Tara Swart Quotes

“Activities like aimless lounging around, daydreaming, puttering and reading for pleasure rather than purpose all activate the default network in the brain. When this network flourishes, inspiration is more likely to strike and we are better able to free-associate and harness our emotional intelligence and intuition.”

“As social creatures, we have a great need for belonging. The desire to foster alliances and act in a compassionate and collaborative way with other people and the world is a powerful motivator in neuroscientific terms because it activates the brain’s empathy pathways.

Attachment emotions such as love and trust trigger the release of the neurochemicals oxytocin and dopamine, which contribute to feelings of bonding and pleasure as part of the brain’s reward system. Countless studies show that having a strong sense of meaning and purpose correlates with life satisfaction.”

“Blame cultures in businesses rely on this behavioral bias because people are too fearful to question poor decision-making and challenge the status quo.”

“Consistent meditation practice increases folding in the brain — and its surface area. These changes are situated in the cerebral cortex, the layer of the brain responsible for processing and regulating data from the outside world.

Committing to devoting a few minutes each day to meditation will give you a new clarity of perspective on what and who are your real priorities in life, supporting your “higher level” brain regulation and improving your resilience, making you more considered and balanced in your approach. If you want to maximize the power of The Source, mindfulness really is a no-brainer.”

“Directing our thoughts can influence not only our perception of “reality” but also our material life circumstances, our relationships, and the situations we attract into or tolerate in our lives. The way we think determines our life. This is a simple idea, but a powerful one.”

“It is perhaps surprising that although the rumination that leads up to a decision requires mental energy, it’s the point of decision itself that is most energy-intense for our brains. This explains why reducing the number of unnecessary choices in our day (what to wear, eat, watch, react to on social media) is an effective way to conserve decision-making energy for bigger and more important decisions.

This is known as “choice reduction” and can include a regular morning routine or laying out your outfit the night before, to avoid using up brain power on too many small things.”

“Manifestation and magnetic desire are useful for raising your awareness of what you want and focusing your attention on it, guiding your actions to make it happen. Patience and harmony will help ensure you stick with your goals and that they align with your deepest self.

Finally, becoming aware of abundance and universal connection encourages you to think about your goals in the context of other people and the wider world; to consider your place in it and provide you with a powerful sense of purpose that will guide The Source, making you more resilient, compassionate and integrated in your thinking. This shift leads to an exponential increase in the consciousness of your own power.”

“Moment to moment, rather than skipping over a flash of recognition or achievement, or a fleeting pleasure in a quest for “What next?”, stop to feel gratitude for other people, circumstances or serendipity as well as your own qualities.

This will harness your brain’s value-tagging system and make positive achievements and happy thoughts easier to recall in the future. Doing this regularly will attune you to abundance.”

“Note to self: we do not have to be slaves to our chronological age!”

“Noting in your journal what happens when you follow your intuition/body instead of doing what is expected of you, or what everyone else is doing, can be an eye-opening exercise.

Even minor deviations from your own needs (such as acquiescing to your partner’s choice of vacation destination or going to a work event because you feel you ought to) have hidden costs.”

“Once we give ourselves permission to open up and play with lots of potential ideas and possibilities, creativity rewards us, enabling us to spot opportunities in unlikely places.

It means we can sense when to take a chance and when to question or pursue something. It helps us hone a strong intuition, giving us the flexibility to recognize possibilities that might bypass us otherwise.”

“Physical refers to what you feel in your body; mental is about what is going on in your thoughts; emotional is how you are feeling; and spiritual is about how you feel deep down, at a more fundamental level, in terms of your sense of meaning, purpose and place in the world.

You will be reimagining all of these thoughts and feelings by conjuring up past memories of a time when you felt very negative, stressed or unhappy; followed by a contrasting situation when you were confident, happy and fulfilled.”

“Positive desire is the mentality that we can make good things happen, and it’s the emotional intensity of that desire that drives it towards a tangible outcome.

Intense emotion gives us renewed energy and confidence to carry out new actions that turn the positive desire into reality, rather than stagnating at daydreaming or hoping in vain.”

“Quite simply, when you do allow your brain to be conscious of and focus on what you want in life, the raised awareness that results will work in your favor to automatically bring opportunities into your life.”

“Reassessing our own “failures” and rebranding them as “not yets” is a good way to start rewriting our own story: the internal narrative of our past struggles.

When we decide to switch to abundant thinking, there is always a positive spin. Such is the stuff of success.

It means we’re able to maintain the resilience to stick with our goals, rather than walking away at the first hurdle.”

