By Kathryn Bryant and Julian Illman: Personal Development | Mind Management | Educators | Authors | Entrepreneurs
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The podcast currently has 100 episodes available.
We celebrate 100 episodes as we take a look at the Changeability Podcast past and future.
Here’s some of the top 3s from the past 99 episodes followed by a look at the next episode in the Changeability Podcast story.
Audience top 3 episodesThe 3 favourite episodes of our audience to date. These are the shows with the highest number of downloads so far. The longer the episode’s been on iTunes or our BrilliantLivingHQ.com website or Stitcher or TuneIn the longer people have had to listen to it, so we would expect the older shows to have more downloads than newer ones and that’s reflected in these results.
Third most popular episode - ‘What is Mind Management’ Episode 6
In episode 6 of the Changeability Podcast we were thinking about our strap line phrase – ‘Mind Management’. What is mind management and what’s in it for you?
In episode 6 you found out about:
Second most popular episode - ‘The Brilliant You’ Episode 2
Do you know how truly amazing you are? Well that’s what episode 2 is all about.
You might not always feel like a magnificent being, but by the end of this second episode you be agreeing with us that you’re pretty smart.
Because in this show we talk about just how brilliant you and your marvellous mind and what it means.
Understanding a few basics about how your mind works, will help you understand what’s getting in the way of doing what you want and what to do about it.
Most popular episode - ‘Changeability – The Start’ Episode 1
The first episode saw us introducing ourselves and the Changeability show.
The Changeability podcast is for you if you’re interested in changing or improving something in your life or business, big or small. It’s for people like us who’re interested in finding ways to make our lives the best they can be – so we can be more successful (whatever that means to you), happy and fulfilled.
Through discussion and interviews we look at practical mind management and change techniques, tactics & tools - taken from the worlds of personal development, psychology, neuroscience, business, sport, entertainment and spirituality – to empower and inspire a happier, successful life or business.
In the first episode you find out:
We love you being here wherever you’re from – so this isn’t our favourite countries – but rather the top 3 countries with the highest number of listeners out of the 167 countries we currently have listeners in.
(And just in cast you’re interested the fourth is Australia with India in fifth place.)
Kathryn and Julian’s favouritesThis was so hard to choose, especially as we decided not to include any interviews in our top 3s (maybe they’re deserving of a separate post) – but here’s three each with a couple of extras thrown in for good measure.
Kathryn’s favourites
Julian’s favourites
Couple of extras
Very hard to pick 3 out of the 78 we have so far across the different iTunes countries as we obviously love them all. So we can’t really call these our favourites but they are reviews we’ve especially like.
Excellent - iimmmii from United Kingdom
One of the best ‘change your life’ resources I’ve come across. If you like to understand the theory and evidence (be it scientific or anecdotal) behind advice on how to change your life, this material is presented in an engaging way in this podcast. Of course they also make recommendations for how best to go about taking action. A few episodes in and you will feel like you’ve made two new friends who are supporting you on your journey of change. Well done Kathryn and Julian, listening to you makes me proud to be from the same Sceptred Isle!
A Homely Serving Up of Sound Advice/Wisdom - Ola-B. from United Kingdom
Where has this amazing couple been all my life?! :) Love Kathryn, love Julian, and let's not forget Dude!!! Love this podcast - the topics, the delivery of it all...it's simply unique, uplifting and inspiring! Thank you guys!
Kathryn and Julian's chemistry rocks! - LornaLi from United States
I love the concept of this show! It's so unique and refreshing! I absolutely LOVE the hosts' chemistry - their exchanges are such a joy to listen to. Thank you for all the useful tips you provide to your listeners on how to plan and achieve their goals, I'm sure many are reaping so many benefits from this show!
Thank you to you for taking the effort and making our day. By the way – we’d love more reviews. We don’t always ask for them in every episode as it gets tedious for you to listen to – and we want to provide you with a good listening experience. However, reviews are important to us not only because it’s great to find out what you think but it means iTunes makes our show more visible to people looking for podcasts. You know yourself the power of reviews on sites like Tripadvisor and Amazon – so if you feel like helping us out that’s one way to do it.
Dude’s top 3Who’s been with us all through every single episode and every phase of the podcasting process – in fact he’s always with us – Dude the Dog, our faithful hound and black labradoodle.
We’ve joked we have a contractual obligation to mention him in every show – not that we’ve quite done that but he’s had more than his fair share of mentions and even made it onto the show on a few occasions.
So here’s Dude’s top 3 favourite Changeability Podcast moments as chosen by him (woof).
You wont know what we’re talking about here if you’ve never listened right to the end of our shows – but listen to episode 100 to hear 3 of them for your entertainment – and why they’re called Kathryn’s bloomers!
3 lessons we’ve learned from creating 100 episodes of the Changeability PodcastHere’s just 3 of the many things we’ve learned from creating 100 episodes of this podcast over the past two years, and they’re all relevant to you.
Sometimes it’s hard to measure your impact – this goes for measuring the success of a podcast or many things. How do you measure your success or the impact you have?
On the whole people don’t tell you and it’s not always possible to make a connection e.g. between who’s listened to the podcast and who’s visited the website or bought an Affirmation or audio mind management tool or a course like our ‘Beginner’s guide to mindfulness meditation’.
