have flowers or, you know, scented candles, but obviously ones with natural waxes and essential oils rather than false perfumes. Yes. Diffusers, maybe in your bathroom, you have a lot of, like, you know, products that smell nice as well. The more you expose yourself to different smells throughout the day, you're enriching the olfactory senses in that part of your brain. And because they're so close to memory centers, it's actually inducing neuroplasticity in that area.

Wow.

And improving your memory.

Now, how does smell support you or hurt you when you're trying to enter new relationships? Either romantically, career, business, you know, friends, how does smell, how is it incorporated in relationships?

Brilliant question. So we're very visual. So I would say that that's probably the top one in terms of attraction or even if it's not sexual attraction, if it's in the team at work, then kind of knowing who your tribe is is primarily visual. Also, secondly, I would say we're auditory. So if you like someone's voice or accent, that can have quite a strong impact on you as well.

Is that why I like being around you?

My friend Lily actually sent me a voice note saying, Tara, darling, I'm listening to you on a podcast and your voice is like up there with David Attenborough. It's so relaxing. So that's a huge compliment. But thank you, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I'm just gonna text you. Please send me a voice note today. Tell me something positive, you know?

I'll send you an affirmation every day.

There we go, yeah.

And I think third, we come to smell because... I was just thinking about taste and touch. You're obviously not gonna go there till you smell the person, right? Think about it like this. Let's say there was, cool, let's keep it real. Let's say there was a very famous beautiful actress that you were super attracted to. And then, and this is not about Martha, but then you met her and she had really bad breath.

Oh, interesting.

That would put you off, right? Yes. So it's more of a detractor than particularly a primary attractor. You know, you're not going to choose someone because they smell really nice if you don't like what they look like.

Right, right, right. But if they look good, but they don't smell pleasing to your nose.

Yeah.

And it's gonna push you away from them.

Possibly. And there's a scientific explanation for that, which is called the major histocompatibility complex. And that is actually the imprint of our immune system. And non-consciously we can smell that in a potential partner.

So if someone has a bad smell, or if they have a smell of anxiety, stress, and overwhelm, Do we attract that if we're also overwhelmed, stressed, and anxious, or do we repel that and want someone else who has a smell of peace and a healthy immune system?

Well, I just wanna be really like, I want to stay very, I love this analogy, but in terms of the science, we're not necessarily smelling those words that you've used.

Sure, sure.

With the stress thing, I think we talked about this last time, that cortisol is contagious. So you would be impacted by The cortisol having a physiological impact on your stress levels.

From someone else.

Yeah.

So you can smell the stress on someone.

No, I want to separate those things. So the stress hormone leaks out around us and it affects each other's blood levels of the stress hormone. I wouldn't say that, we can't say scientifically at the moment that you're actually smelling that, but it's having an impact on your blood levels. The smell thing is more to do with the immune system. And so what's super interesting is that we're more likely to be attracted to people who have a very different immune system pattern to us because of the benefit on potential children of having a much broader immune system. Also, the people that you live with, you actually start to like give each other immune cells. So usually it goes from the person with the healthiest microbiome to downwards, basically. And that's because you are either sleeping next to them in bed, you're sharing the same crockery and cutlery, you're sharing the same bathroom, you're kissing, you're having sex. So there's a lot of exchange of bodily fluids. And in that is the gut microbiome, the bacteria as well.

Wow. So are we more attracted to people with different immune systems then?

Yeah.

Through our sense of smell, is that what it is? Like if they have a diverse immune system from us, we will find that more attractive. Really? That's interesting. So how do we know if someone has a diverse immune system outside of smell, if we don't have that ability to smell?

Well, it's not conscious. So you're not saying, you're not kind of like saying, I can smell that you've got a different immune system. You're just like loving the smell of this person.

Interesting.

Is that pheromones or what is that?

Is that like a... Yeah, I guess.

Is that hormones? Pheromones, hormones, everything that's leaking out of the sweat.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

And I sweat a lot, so I'm glad Martha likes me.

Yeah. Oh, hopefully it smells good.

As long as it smells good to have. Yeah, it's all about that. That's right. Yeah, exactly. What else should we know about smell in relationships? Is there anything else we should know about this?

In relationships, I wouldn't say that there's that much more, but just bringing it back around to the super smeller thing. Do you know about medical detection dogs that can detect cancer?

I've heard this.

Yeah. So the research that I'm very interested in, the reason I was having this discussion with this guy, is that he's actually made a simulated nose that can detect cancer to the same level as a human. Come on. Yeah. Wow. It's amazing.

That's fascinating.