“Self-esteem issues resulting from a childhood where we were criticized at home or school or labeled as a non-achiever may mean we sabotage career opportunities because, at a deep level, we fear that we are not deserving of them.

Similarly, if we start a healthy eating plan but believe that we won’t be able to keep it up, we can find ourselves easily giving in to temptation and making bad choices. This is because strongly emotional experiences that have shaped our brain pathways can derail our value-tagging system, skewing it towards what we think keeps us safe even if this is not conducive to thriving in our current life.

Our selective filtering will prioritize avoiding shame or criticism over potential career success or romantic fulfillment.”

“Sleeping in the side position is the most efficient for allowing the glymphatic system to cleanse the brain, so if I’m having a restless night, I take the opportunity to turn onto my side before I fall back asleep.”

“Some will have a scientific explanation, for example muscle spasms or migraines can be related to low magnesium levels, but some will have a unique meaning to us and it is down to us to decode them.

I have a friend that has always said “By the time I get a mouth ulcer, I know that I have pushed myself too hard and my body is not getting enough nutrients to keep going.” I have taken note of that for myself.

A cousin said that his stress always shows up as a feeling of toxins built up in knots in his shoulders. I recognize that one too!”

“The more you relive a memory and/or the more intense the emotions associated with that memory, the stronger the connection becomes.”

“The neuronal mass of a number of regions of musicians’ brains is far denser than that of non-musicians. Some of this increase appears obviously located in certain areas: brain scans of violinists show that the area of their brain associated with the left (fingering) hand was far denser than the same area in the general population, for example.”

“The Source is the incredible, complex and sophisticated thing that is our whole brain — not just the cortex and our planning and data-driven decision-making abilities. The true power of the brain lies in being able to integrate what we think with how we feel — the cortex and the limbic system together — with what our gut tells us and what we sense throughout our entire bodies.

This creates an experience of life of which we can take true ownership; one that is filled with a trust in our own amazing ability to navigate circumstances with every part of us aligned and fully immersed.”

“Throughout this week, aim to adopt an attitude of positive encouragement towards yourself at all times. Praise activates the emotional circuitry associated with love/trust and joy/excitement which correlates to the bonding hormone oxytocin, making us feel warm towards others and ourselves.”

“To actualize this in the real world, all I had to do was work on what I was good at, find the positives in my life — rather than focusing on what was wrong — and then this would have an impact on all that I touched.”

“To get the maximum benefit from this practice, you’ll need to write in your journal daily about your thoughts and reactions to events and the people in your life. You don’t need to write long entries, but aim to be honest and open about your emotions, motivations and behaviors.”

“We live in a world where logic is massively overrated, emotions are seen as a weakness and decisions based on intuition have little or no place. We have forgotten where we came from.

Over time, we have neglected the limbic brain that got us to the pivotal moment in our evolution, and instead placed the cortex on a pedestal. We have demoted depth, passion and instinct and come to rely on the surface-level capabilities — such as exams, rote-learning or transactional relationships — that are more connected with material gain than true joy.

We live a life dominated by stress and are too busy to really take notice of who we are, where we are going and what we want from life. We are now at a moment where technology will disrupt our minds and bodies more than we can begin to imagine.”

“We need to actively direct our brain to move away from prioritizing these unconscious biases, and to being more open, flexible and courageous about pushing ourselves towards our goals and choices that feel “new” and “dangerous”.

Focusing on what we do want rather than what we need to avoid in order to survive will mean we are more likely to manifest it (in the same way that if you’re mountain biking, you should never look at the potholes and boulders you don’t want to ride over, but instead focus on the path through them).”

“What can you do to turn a bad day into a good day? To turn yourself during a difficult moment into your best self?

Write down the answer to this in your journal, and make a mental note to keep your eyes peeled for images in magazines that could represent your positive self on your action board.”

“When I feel stressed about not finding the time, I remind myself of a wonderful story of a monk advising an executive to meditate for an hour a day.

When the reply is that at busy times this won’t be possible, the monk simply states: “At those times you must do two hours a day.”

The irony is not lost on me.”

“When weighing up the pros and cons of a big decision, it’s important to try to remember this, although it’s easy to get paralyzed by overthinking and decision fatigue.

As a general rule, once we have made a decision, it tends to feel as if it was not as bad as we thought it would be. The key is to make a decision and then make it work.”

“When you do allow your brain to be conscious of and focus on what you want in life, the raised awareness that results will work in your favor to automatically bring opportunities into your life.”