21min chapter

Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee cover image

The Truth About Stress, Belly Fat, Alcohol and Journalling & How To Tune Into Your Body & Mind with Neuroscientist Tara Swart (re-release) #516

Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee

CHAPTER

The Power of Trust and Intuition

This chapter explores the vital role of trust in relationships and decision-making, emphasizing how stress can undermine trust and clarity. It discusses strategies for recognizing emotional states and the importance of personal intuition, particularly in high-stakes situations. The conversation highlights the significance of self-worth and past experiences in shaping perceptions, underscoring the need for reflection and guidance from trusted individuals.

00:00
Speaker 1
What
Speaker 2
are some of the other values that are important to you?
Speaker 1
Trust is a really important one. Mostly because, you know, what I usually say to my team is, I mean, we do sign contracts, obviously, but mostly I say I operate on trust. I make my decisions on trust. Somebody could break that, but I choose to live my life based on trust. So obviously then if I feel like there's somebody in my life that isn't trustworthy, that would be a serious boundary transgression for me.
Speaker 2
I love what you just said. And I love it because you're making a very intentional choice about how you want to live your life. You are essentially controlling what you can control, right? You're basically saying, I'm going to go into things based on trust. Now, if someone chooses to break that trust, you can't do anything about that. That's out of your control. Whereas taking this back to stress states, right? Because trust, you can't really operate from trust if you're stressed. No. Right? Because the fear response, I'm in danger. You don't want to trust people if you feel in danger, right? So trust is that you have to have a calm, regulated nervous system to operate from trust, first of all. But what I really love the most about what you said is that, look, may cheat on you people may break that trust people may do those things but if you choose to live because you're scared of that happening well you change who you are yeah and you can't even control it anyway no and
Speaker 1
let's just use that example because you used it if somebody cheats on their partner, at the end of the day, the problem is theirs. You know, they've let themselves down as a person. They've, you know, had the impact that it's had on the relationship. I can walk away from that and say, I'm not a cheat. Thank, you know, thank goodness I should feel really good about myself. But
Speaker 2
the problem often is then, if we take a relationship as an example, that experience of, let's say, someone in a relationship, one party has cheated. For whatever reason, okay, the party who hasn't, yes, as you said, they can walk away. They know that they didn't cheat and maybe, you know, integrity, trust, these are core values to them. So they know they didn't break that. But unfortunately, because of how our brain is wired, often what happens is that that then impacts how we show up in the future. Because we were cheated on once, it's less likely we want to trust in the future. Yeah,
Speaker 1
that's true. So I want to go back and pick up on something that you said about that you can't operate based on trust when you're under a lot of stress. So they're actually opposite states. So the survival emotions, fear, anger, disgust, shame and sadness, which correlate with the hormone cortisol. At the other end of the spectrum, we have joy, excitement, love and trust. And they correlate with the hormone oxytocin. So you can't be in those two states at the same time, because one of those hormones is higher than the other. So you literally cannot like trust yourself, trust anyone else, trust your decision making when you're in this stressed state. So
Speaker 2
you say you trust your gut a lot, I think, when you make decisions. Right. So if we're going to follow everything we've just said throughout the course of this conversation so far, right, in order to trust your gut, you can't be stressed, rushing around, overly busy. How do you then, because so many people really struggle with this. The reason I'm spending a long time on this chronic stress is because I've seen firsthand how many people this impacts, right? Physical health, mental health, emotional health, the whole shebang when we're chronically stressed. And I genuinely believe that a lot of us don't even realize how stressed we are. I
Speaker 1
agree.
Speaker 2
We just got used to that as our normal state. So our decision making comes from that place of stress, which is why I think we find it hard to operate from love and trust and joy and compassion. Because of that, what can people do? How do you do it? How do you know when you're making a decision, if it is really coming from trust, or it's coming from fear? Oh,
Speaker 1
I mean, I can tell the difference. I can feel physically when I'm making a decision, like what state I'm in. In your
Speaker 2
head or in your body? In my body. So what happens?
Speaker 1
So maybe both, but like, if I'm, because, you know, even I go between those, I'm not constantly like walking around in a love bubble. If I'm like, you know, moving relatively more slowly, then, you know, I can tell that I'm in parasympathetic, which is basically like rest and digest or rest and relax. When I'm feeling agitated, you know, my facial expression is not, you know, it's kind of like down. when my like thoughts are like racing more, then I know that I'm, I'm probably, you know, I'm not going to be making the best decisions that I can. And, and often it comes with that feeling of, I can't decide, I can't, you know, like something that a decision that you need to make, you just feel like you can't make it. It just feels very cloudy. Whereas when you're in the trust and love state, things feel very clear. Um, what I tend to do, what I've learned to do at that time is think of three people and, you know, family or friends that I trust who would have a relevant opinion to the decision that I'm trying to make. So, you know, it could be three different people each time. And I ask each of them what their opinion is. And then I will use that to try to inform my opinion. But also, I'll try to wait till I'm, you know, in a better state before I make a final decision. When
