I Think, Therefore I Am

Mind training is the key to unlocking your full potential and reshaping your life. Join Adiel and Ravinder Taylor, lead author of the book Mind Training: The Science of Self-Empowerment, for an enlightening conversation about the brain’s power to transform our well-being. Ravinder shares her personal journey into hypnotherapy, the science behind subconscious programming, and practical tools to rewire your mind for greater joy, alignment, and success.

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I Think, Therefore I Am

The Science Behind “Rewiring The Brain” For Success And Well-Being

It’s a joy to be back with you. It is an exciting day. We have Ravinder Taylor here with us. Ravinder, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. I’m very much looking forward to our conversation.

The Power Of Hypnosis: A Personal Journey Of Healing And Self-Discovery

Same here. If you can tell us how you got here. What led you to this type of work? How did it happen? What was your path?

It happened a little bit accidentally. I was always interested in how the mind works and psychology, but I didn’t get a formal education there. My degree is in microbiology. I was very much a hard scientist and I was working in a pathology lab. One day, all of these flyers appeared around the hospital. This was at the Public Health Laboratory at the Leicester Royal Infirmary. All of these flyers appeared everywhere talking about a hypnotherapist who was going to do a presentation. He was an anesthesiologist who also practiced hypnotherapy.

At that time, I didn’t take hypnosis seriously. That was something people did for entertainment on the stage, trying to make someone look stupid or dumb. That was as far as it went, but the fact that it was being advertised all over the hospital, and this was for all the employees, the doctors, the nurses, and all the path lab people, it got a quasi-endorsement. Everyone was interested because it sounds fun. Even if it’s not serious, it sounds like it’s fun.

We attended, and the auditorium was large. Where I worked, there were about 70 people who worked there. Most of those people attended this presentation too, but they were sprinkled around this large auditorium. By coincidence, the three people that the lecturer called up to demonstrate some of these techniques to all worked in my lab, so I knew for a fact that these were not shills.

I remember Dawn was told to forget the number six. She counted up and down and omitted the number six. Martin had a pin stuck in his arm to show that he wouldn’t feel any pain. He took great pleasure in parading this pin around the following day to say that it had been stuck in his arm. I knew it was serious, but the story that caught my attention was one where the hypnotherapist said that he had a client come to see him. This woman had a pain in her arm for a long time, about a decade, I believe. She had seen all the doctors and all the specialists and had all the tests done but they couldn’t find the cause for the pain in her arm. As a last resort, she went to the hypnotherapist.

Under hypnosis, they did some regression work. She remembered an emotional traumatic event. It wasn’t something that she had forgotten about. It wasn’t like it was new. It was something in the past that she had dismissed that she thought she was over. Under hypnosis, it brought it to the surface. The following day, she phoned the hypnotherapist and said the pain in her arm had gone. Apparently, it had gone immediately after this uncovering, but she hadn’t believed it, which is why she waited until the following day. That intrigued me. What is there about an emotional event in the past that can cause a physical ailment today? I found hypnotherapy fascinating.

I ended up signing up for some hypnotherapy. I experienced techniques like automatic writing, automatic drawing, and uncovering different issues. There was one where I was doing this automatic drawing under hypnosis. We’d already done the regression. We’d gone back to these different ages. We were looking at not just the cause of a particular issue but all the small events that trigger it and re-affirm the particular trauma.

He put me under hypnosis and I did this automatic drawing. I opened my eyes at the end of the session and looked down at this piece of paper and there were these massive squiggles on the paper. I’m not an artist, but this was bad even for me. The following week, we went back. He put me under hypnosis again and I looked at this picture and knew exactly what it was.

When I was about eight in elementary school, we used to go swimming as a class. There was a pool on the grounds of the school. It was an above-ground pool. There weren’t proper lessons. It was something that we got to do in the summer. I was in the swimming pool and the teachers were walking around outside.

For some reason, to this day, I don’t know what it was, but my feet couldn’t find purchase on the ground. My feet kept slipping, my head was underwater, and I couldn’t stand up. The teacher saw my issue, reached in, and pulled me up by my cap. I didn’t tell anybody about the trauma, but it was still exerting. I hadn’t forgotten it, but it was still exerting an influence on me today. The fact that I wouldn’t tell people when I was upset, hurt, or afraid. I just locked it all up within. I found all of that even more fascinating, so then I went on and did a three-year course in hypnosis and hypnotherapy.

Eldon Taylor, my husband, is an expert in subliminal communication. He has written several books and testified as an expert witness. At the end of the course, he was coming over to do a special presentation. I got to learn a whole lot more about how we intake information subliminally. Eldon and I got together, and from that point onwards, I have been fascinated by the subject. I’ve been researching it, studying it, testing it out on myself, and trying to find the practical applications. My approach is very practical-minded. It’s not a case of just having interesting information. It’s about how I can use it to improve my life.