That’s not to say there aren’t any clues. Ways of gauging if we’re having a positive impact include comments in our FB group or page and reviews on Stitcher or iTunes. Plus nomination for national / international podcast awards – being a finalist for the New Media Europe Audience Appreciation Award and winner of the UK Podcaster’s Best Self Help Podcast Award. But the truth of it is that for the thousands of our podcast listeners each month, for the most part it’s hard know the difference, if any, it makes to them.
Does that matter? Yes and no. Yes because from a resource and business perspective it’s helpful to have a handle on the impact but also no because sometimes it’s not just possible to know but that doesn’t make it any less valuable.
This is an important lesson for us all because you don’t always know the impact of what you do in your work, relationships and everyday life – but that in itself doesn’t mean you should stop what you do.
Creating 100 episodes of a podcast, especially one like this, is an achievement. This is an important lesson for us and maybe also you as well. When we do something consistently and with focus it creates results.
We may not know the full impact of those results but there are some clear results for us.
All of which is the result of focus and stickability – week by week. And now we have this body of work that is out there in the world whatever happens in the future – no-one can take that away from us.
This goes for you as well – what is it you want to achieve? A new skill, producing something, writing a book, starting your own podcast, setting up a business. Whatever it is clarity, consistency, stickability and focus is the key.
The third lesson for us has been learning the importance of reviewing and evaluating what you’re doing. We’ve been doing just that with our podcast as 100 seems a good point to do so.
We’ve been looking back on the experience of the past two years, learning from it and making changes. This is something we advocate for you too. It’s about being deliberate about what you do rather than just carrying on doing the same thing because that’s what you do or what people expect of you. It might be a matter of fine-tuning and pivot or of big changes.
For us it’s meant reviewing our experience, going right back to why we started Brilliant Living HQ in the first place. In fact going back further than that to why we wanted to make the big change in leaving our previous careers. Sometimes it’s good to remind yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing.
One of the things we always said was that we wanted more control over our time and to spend time doing what we want to do, and more time for ourselves. We know that time is a resource, even our most precious resource.
So to put these two things together we’ve been looking at how we spend our time and efforts, in effect the resources we put into the podcast – that’s the review bit.
Next came the evaluation. Is the balance right? This is a challenging one for us because we love doing the podcast, which means it’s always high on our list of priorities, together with the schedule we set ourselves and the way we create our show.
Review, evaluate and make changes in the light of your experience to make sure you’re always taking control of your own path.
That’s what we’ve done – and to see what changing we come to the future.
The futureThe result of our thinking about what we’ve done and what we want to do is that we love the podcast and you the listeners, so we’re going to continue with it but take a break over the summer for a few weeks.
We’re taking this short break for an exciting reason, because when we return at the beginning of September we’ll have the Changeability Success Club.
We’re taking the next few weeks to get this exciting club ready for you. We’re ordering the carpets and curtains, mowing the lawn, changing the beds, only joking, it’s an online club to take the things we talk about on the Changeability podcast and make them a reality in your life.
With everything you could want and need to help you make changes in your life alongside a great community of people like you to support each other. More on that very soon, but for now we wanted to let you know it’s coming.
We’re putting a lot of love and time into creating what we believe will be the best online club for you to become a member of.
We’ve been working on it behind the scenes for a while now and now we want to put a special effort into the final push to get it ready for opening the doors. We’ve been making videos and templates and downloadable tools including special audio tools to help you not only get clear about what you want but also give you the tools and support to make it happen – all within our special membership club for those of you who join us.
So we’re taking the next few weeks to get it ready for you and when we come back it will be here. We’ll have one hundred places ready – it’s going to be really special and we can’t wait to share it with you.
So exciting!
What to do nextThanks for being here and listening to the show and we look forward to talking again soon.
“Habits are formed by the repetition of particular acts. They are strengthened by an increase in the number of repeated acts. Habits are also weakened or broken, and contrary habits are formed by the repetition of contrary acts.” ― Mortimer J. Adler
Habits are an intrinsic part of who we are and how we function. Habits are fundamental to how we think and behave, which makes them key to how we live our lives and make our decisions.
The achievement of our goals and success are more the product of our daily habits than any one off transformative situation or action on our part.
Habits are a key part of mind management because;
To do this we need to know which habits are good for us and to continue and critically which habits are not supporting our goals. The first step therefore is to identify a habit you want to change for a helpful, empowering, positive, healthy or wealthy habit, or a new habit you want to cultivate.
This an important step as the funny thing about habits (like limiting thoughts) is we’re not always aware of them. We have to take a deliberate step back to identify the habit or to acknowledge that thing we keep doing but would really love to change is indeed a habit – an habitual way of behaving in response to a situation or action.
WillpowerNow you know the habit you want to change, is it a matter of using your willpower to change it and your motivation to keep going?
Yes and no. Yes because when it comes to habits willpower and motivation both have an important role to play but they’re not enough on there own as there are limitations to be aware of.
Willpower is the power to exercise your will. To have control over what you do and self-discipline.