I know. And also in nursing homes, where they have cats and dogs, you know, just to like give people comfort and comfort, they go and sit outside the doors of people that are about to die in the next few days. Because when we're dying, our organs start to die off in a certain order. And that lysis of cells, cell death, otherwise known as apoptosis or an-lysis, they can smell that. Because obviously they're down on the ground, they've got a lot more smell receptors than us. Because in the animal kingdom, they're not finding their partner attractive because of visuals, they're doing it more on smell.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Wow. So what cats and dogs will sit outside of a nursing home of like the door of someone who's about to pass.

Yeah.

Really?

Even if it's not yet known by the medical staff that that person is-.

They just do this intuitively?

Through smell.

But why do they, are they trained to do this or they just kind of do this because they wanna bring comfort to that person or?

So the medical detection dogs are obviously trained to detect cancers, but what we see in nursing homes is there's no training involved. It's just that because they can smell it, They go and sit, yeah, they go and sit there. They want to offer comfort. Maybe they want to signal to the staff that this is something that's happening.

That is fascinating.

I know. Wow. So what I think is, in terms of us being able to expand our consciousness, is that if there are biological models, and by that I mean cats and dogs that can smell death or bats that can hear things that we can't hear, dolphins, you know, flies that can see things that we can't see. If there are biological models that can do that, is it possible that we can do more of that?

That's interesting.

And I'm applying that to cognitive science, because obviously that's my area. And the question I love asking people is, have you ever thought of someone that you haven't been in touch with for a while, and suddenly they message you? Has that ever happened to you?

Yeah, of course.

So everybody says, of course.

Is that what you messaged me the other day?

No, that was because it was your birthday.

Exactly.

But if it was because...

I was thinking of everyone. That's why I'm getting messages.

I know. So if that phenomenon happens... Why is that?

Why does that happen when you're thinking of someone and then the next day they text you or call you?

Well, we don't know, but that's what I'm so excited to dive into next.

Fascinating, right?

Because if you can control that, then what are the possibilities?

So, if you had a hypothesis on why we think of something and then that person calls you or, you know, two people are talking about you and then you call those people, what do you think, based on neuroscience, that is, if you had a guess?

I'm going to give you a science answer and a spiritual answer. I love it. It has to be a blend.

Let's go.

So, the science answer is mostly based on Carl Jung's psychological theories about the collective unconscious, which means that on some level that we are not consciously aware of, there is a connection between our psyches. And a couple of examples of this are at the start of the pandemic, there was a global phenomenon of vivid dreaming. And that hasn't happened in the world since the last world war.

Globally, this was happening.

Yeah. So literally, like, you know, me in my country house in England, you in LA, someone in a tiny village in Africa, we were all experiencing that, and it was mostly anxiety based, which completely makes sense, right? But for people in very, very different circumstances, and dreaming is a huge part of our emotional processing, that was going on. Then there's the example of people saying you thought of somebody and then they messaged you. Twins definitely seem to have a higher level of being able to know if the other one's thinking about them. So that is to do with the only explanation that we have for that at the moment is this potential collective unconscious idea. And then because I've been doing some research into the First American cultures. One of the things I've learned is that our construct of time as linear, which is that there's a past, a present, and a future, that's a man-made construct. We don't actually know how time works. A lot of the First American nations believe that time happens in a spiral. And so as you are progressing through your life, you are passing by times and things and people that you've passed by before. And most people just have blinkers on and aren't aware of that at all. But if you're more open to the fact that time works in a different way, then you would understand that there's no such thing as coincidence or serendipity. It's because you're mentally passing through places that you've been past before.

At the same time, Or you're going back in time or... CB: It's no.

You'Re not going back in time. I don't think we can do that yet. But you're passing close to, you know, let's call it memories or emotions or intuitions that we're not normally, they're not in our brain. They might be... What we're thinking now is that the brain is filtering our mind down to survive in this material world. and that actually our consciousness could be much bigger than that. And areas of research I've looked at around that are things like, I'll explain these terms in a minute if you don't know what they are. Terminal lucidity, near-death experiences, and past life memories. So terminal lucidity is when someone who's got dementia or they've had a stroke or a brain injury suddenly becomes completely lucid. So they go from not recognizing their own children Not even knowing that they have children anymore to suddenly saying, Lewis, son, come here. I want to say something to you that's really important to me. And usually they die within 1 to 24 hours of that happening.

It's like when they come back to who they were or where they are today. It's like quickly the end is coming soon.

The end is coming, but... Why is that? We don't know why, but there's... So basically there's this amazing doctor called Dr. Alexander Batthyany, this is his life's work. head of the Victor Frankl Institute and.