It’s very gratifying to have a spouse who is also in the same general field. You can enhance each other’s work, which is even nicer. It seems like it’s not just the mind that controls, based on your story, our health and well-being. We call it mind, but isn’t it deeper? Doesn’t it go to the emotions? Doesn’t it go somewhere else? Maybe the word mind is not the most accurate.

The Subconscious Mind: Understanding Its Role In Health And Well-being

It can be hard to define the difference between the brain and the mind. The way we look at it is as is commonly seen. You look at different levels of the mind. There is the conscious mind, all the stuff we’re aware of. There’s the pre-conscious mind that has the information that we haven’t forgotten but we draw on it. The better our memory is, the better access to the pre-conscious mind is. There’s a subconscious mind, and that’s where all the fascinating stuff happens. That’s where things get forgotten but they still exert an effect. It plays a huge role in health and well-being. You see that most obviously in the placebo effect. The placebo effect is where it has its effect on your beliefs. It is your beliefs, not necessarily what it is that you are taking.

It becomes fascinating when you look at some of the nuances of the placebo. There are things like a capsule is more effective than a pill. An injection is more effective than a capsule. Surgery is more effective still. The colors of the pills can make a difference. Bringing it back to the practical perspective, what I found interesting is when you look around the globe at the placebo effect, the placebo effect for hypertension is particularly low in Germany. On the other hand, the placebo response for gastric ulcer medications is low in Venezuela, higher in Europe, but highest in Germany.

What is it about enculturation that is going to cause some of these kinds of effects? The placebo effect has been tested with asthmatic patients. There is one particular study I looked at where they used a bronchodilator and a bronchoconstrictor. They used a bronchodilator, which should make it easier for someone to breathe, but when they told the patients that it was a bronchoconstrictor, they had more problems breathing, and vice versa.

Some people call that the nocebo effect, a negative effect, because of your belief.

The placebo effect is what you believe it’s going to do. The nocebo effect is going to be the negative effect. Some of the nocebo can come in from associations. If a dialysis patient always goes to the hospital for their dialysis, they can have a negative reaction to the smell of hospitals thereafter, because they can get those kinds of associations in.

It has been three years since you’ve been doing it. You also worked with your husband. If we go back to one of the stories you told us about how it all began, the lady who had pain and nobody could explain what it was, she went to hydrotherapy and right away, the pain went away. From your perch, what would you say happened there?

Self-Sabotage And The Subconscious: How Our Past Holds Us Back

When it comes to self-sabotaging behaviors, the pain in her arm was a form of self-sabotaging. There was some part of her that was causing this particular problem, whether it was to remind her not to repeat a mistake or whether it was to confirm that she wasn’t worthy of good things. It’s hard to tell. Freud did a great deal of work with the subconscious mind. He was working with women who were dealing with female hysteria. This story intrigued me because female hysteria was an actual diagnosis in the early ‘80s. As I was preparing to go away to university, I could have been diagnosed with female hysteria because I like to read books. It’s ridiculous.

Also, because you’re female.

These kinds of things impose limitations on us. The females, in general, have been classed as the weaker sex, the more emotional sex, and not as strong. These things can restrict us. We are fighting against it and it has improved drastically. Having a diagnosis like female hysteria would certainly have confirmed that and made that all the stronger.

Freud was working on these things. One of the things that he discovered was there was frequently an emotional release as you uncovered some of this information. What we find with self-sabotaging strategies is as soon as you know what the cause is, it can frequently lose its power right away. It made itself known. For this particular woman, she had this association. The pain in the arm is connected to this traumatic event. She can look back at that traumatic event and say, “That was in the past. It doesn’t matter. It isn’t real. I’ve outgrown it.” She allowed herself to outgrow this particular pain.

That’s very interesting. It almost reminds me of this analogy. It’s not a good one, but this is what popped into my mind. When people deal with addictions, they say the first step is to admit that you have an issue. In this particular case, she was sabotaging herself by feeling pain the whole time. Maybe she was like, “I’m not worthy. I’m not entitled to a pain-free life. This is me. I did something horrible.” By shining a light on the source, it goes away.

I’m torn between wanting to ask you a lot of questions and also a general sense of possibility because we all pretty much have a mind. If we can go in there and make things happen, the way you described what you experienced and now is what you do, the sense of possibility is enormous. We’ve been living a life that’s this big. Maybe we are happy. Maybe we are successful. Maybe we’re like this, but it could be this big or this big. Those are grains of hope that you inject here by these stories.

Let me even go back. There is a sub-discipline where people regress back to past lives. Somebody can say, “I don’t believe in past lives.” Let’s ignore that for a second and make an assumption right here for this conversation that past lives exist. Let’s not get into the whole discussion, which could take six hours. Have you seen and/or engaged in this? Sometimes, maybe a past life trauma has been so dominant that it can carry over.