But the thing about will power is you only have so much of it and when it runs out – because we’re tired or hungry or sad – it’s hard to rely on.
This is why you can wake up with good intentions and lots of willpower but by the evening it’s decidedly harder to exercise your will.
Although you can get better at exercising willpower the more we do it, your brain likes your habits so wants you to keep them.
So although willpower has a role to play in changing your habits, it can’t be relied on to do it alone. The same goes for your motivation.
MotivationYour motivation is the purpose or the ‘why’ behind what you do – in this case behind the new habit you want.
I think of motivation as having different levels or layers and each level or layer has a different strength.
Think of it as concentric circles –circles within circles like an onion.
The outer layer is your big ‘why’ or the purpose that motivates you.
Say you want to develop some health and fitness habits– the big outer layer motivation is to be healthier and fitter because it makes you feel better, gives you more energy, to get the most out of life, you look better which makes you feel better, and that makes you a better happier person in yourself and relationships.
In short the outer layer is you want to develop healthy habits because being fit and healthy feels good and makes me a happier person. That’s all very well and good but it’s hard to keep that at the forefront of our mind in everything we do – and we know that willpower will only take us so far. Especially as we move in onto the next layer.
The next layer or circle in is your situation. For example, you have a busy life, you’re looking after your house, maybe you have a family or a hectic social life or many commitments, and you’re always rushing around from one thing to the next.
Then we get to the next layer in which is your career or job that maybe demands a lot from you in terms of energy and time.
Next comes the final layer because right in the middle (like the bullseye on a dart board) is a circle which represent you. It has the word ‘you’ of ‘me’ written in it.
This is you at this very moment or in the present moment when you’re thinking about it.
That’s the model but it’s not static, because the thickness of these layers changes over the day and over the week, they may be different at the weekend to a Monday morning,
The point is your motivation which starts off with the best of intentions can get hijacked or watered down as you move through the layers.
So first thing in the morning you start off with good intentions about changing your habits but then you get busy getting the breakfast done, getting to work, your energy dips and then the you in the middle circle – i.e. the you at that precise moment – isn’t so worried about the bigger picture because the needs of the moment are nearer to you than the big circle on the outside. And the needs of the moment are that you’re hungry, you’re busy and need something quick to boost your energy but more importantly in that moment to overcome the hunger and to do it quickly and easily in a satisfying way.
That’s when you don’t want to just be relying on willpower and motivation and can do with something else to help you.
Let’s think about what that could be and to do this we need to go back to the idea of what a habit is.
The habit loopHabits have a cycle they go through. These are the elements or phases a habits exhibits or has h to be classed a habit. A habit is made up of
This whole habit process or framework is sometimes referred to as the habit loop and it’s a crucial concept to changing your habits.
Disrupt the loopNow comes the clever part. You take this habit loop and use it to your advantage to reduce your reliance on willpower or motivation to help you form new empowering habits to support your goals.
In practical terms you do this through disrupting this existing habit loop and tying the new habit you want to cultivate to an existing one. In that way the existing habit or activity becomes the cue or trigger for the new one you want to do.
So you take a habit you do every day like cleaning your teeth or having a shower and disrupt or interrupt it – because you’re not necessarily completely changing the habit, you might be adding in a new habit.
You’re effectively hijacking or piggybacking an existing habit.
I’ve been doing this by interrupting my morning bathroom routine to insert a push-ups and stretching directly in-between cleaning my teeth and having my shower. And it works as I’ve done it every day this year. It’s now intrinsically tied into my morning routine so it doesn’t feel right to get in the shower if I haven’t done my little exercise habit.
Try it for yourself. Tie or link your new habit to an existing one and see how long it takes to create a new pattern of normality, in other words a new habit. Let us know how you get on.
“Habits aren’t destiny. Habits can be ignored, changed, or replaced. But the reason the discovery of the habit loop is so important is that it reveals a basic truth: When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks. So unless you deliberately fight a habit—unless you find new routines—the pattern will unfold automatically.” ― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do
The Changeability PodcastHear us talk about all of this and more on episode 99 of the Changeability Podcast.
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Your habits are key to who you are and the change you want.
Habits underpin what we do at Brilliant Living HQ.com and on the Changeability Podcast – mind management for your best life and business and how to make changes.
Lasting change, i.e. achieving your goals – is not the result of a one off transformation but a product of daily habits.
What do you want to achieve? What do you want to change? Whatever it is, getting it is the result of your habits. Habits play a role in what you look and feel like, in your success and relationships.
All of which makes it slightly surprising we’ve got to episode 98 of the Changeability Podcast before dedicating and episode to habits – but here we are and this is it.
So what are habits?Habits are the things we do, but also and maybe as importantly, the way we think and what we believe. They include the self-beliefs that influence what we do, our behaviour and the actions we take.
A habit is the repeated thinking and behaviours that become automatic, so we don’t mostly think about it.
We need to know how we form habits in order to change them.
Habits have certain characteristics or constituent parts that keep us doing them.
Cues, routines and rewardsThere’s a cue that initiates the behaviour.
A cue is a trigger, or reminder, something that triggers our thought or behaviour. Like the cue line in a play, (the line before you come in) which on hearing it reminds you to say your line, or triggers you to deliver your line.