Speaker 2
you are asking your family or friends, are you literally calling them and asking them? Yeah. And the reason I asked that is because I had Shane Parrish on the show a couple of months ago, who's just written this book called Clear Thinking. And in that book, Shane talks about having a board of directors that we can always refer to but those board of directors could be dead they could be fictional characters from the past so he you know he wouldn't be against what you just said but he would be you know i guess he would make the case that let's say for example someone doesn't have access to friends or family and they feel really really isolated maybe this board of direct side is super helpful for that person you've got friends, you've got family, you can call and ask for help. But it's almost like imagining, well, you know, let's say someone had you on their border directs. What would Dr. Tara do here? What would she say in this situation? You know, what would, I don't know, what would my grandma who died 10 years ago, what would she say about that? I guess in both examples, what's going on? In some ways, we're getting out of our own heads and our bodies and minds and we're getting a bit of distance. Yeah.
Speaker 1
So it's basically coming back to that idea of metacognition, which is that when you're embroiled in your own thoughts and feelings, it can be very difficult to be rational and have perspective. But if your brother came to you with the same issue that you're experiencing, you would be able to give him some advice. So by having either the actual friends or the fictional board of directors, you're stepping like one step aside from yourself. Another thing that I say to people is what would your sister or best friend say to you? Or, you know, what would your wife say to you? And another exercise I do on my own is I, you know, I sort of acknowledge that I am here in the present today, the age that I am. And I pose a question to myself seven years in the future, and then actually walk seven steps forward and turn around. And as if I'm looking at Tara today, and I identify myself as Tara plus seven years. And then I answer the question. And that is accessing your intuition. sometimes it's incredible that you you literally feel like a different person um like you're looking at that tara and just thinking if only you knew what i know now
Speaker 2
What does intuition mean to you?
Speaker 1
So basically, it means wisdom from all the life lessons that we picked up, you know, throughout our life, but don't necessarily consciously remember. So, you know, let's start with just that basic fact, which is we cannot remember everything that we've experienced in our whole life. But we will have, you know, we didn't quite finish off with that cheating example. So let's use that as an example. We may have been in a relationship that we thought was going to last forever. And then the person cheated. And, you know, you took us up to the point where that leaves the person that's been cheated on less willing to trust people in future. if that happens three or four or five times, then yes, that is your, that's your pattern. But if you say, maybe it's because I'm choosing the wrong kind of person for me, maybe it's because I'm choosing someone that doesn't have the same values as me, then you can use your judgment to make a different decision the next time around, or to make it very clear that that is a deal breaker for you. You know, sometimes these things aren't actually said out loud beforehand. So intuition would be in that example, a way of making your own judgment based on relationships that you've had before people that, you know, you know, examples of relationships that you have in front of you of whether this is likely to be a trustworthy person. Um, and then just in all other scenarios, it's, it's the knowing that you have not based on anything logical or you know obvious data but based on a sense that you have of the world through the experiences that you've built out yeah
Speaker 2
I love that I asked my wife this question yesterday I said what's intuition to you and she just had a couple of seconds thoughts and said, a knowingness not based on logic. And then she got up and went and put the kettle on. I was like, that's amazing. I love that. That's really, really good. I kind of like that. And it sort of echoes what you just said. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1
But
Speaker 2
where does that knowingness come from? Well,
Speaker 1
it comes from all the experiences that we've had in life, but we don't necessarily remember. So it comes from, you know, like, again, let's take up this cheating example. It comes from the relationship that you witnessed between your parents when you were a kid. It comes from the way your parent of the opposite gender, you know, whatever it was that they did to contribute to or belittle your self-worth. Okay.
Speaker 2
I'm loving this, Taro, right? So let me continue on that thread, right? So it goes, it's based upon your past experiences and what you've learned because of course the brain doesn't forget. It logs all of this stuff. So let's keep on that cheating example. So that's individual who has been cheated on five to 10 times, let's say. Mm-hmm. 10 years on from that, when they make a judgment based on intuition, their intuition is predicated on the fact that they've been cheated on for 10 years. So which kind of makes sense because the brain is always trying to predict the future based on past behavior. So it kind of all makes sense. But that can also be problematic because that person can be tapped into their intuition, which says, hey, when you get into relationships, someone's going to cheat on you. But actually, that's probably not that helpful. And we, I guess, we believe a lot of us that intuition is a good thing.
Speaker 1
So
Speaker 2
help us unpack that puzzle if you can.
Speaker 1