Past Lives And False Memories: Navigating The Realm Of Regression

There are two elements to that. I have not done any work with past life regressions. I’ve looked at it. It’s fascinating. I’ve read some books about it. One of the biggest problems with what I have encountered about it is how easy it is for the hypnotist to implant memories. You’ve got a subject who wants to believe in it. The hypnotherapist even inadvertently can implant particular kinds of memories and say, “How would you describe the room? What age is the furniture? Is it Edwardian?” You implant some of these things.

Hypnosis is a state of hypersuggestibility. Under hypnosis, the hypnotist may be implanting some ideas. You’ve got the desire of the patient to experience this because it’s exciting and fun, and they start to create memories. The more they think about them, especially afterward as well, the more those memories become fixed, so they believe that it’s real. I’m not making a judgment as to whether past lives exist or not or whether past-life hypnosis can work. I’m talking about the examples where it’s suspect. You have to be very cautious there.

On the other side of that, if the patient believes it and they have a problem today that they can blame on something in a past life, and then they can release it. Does it matter? My work is all about helping people live to their highest potential. If something is holding them back and they believe this past life regression helped them to release it and it’s gone, it’s a variation on placebo but packaged a little bit differently. The mind has permission to let go of some of these old beliefs.

That makes perfect sense. It’s almost like the exact reason is secondary. What you said hit home. You give your own mind permission. If an excuse is needed, then let that be the excuse. As you were talking about the hyper suggestibility, I can see that as much as it seems super promising and quite incredible, we can sometimes, in a very simple manner, release maybe years of behaviors of health things. The double-edged sword is that if the hypnotist is not scrupulous, then harm could be done. How does that get buffered?

The Ethics Of Hypnosis: Protecting The Vulnerable Mind

You’re correct. An unscrupulous hypnotist could create problems. There was a great deal of work. This was back in the ‘90s, I believe, when there was a whole spate of people claiming that they had been abused as children. It wasn’t that the therapists were being unscrupulous, but they weren’t being careful enough in how they questioned so they ended up implanting ideas, and then the patient wanted to blame their current problems on something. It did come to light about false memory syndrome. That is a real issue. Most people are more aware of that now. Hopefully, hypnotherapists are. When it comes to therapists in general, you have to be very careful about who you choose.

That makes a lot of sense. I’m going to take the tack of assuming that we are talking to a hypnotherapist who wants to help. It comes with good intentions. They’re experienced enough to also know. We talked about pain, except for the example with the number six. What about behaviors? Let’s say a person carries certain trauma from their childhood. They were not loved. It’s pretty common.

Maybe the parents weren’t even there. Maybe one of the parents left. Maybe one of the parents wasn’t crazy about that child. They carry the belief, “Maybe I’m unlovable.” If we take the narrower domain of love life and relationships, if they believe that they’re unlovable, their relationship patterns are going to reflect that. Maybe they never get with a partner. You are saying that with a good session, there’s at least a possibility that all of this baggage goes away.

The Power Of Belief: Transforming Your Reality Through Your Thoughts

That is possible. You don’t have to have hypnotherapy to make these kinds of uncoverings either. That’s what mind training is all about, explaining how the mind works, how we learn information, how it gets embedded in the subconscious mind, and how it can be expressed. Therefore, it provides lots of tools to change some of that programming.

We all have programming in our past. Our subconscious mind is a repository of all of our experiences. Bad is a lot more powerful than good. If a teacher tells you nine wonderful things about you and one bad thing, you are going to remember that one bad thing. That’s going to have a whole lot more. If the kids in the playground say something mean to you, even though everybody else tells you, “You are beautiful. You are wonderful,” or whatever, that stuff sits inside us and it creates different issues.

You are talking about perhaps if you are unloved as a child. There was one particular research paper I looked at that I found particularly interesting. What they did was they looked at infants. These are a year old, one and a half years old, thereabouts. They looked at their degree of bonding with their primary caregivers, the mom and dad. Looking at the degree of bonding, they were able to predict the number of friends they would have in high school and the number of good relationships they would have. These things play a huge role.

In mind training, we look at all of this stuff. The other thing that I found helpful is when you look at Erik Erikson’s eight stages of development. He’s got the infant, the young child, and he goes all the way up. He looks at what you are supposed to learn at all these stages, and what happens if you don’t learn them, the effects that can have.

What you will have to remember too is there isn’t a pass-fail type of grade with all of these things. When you learn to be independent or when you learn to be self-reliant, there are degrees of self-reliance. When you have an understanding, your subconscious mind holds onto all of this information. We all go through these different stages of development. You can look at the problems that you may be having today, and it gives you somewhere to look to find the answers.