Then comes the routine. This is the behaviour or action that the cue has triggered – and the bit we think of as the habit.
This is followed by the third part of a habit – the reward. This is the bit that is of benefit to you in some way, even though it might not actually feel like that, your brain is seeing it’s benefit. Because it’s a reward or benefit your brain wants you to repeat it and so you do until you’ve done it often enough it becomes a habit.
This forms what Charles Duhigg in ‘The Power of Habit’ and Stanford professor B.J. Hogg in ‘Tiny Habits’ call the ‘habit loop’.
Many of our everyday activities involve habits with a cue, action and reward. Here’s a few you probably repeatedly do and don’t really think about them :
Then there’s certain ways of behaving we get into which quickly become habits for example,
Then there are the habits you think of as bad or unhelpful.
If you want proof of the power of habit – if proof were needed – just look at your pet. Our dog Dude not only knows the time of day but exactly what should be happening in his world at what time and what order. Especially when it comes to food and walks.
Why we need habitsHabits help us manage our minds.
Habits save us brain power – or rather free up our brains to do exciting creative thinking.
Making habits out of the things we do repeatedly, our behaviours and actions – provides our brain with a power saving or effort saving mechanism. An automatic response requires less creativity and complexity of thinking from us.
Gretchen Rubin in her book “Better than before” sums it up nicely:
“When possible, the brain makes a behavior into a habit, which saves effort and therefore gives us more capacity to deal with complex, novel, or urgent matters.” ― Gretchen Rubin
Why habits matterHabits matter because they hold great influence and sway over how we think, act and feel – which just about covers everything we do.
We get into habits of thinking, doing and feeling.
And because it’s the brain’ shortcut to behaving and feeling certain ways, it becomes automatic behaviour.
“We become what we repeatedly do.” - Sean Covey, The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective Teens
This is great if it’s good automatic behaviour – but what if it’s not good behaviour? We’ve mentioned a few of our bad habits, those unhelpful habits that don’t support us in the changes we want to make and the way we want to live. And the truth is we all have unhelpful habits.
That’s why habits matter. They matter to us because they are such a big part of who we are and what they do. The results of their influence is felt and seen in every aspect of our life and work. They help to determine how we feel and what we do.
Habits underpin our mind management and how we can manage our minds to change what we do and how we do it.
And habits matter because lasting change is a product of daily habits. The little small daily things we do that day in day out, week in week out and then month in month out, go into making the person we are - how we think, feel and act. In other words, we and our lives are the sum and result of our habits.
Mind WorkWhat can we do about it? Before we think about how to change our habits – we need to identify them and decide which are helpful and which are not serving us in what we want to do or the person we want to be.
The mind work is to take a day really notice what you think are your habits. Notice what you do and how you feel and note down a word or two or you’ll forget (you think you wont but you really will) and then determine if it’s linked to a habit and if that habit is helping or hindering you.
To take it one step further you can relate it to the there being the three aspects of a habit. This will not only help you determine if it actually is a habit but also help you understand what triggers it, (the cue) how it shows itself (the routine or behaviour or action) and what that habit is doing for you (this is the reward and benefits bit).
This will not only give you an increased level of self awareness and understanding but will put you in a good place to take forward some of next week’s suggestions when we look at how to change your habits.
Changeability Podcast Episode 98Hear us talk about all of this and a lot more – including some more of Julian’s unsavoury habits, on episode 98 of the Changeability Podcast.
Thank you
Thank you for reading or listening today. We appreciate you spending your time with us and if you appreciate us we’d love you to share this with someone you know. Send them an email or share on social media.
Links and resourcesKathryn and I first met Emma and Carla when we were attending a business entrepreneurs’ event in the Philippines. Meeting these two vivacious and fun loving entrepreneurs made a mark on both of us.
Their joy of life was infectious, and we wanted to know more about them, their journey and what they did.
Emma and Carla Papas, known as ‘The Merrymaker Sisters’ are real life sisters who went from being communication professionals to health and happiness advocates and health coaches!
They're the founders of themerrymakersisters.com where they inspire hundreds of thousands of Merrymakers around the world with real food recipes and ways to find and follow your bliss!
“If we hear ourselves say ‘we want this to happen’, we have to focus some energy on it.” - The Merrymaker Sisters
So, what better than to invite them onto episode 97 of The Changeability Podcast laugh and chat healthy happy eating with The Merrymaker Sisters.
Packed into this week’s Changeability Podcast“Life is too short to say no to dessert. You just have to make your dessert healthy” – The Merrymaker Sisters
Links mentioned on today’s show:
Change your brain, revitalise your body – really? Sound too good to be true?
We’ve been talking over the last few weeks about how to use the power of your brain to reach your ideal body weight, look younger and boost your energy.
And let’s face it, who couldn’t do with a bit of that!
As part of our wellness and wellbeing series we’ve explored Dr Daniel Amen’s book, Change your Brain, Change your Body, including 10 brain principles for the body you want and four ways to use your brain to change your weight. Today we conclude our exploration in change your brain, revitalise your body.
How your brain can help beautify your body and improve your overall health and well-being.Dr Amen puts forward 6 solutions:
1 - The Skin solutionYour skin is directly tied to the health of your brain.