Yeah. So I wouldn't actually call that intuition because that is based on data. So if you've been cheated on five or 10 times, that's, those are facts. So I would look more then at what is it about the choice of partner that you're making or the dynamic within the relationship, um, your self-worth, you know, I would look at more of, you know, what is it about you and your, how you behave in a romantic relationship that is repeatedly leading to this outcome? So it would be logical for that person to think that the next person they choose is not going to be faithful to them. It totally makes sense, doesn't it? Yeah. So I think intuition is more an example of that is when a relationship is, it's obvious to everybody else that it's going to end soon, but the person is clinging on because they're afraid of being single or they, you know, feel ashamed that they couldn't make it work. There are so many times where the two people in the relationship are so unhappy that they should just say, you know what, we used to make each other happy once. We're actually now making each other unhappy. We should probably just let each other go. But, you know, that period tends to be quite drawn out. And that, that leads to like more negative experiences. And, you know, that can, that can definitely then like damage your, your self- which is the thing that you must fight for really at all costs is your self-esteem your self-worth because that's really the filter that shows you what if whether the world is safe or not whether a person's trustworthy or not um but what the brain tends to do in a stressed state is so the amygdala which I mentioned before the emotional center gets together with the hippocampus which is where our memories are stored and brings up every example of oh the last time someone dumped you you were single for you know six years um which makes you want to like hold on to the status quo out of fear even though you actually know that you're not happy. Yeah.
Speaker 2
How do we tap into our intuition? If we want to get better at it, if we want to go, look, I like the sound of that, it's all right. I've forgotten what intuition feels like, what it looks like for me. How can I re-tap into it what would you say to them so
Speaker 1
if I'll just finish off with that example and then I'll speak a bit more generally with with that example I would say if you recognize that you have been in that situation before and maybe you've maybe you've been in that situation and you've said you know what if I get to the stage in a relationship where we're actually both miserable, it's not going to last forever. It would be better to like end it quick sooner. You know, it's less painful for everyone that you remember that the next time and that you act on it and you do something differently to demonstrate to yourself that you're not just repeating the same pattern. But more generally, I do think journaling is a really great way to hone your intuition. That's how I think I was, I was using intuition. But when I first started journaling, that was really how I built my intuition into a superpower was through journaling. So what I would do with every decision that I had to make, I would write down what logic was telling me. And I would write down what intuition was telling me. Now, if they were saying the same thing, that was fine. That's easy. If they weren't, then most people's tendency is to go with logic. scenario, if your logic and your intuition aren't aligned, do an experiment and go with the intuition and see what happens and write it down. And then as you become more confident in your intuition, do it with something that's a bit more, you know, high stakes. And through pretty much, you know, experimenting like that, a period of trial and error for me I got to the point where I had I could convince myself with the data that my intuition was always more accurate than my logic I
Speaker 2
love that so you run an experiment on yourself basically I love that in low risk situations give it a go because who cares It doesn't really matter. And I guess, you know, what's a common scenario? It might be, I don't know, applying for a job or someone's got three job offers or three jobs that they can't decide, right? So that's a presumably for most people quite high stakes decision. But I guess the lesson is if you've been practicing for a period of time let's say with journaling then when that high stakes decision comes into your life you've got evidence yeah to kind of say hey listen I know that usually my intuition is correct exactly
Speaker 1
it's
Speaker 2
really interesting when we think about that in relationship to decisions that we have to make in our life. One thing Tara, I've been thinking a lot about recently is this idea that people, I think, especially today, because we live in this era of information overloads, right? Let's even talk within our wheelhouse health and well-being, right? There's a million experts online, right? We're not all saying the same thing. And what I see often happening is that people have an over-reliance on experts and what I mean by that is not that they shouldn't listen to experts but that let's say you were saying one thing and they like you and they trust you and they go wow you've got all the minerals you've got all the qualifications and the experience and let's say you have a particular perspective on one thing. And then they also like me and go, yeah, but you've also wrong and got the minerals and the experience and the qualifications. But you're saying different things.
Speaker 1
Yeah. So let's give a concrete example for that. So I don't eat breakfast. So I only eat between 12 and 8. So let's say I'm not, just saying what I do. I'm not saying everybody should be doing that, but you know, let's say that you, I say I don't eat breakfast and you say you do eat breakfast and we both got the same qualifications. So I think what you're trying to say is that then each person has to think, okay, there are pros and cons to eating breakfast or not eating breakfast. What is right for me? Yeah. Each person should know their body better than any doctor or expert.
Speaker 2
Agreed.

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