People spend a lot of money on skin care products and more. It’s a huge multi-million pound business. From skin-care products to laser treatment, to the plastic surgeon, but Dr Amen argues these are only temporary fixes and the real solution lies in your brain.
It’s your brain that tells your skin to produce more or less oil, supervises the production of supportive collagen and is responsible for skin regeneration; so it’s there we need to begin.
“The health of your skin is an outside reflection of the health of your brain.” – Dr Daniel G. Amen
So what’s bad for our brain (and therefore our skin)?
Well it’s the usual suspects: Caffeine, alcohol, smoking, poor diet, too much sugar, yo-yo dieting, inadequate water intake, lack of sleep, lack of exercise, stress, unresolved emotional conflicts or PTSD, hormonal changes, untreated psychiatric conditions, dementia, medications, sun exposure, pollution and environmental toxins, climate.
And the solution:
Get more sleep, distress, exercise, balance your hormones, have more sex (really), limit caffeine and alcohol, quit smoking, eat a brain healthy diet (more of that next week), maintain a healthy weight, drink more water, balance your sun exposure (some sun is good for your Vitamin D) but not too much which can cause premature aging and sun spots. 20 minutes during the day after which protect yourself with sunscreen. And finally treat mental disorders and memory problems.
Plus you can take some supplements, e.g. Vitamin D, fish oil, evening primrose oil and grape seed extract (good antioxidant)
2 - The Hormone solutionDid you know your hormones have a huge impact on brain function?
When your hormones are balanced you tend to feel happy and energetic.
And in contrast Dr Amen cites evidence pointing to low hormonal levels being responsible for amongst other things: low libido, depression, memory problems, midlife crises and divorce.
While high hormone levels lead to: hyper competitiveness, acne or aggression.
Once again it’s the brain that controls all the hormones in your body.
Types of hormonal imbalance include thyroid, adrenal, testosterone, oestrogen, progesterone to name but a few. Different hormones require different treatments but often begin with blood tests depending on the symptoms.
3 - The Focus and Energy solutionIf you want more energy and focus (and frankly, who doesn’t) then you are probably prey to one or more focus and energy robbers.
These fall into different categories including; infectious causes, hormonal issues, low or erratic blood sugar states, anaemia, brain trauma, environmental toxins, inherited brain disorders, medications, chronic stress, untreated past emotional traumas and bad brain habits.
So if you find yourself wondering if your lack of focus could be something more that just being disorganised or lacking focus, it might well be. The good news is there’s lots you can do to counteract this.
The first step is to get any of those focus and energy robbers treated and at the same time develop and maintain a brain-healthy lifestyle – adequate sleep, a brain-healthy diet, exercise (4-5 times/week), a stress reduction program if chronically stressed, and meditation is a particularly good energy booster too. Plus, certain foods are energy boosters including fruit, veg, beans, and whole grains and protein.
4 - The Sleep solutionAnd then we get to solution 4 – the sleep solution. Always a favourite topic of conversation between us. One of us a night owl who can survive on considerably less than the other.
Dr Amen suggests resting your brain for a slimmer shape and smoother skin, pointing to a small study by the University of Chicago which suggests people who are sleep deprived (the test was on 12 healthy men in their twenties who slept only 4 hours a night) were more likely to choose sweets, cookies, and cake over fruit, veg and dairy products.
Practical action steps in the sleep solution include: maintaining a regular sleep schedule, avoid exercise close to bed time, and what causes sleep deprivations which includes amongst others medications, caffeine, alcohol, nicotine and a number of others along with these usual suspects.
5 - The Stress solutionA little stress can be a good thing but excessive stress both in good and bad forms can spell trouble for your brain and body. Chronic stress affects the flow of blood to the brain, lowering overall brain function and prematurely ageing the brain and can also affect the body making you look older.
A 2009 study of 647 women found the physical effects of chronic stress were similar to the effects of smoking, being obese or being 10 years older than their actual age.
Techniques to help calm stress and thereby have a better body include: meditation, yoga, learning to delegate, practicing gratitude, getting enough sleep, exercise, soothing music, lavender, rehearsing or practicing situations that cause stress, living in the present (mindfulness), laughing more, seeking help, self-hypnosis and avoiding substances that harm your brain (the aforementioned usual suspects).
6 - The Negative Thoughts solutionThe last solution is around thinking your way to being thinner, younger and happier through avoiding negative thoughts. Dr Amen cites 9 types of ANTs or Automatic Negative Thoughts that get in the way of your being thinner, feeling and looking younger and being happier.
We’ve looked at these and more in a previous post and episode of the Changeability Podcast which you check out at – Episode 39 – 11 Negative thoughts to avoid. And how to swat them.
Change your Brain, Change your Body‘Change your Brain, Change your Body’ is an interesting book that really got me thinking about whether some of the things he talks about, which I’m sometimes frustrated about in my own behaviours – tiredness, fogginess of thinking, could well be around imbalances, or poor dietary considerations and I was left wanting to explore that more.
It’s a dense book with many useful actionable steps in it, plenty to ponder and take action on and return to for further reading. It will really make you think about the mind-body connection.
Where to start?Start by changing a few vital habits that will have the maximum impact. That may mean replacing ‘anti-nutrition’ with brain healthy foods, or taking supplements geared to your brain type, or by gradually starting an exercise program, or getting a bit more kip (sleep). Then fine tune your life changes to ramp up your brain and body health.
Episode 96 of the Changeability PodcastHear us talk about all of this and more on episode 96 of the Changeability Podcast on iTunes, Sticher, Tunein or in the podcast player at the top of this post.
Links mentioned in the show
We received some excellent news this week. We’re through to the final of the Audience Appreciation Award 2016 at New Media Europe 2016 – which is incredibly exciting and down to you lovelies who all voted for us in stage 1 of the Award process. The winners of this award will become known later this month at an Awards event in London.
We could do with your help to vote for us from now to 10th June. The competition has moved to Twitter and all it requires is that you vote for our podcast on Twitter, by going to:
BrilliantLivingHQ.com/awards2016, scrolling down to and click on The Changeability Podcast link under ‘The Audience Appreciation Award’. This will pre-populate a tweet which shows your support for our podcast.
One final thing– if you felt super-duper kind – please vote for us once a day up to 10th June – thank you.
This week we’ve gone from consuming 5 course dinners every night in a lovely hotel on holiday in Wales, to thinking about weight and the brain. It’s sweetly ironic and rather timely.
As part of our mini series on health and wellbeing, this week we think about weight and if we can use our brains to help us lose weight. Today’s featured author certainly thinks so as Dr Daniel G. Amen devotes the second section of his book, Change your Brain, Change your Body, to the subject.
Last week we looked at 10 brain principles for the body you’ve always wanted. Continuing with our exploration of the link between your brain and body and how having a healthy body and making healthy decisions all starts with your brain, we turn to the subject of weight.
Weight is an aspect of our bodies that many of us want to do something about. We might want to change our weight upwards or more commonly downwards, for our health and because we think it will make us feel better about ourselves.
So what does Dr Daniel G. Amen say about this?
How can you use your brain to achieve lasting weight loss?Dr Amen, puts forward four major solutions to how to use your brain to change your weight.
1 - The Craving SolutionThis is about using your brain to increase your willpower and calm the urges that prevent you achieving your goals.
How often do we have a day where everything’s going well and then someone offers us a cream cake? In Dr Amen’s case it was a caramel apple which he resisted it by walking away – but why was everything in him craving it?
Essentially, there are centres of the brain responsible for focus, judgment and impulse control – the pre-frontal cortex in the front of your brain – and there is also a pleasure and motivation centre deep within your brain plus we also have emotional memory centres that trigger behaviour. All this comes together to influence our behaviour.
By understanding these brain circuits of willpower and control you can work towards gaining mastery of your brain and body.
It starts with our first experiences of pleasure or intense emotional experiences. These first experiences can get locked in the brain and lay down the tracks for later behaviour and addictions, because we want to replicate and repeat what led to our first pleasurable experiences.
For Dr Amen it was linked to the pleasure he associated with some of his earliest memories of making fudge with his sweet-maker grandfather.
What about you? What are your earliest memories of pleasure or intense emotional experiences?
I remember eating ‘milky way’ chocolate bars at my Grandma’s house when I got home from school and my Mother’s sherry trifles were legendry at family parties and celebrations of every kind.
For Julian the stodgy puddings of school dinners and getting enough of it after it had been passed down the table of older children first, loom large in his memory (yes he is that person that loved school dinners)!
So going back to the idea there are different centres of the brain responsible for focus, judgment and impulse control plus a pleasure and motivation centre, it’s the relative strength and weakness of each of these brain areas that goes a long way in determining how much control we have over ourselves and how well we are able to stick to our plans.
Regaining control of these different centres of the brain depends in part on the area in question but it generally involves balancing your brain systems. If, for example your Prefrontal Cortex is out of balance, you might need to treat any PFC problems that exist but in more general terms you can strengthen this area by:
Here, you’re using your brain to achieve your optimal weight. While according to Dr Amen we might exhibit different clinical presentations and brain patterns and require different approaches, he outlines 13 things all of us should do to maintain a healthy weight.
This involves feeding your brain nutritious foods to look and feel younger, on the basis that we are what we eat, and that the foods we eat affect our moods and our energy levels.
We’re constantly getting the wrong or unhelpful messages about food. As a society we’re bombarded with messages encouraging us to adopt bad eating habits.
‘Do you want to supersize that?’, ‘Do you want bread first?’ ‘Do you want a larger drink? It’s a better deal’, the All you can eat buffet!
Many of us send out the wrong messages to our children ‘If you’re good, you can have a treat when you get home.’ We use poor nutrition as a reward for good behaviour which later in life translates to us rewarding ourselves with food that is not good for us.
To follow the Nutrition Solution of how to use your brain to change your weight:
Exercise your body to strengthen your brain.
“Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness.” – Edward Stanley
We’re becoming more sedentary – driving to work, sitting all day at a desk, lounging on the sofa. This is bad news for our brains, our bellies, our backsides and our backs.
Exercise is part of the solution because it:
Join us to hear us talk about all of this and more in episode 95 of the Changeability Podcast
What about you?Is this something you’d like to change – sign up for our free Changeability Starter Kit.
Links mentioned in the show:
Is it possible to utilise the power of your brain, to reach your ideal body weight, to look younger and boost your energy?
That’s the question we’re asking today.
And it’s the bold claim Dr Daniel G Amen makes in his New York Times bestseller, Change your Brain, Change your Body - the subject of this week’s blog and Changeability Podcast.
What’s the idea behind Change your Brain, Change your Body?In his introduction, Dr Amen tells us
“Fifty percent of the brain is dedicated to vision. How you look plays a large role in how you feel. To look and feel your best, you must first think about and optimize your brain.”
Let’s unpick this a bit.
We’re visually orientated, with our brain devoting half of its processing power to sight.
Being visual creatures – how we look, or how we perceive we look, plays a large part in how we feel about ourselves and that can often determine our ultimate success.
For our own underlying health – and not just for vanity sake – we should therefore concern ourselves with how we look and feel.
And that ultimately, to look and feel your best you need to first think about and then optimize your brain.
So as the title suggests, this book is about understanding and optimizing your brain to help you reach your ideal weight, look younger, boost your energy, change how you feel about yourself and that process of changing your body (via your mind) will in turn ultimately determine your success.
In essence then, this book is about body/mind integration, mind/body connection and how you can use your brain to improve your body and health.
And I’m sure you’ll agree, that’s an interesting premise.
But what do we know about the author and how he comes to make these claims?
Background and credentials of the authorDr Daniel G Amen is a doctor with three decades of clinical practice at the Amen Clinics.
His interest in the brain-body connection started over 30 years ago – where intriguingly he was influenced by an oncologist who taught people to use visualization to boost their immune system in order to fight cancer.
At medical school he became trained in hypnosis and saw the effect it can have on healing the body in a variety of treatments.
But it was in 1991 that he truly started to understand the mind-body connection when he started doing the brain imaging work which he now does at his clinics.
“Our brain imaging work opened a new window into why people do what they do. It provided the missing link and allowed people to see what was going on in their brains, so they could do things to improve their brain and bodies.”
Addressing the effect rather than the cause of body dissatisfactionHow often do we look in the mirror and see things we don’t always like?
We look at our reflection and we see lines on our face we don’t always want there, or we catch a glance of ourselves sidelong and see a tum which frankly we’d prefer not to have. We notice a few split ends in our hair or excessively dry skin on our face.
What do we do?
Well, we could make an appointment with a hairdresser for a haircut.
The wrinkles – we might slap all sorts of lotions and potions onto the skin to moisturise, cleanse and fill the cracks, so to speak – and some might nip along to their doctors to make an appointment for Botox.
Basically we try and fix it ourselves (diet to lose the tum) or get some professional help. We address the effect.
But Dr Amen would say that we need to address this issue by thinking about the health of our brain, the cause.
And that many of us are walking around with brains that could do with some serious help, but we don’t know it, so we don’t do anything about it to address the issue.
The things we see in the mirror are symptomatic of our brain health and instead of addressing the causal symptom we address the effect.
10 brain principles for the body you wantAmen’s book is based on 10 key principles about the brain and its relationship with your body, and ultimately the health and wellbeing of our bodies.
So that’s it, the 10 principles that explain why it is essential to love and nurture your brain to have your best body possible and optimal wellness.
Next time, we explore how to use your brain to achieve something many of us struggle with – lasting weight loss; plus the many ways your brain can help you beautify your body and achieve lasting wellness and good health.
Episode 94 of The Changeability PodcastHear us discuss the 10 principles and more in episode 94 of The Changeability Podcast, or subscribe to all our previous episodes on iTunes.
Links mentioned in today’s showNicole Keating is on a mission to live a life of Epic Wellness, and to inspire and help others in their quest for The Art of Epic Wellness – a life of physical, spiritual and emotional vitality.
Nicole maintains:
“If you treat your body as a temple, then your body is going to treat you with beautiful energy and epic vitality”
And who doesn’t want more energy and vitality? We know we certainly do.
Behind the concept of epic wellness is the belief you have the right to know what’s going into the temple that is your body, and the responsibility to share what you know with the people you love.
“It’s all about becoming involved with your food”, Nicole tells us.
And this carries on from ideas we explored on last week’s Changeability Podcast where we were talking about wellness and wellbeing.
Nicole’s website, theartofepicwellness.com and her podcast of the same name seeks to do just that, to explore, uncover, question, unburden and uplevel your wellness journey. After all…
“When you invest in clean food going into your body you won’t to have to invest later in your healthcare.”
With a life voyage of such life changing proportions, we thought the only decent and British thing to do was to invite her onto the Changeability Podcast to discuss not the science but the Art of Epic Wellness.
And when the California State (where Nicole lives) and good old blighty meet – that’s home to Kathryn and I – there’s bound to be room for lively discussion on living a life of such epic proportions.
On today’s Changeability PodcastHear Nicole, Kathryn and I discuss:
“I like to think of my meal as a palette, I’m building a beautiful canvas of food in front of me and I want to see all the different colours, I want to have different textures, I like to have some things cooked and some things raw and whenever I am cooking, I’m thinking about it that way.”
Links mentioned on this week’s showHere at Brilliant Living HQ and our Changeability Podcast we’re all about helping you and us manage our minds to make changes and have more success and our best life and business. As well as looking at mind management techniques and processes to do this, we thought it would be fun and hopefully helpful to look at some of the key areas of life that many of us want to do something about. Earlier this year we did a series of podcasts and posts about relationships and today we start thinking about wellness and wellbeing.
“Everything that brings us well being is achieved through allowing ourselves to flow with life and be in harmony. Pain happens, it is our attachment to the pain and our resistance to change that causes suffering.” Alaric Hutchinson
Today is a beautiful day. It’s the first week of May and spring has sprung here in our little corner of England. The evenings are light and the days getting longer every day. The sunshine is making us feel better and it’s amazing the difference it makes. In fact we could say it’s increasing our sense of wellbeing - it certainly feels like that to us. But what the heck is wellbeing?
What does wellbeing and wellness mean to us?This notion of wellbeing seems to be everywhere, in the work-place, in magazines, all over the internet, in fact there is a whole wellness and wellbeing industry out there.
Wellbeing is big business. It’s a world populated by spas, therapists, therapies, fitness, gyms, dancing, exercise classes, weight loss, relaxation, supplements, closely associated to the health industry and being in a healthy state.
Wellness is the manifestation of wellbeing. Wellbeing is a particular way or specific state of being encompassing many different aspects such as:
Psychologists, economists and policy makers are all interested in wellbeing and try to measure it, so they can use it to understand more about populations and the policies needed in the future.
While our focus at Brilliant Living HQ and in the Changeability mind-work is on mind management, it doesn’t mean we ignore the physical or body side of things.
The two are totally entwined. We know this is area where lots of us want to change things – and that’s great because we believe mind management is key to making those changes, as much as it is to making any changes in life or business.
Is it an area you want to change? Ask yourself if your level of wellbeing is having an impact on your life, work, business, interests, family or relationships?
Mind body and spiritWhen we talk about wellness in terms of Brilliant Living, we see wellbeing encompassing body, mind and spirit. For us it has to be a holistic definition and approach to wellbeing that takes all three elements into account.
How do you define wellbeing? What the heck does wellbeing mean to you?
We asked our Changeability Facebook Group and is what two of our members told us:
‘Giving your body what it needs (fuel, movement, rest and recovery) self care, connection, emotional support/nurturance... Just some ideas off the top of my head 😉 ‘ Vicky
‘Wellness for me has to do with both mind and body, but I sometimes have to go along with wellness also including pain/discomfort as well. So it isn't the absence of problems, more like being happy where I am, appreciating all the good things, having a sharp mind to play with and a very useful body! Other people, communication, meaningful activities, and all the basic needs met are of course in the mix. (There’s no of course about that list for so many people, so gratitude is in there too!)’ Janet
Thanks to Vicky and Janet for these insightful definitions.
PositivityJust as health is not the absence of disease, there’s something much more positive to it rather than being just an opposite to a negative thing, wellbeing is something positive in its own right. As Jan points out, it isn’t about the absence of problems, but about being happy where we are – which is a relief for all of us as we’re never going to have a completely problem-free life, but we can still have wellness and experience wellbeing.
How we think and feel about wellbeing is context dependent, as wellness and wellbeing are a relative concept. It might change at different times and stages of life, and different levels of health and fitness, but the key to wellbeing remains the same.
The key to wellbeing is feeling goodThat’s it really isn’t it? The answer to what the heck is wellbeing is – ‘feeling good’.
As our feelings and emotions are connected to our mind this brings us back around to mind management as the way to help us experience wellbeing.
So how can we summarise what wellbeing means to us?
Wellbeing is a combination of factors, some of which are more important at different times than others, but all impact on our levels of wellbeing including:
That’s our quick introduction to wellbeing, what it is (and isn’t) and we're looking forward to delving into this subject a bit more and talking to some guests about it over the next few weeks.
The Changeability Podcast Episode 92Hear us talk about all of this and much more – including how and 11 year old Kathryn got this definition of wellbeing and times she hasn’t been feeling it – on episode 92 of the Changeability Podcast.
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How do you quantify success? What is it you actually
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Maybe it could be a combination of these, rather like those
Or should we more concerned with experiences rather than
Statistics are certainly the easiest and most obvious way to
But it’s all relative. What constitutes a measure of success in
Money can be measure in it’s own right or as an indication or
That’s all very well and yes numbers and effort are a good way
So how are we measuring success?
During my reflection time recently (a part of my Changeability
I realised that for much of my life I’ve equated success with
This was quite a revelation! I was interested in what it meant.
There’s a lot more to be said about this and how it shows up in
If you haven’t got time to listen to the episode now (and it’s
I am going to have a new measure of success from now
My new measure of success is around enjoying every day. So
Now of course what constitutes an enjoyable day or a fulfilling
There is no real single measure of success, but many different
After all, what I (and I think most people) want to achieve in
What makes each of us happy and fulfilled will be different and
Listen to the podcast to hear me read the full extract from my
“A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed
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