Even more than that, I have found that the more you understand that your subconscious mind has the answers, the more you can question your own subconscious mind. It doesn’t have to be a hypnosis. This is something that I do myself all the time. Now, the answers come faster. It used to take quite a bit of digging around. You have to allow that free association kind of thinking, first of all.

You say, “I’ve got this particular problem. Why do I always have these bad relationships?” It could come from childhood. You then start thinking of the bad experiences that you had as a child that could be related to relationships. After a while, it sifts through. I have found from personal experience that the answers do make themselves known. Once they make themselves known, that particular problem can disappear.

Let’s run with the example that you gave. Here is a toddler who is not bonding closely or very well with a primary caregiver. That study would predict, “In high school, when this kid has two friends, they’re very lucky. Maybe they’d be lucky enough to have one friend.” They’re in high school and the study has proven that it’s right. They have one friend. You come and intervene because they go to you. The background has been set in childhood. Now, they are sixteen. What is it going to take to get that out of the system and simulate a life in which that teenager did have a great bonding? What’s going to happen there? What’s the process?

The Science Of Smiling:  Boosting Happiness, Health, And Success

What you can do there comes down to reframing things. The person at 16 or the person at 25 tells you, “I feel unlovable. People don’t love me. I fail all the time. I look at this example.” They can bring out examples from their childhood that prove that point. A good therapist is then going to turn to them and say, “Turn your attention in a different direction. Look at those that did work or look at those that you’ve pushed away. Is it possible to do things differently today?” Perhaps you thought your mom didn’t love you because you are a girl and she wanted a boy. That can happen pretty frequently. Instead, look at everything that you have today. Perhaps your mom has gotten over that. This is something old that doesn’t hold today because you have a great relationship with your mom now.

If you are aware that your feelings of being unlovable come from your childhood, and it doesn’t apply today, you reframe them. You look out and find other examples, or you go and test it. Rather than pushing people away, smile at them. Smiling is the best way to be more attractive to someone else. Smiling is good for so many other things. The simple act of smiling increases the happy brain chemicals that make you healthier and stronger. It can also make you more successful in life and can make you live longer.

There were a couple of studies I looked at. One looked at baseball cards and one looked at high school pictures. By looking at those pictures, they found a correlation with how long people would live. For those people who smile broadly, they call it the Duchenne smile. The Duchenne smile reaches all the way up to the eyes. The eyes crinkle up. It’s a full smile. Those who had the Duchenne smile in these pictures lived on average seven years longer than those who weren’t smiling. Those who were smiling a little bit would live on average two years longer.

Those who were frowning?

They didn’t live as long. These things have an effect, and it goes everywhere. They looked at the financial situations of these people. The smilers would do better financially. They would do better in their relationships. They would do better in their careers. It sounds like such a small thing. People don’t think about smiling. Ever since I came across that work, I have paid attention to smiling. I make an effort to smile at other people because that’s my way of helping someone else. When someone’s smiling at you, you feel more relaxed.

I wish to help the world at large, so I’m going to smile at people and try to make them feel comfortable. I practice smiling to myself to tell myself I’m worthy. When I go to the bathroom, especially ever since COVID when we all started washing our hands a whole lot more frequently and a whole lot more thoroughly, I would take a second to look in the mirror, smile at myself, and tell myself something positive like, “You’re good. You can do this. You got this.” It’s so uplifting.

It makes so much sense on so many levels. We talked before about the person who feels unlovable and that affects relationships. If we talk about romantic relationships, when people meet each other in real life, a smile is also an encouragement. It’s like, “You can come and talk to me.” That can build something that will happen.

You said something interesting. It doesn’t have to be that teenager we talked about with the one friend, but any person who goes around feeling, “I’m unloved. I’m unlovable.” That’s exactly how it is in life. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You take two people right next to each other. Let’s say they’re identical twins. There is the nurture part here, not the nature.

I’m riffing here. Scientists may say, “Identical twins?” It’s just my example. They’re exactly the same but one of them carries a belief that they’re unlovable and unloved. For some reason, the other copy of that person doesn’t. The other copy meets a person, a male, a female, a friend, or a lover. Maybe they smile. Maybe they talk. They feel at ease. They have a new friend. They go on a date. That person with the belief already knows they’re going to be rejected so they reject the whole thing themselves. They tell themselves, “This person is stupid.” It’s self-fulfilling prophecies happening day in and day out. Isn’t that the case?

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: The Cycle Of Belief And Behavior

Absolutely. Self-fulfilling prophecies are in play in lots of different areas. The work on the Pygmalion Effect demonstrates that well. They had to make the teachers believe. What they did was they told the teachers that the kids had taken a particular test. They gave the test a fancy name so it sounded even more impressive. They said that the test results would be a predictor of how well the kids would do. They told the teachers which of their students had scored well on this test.

What they found was that for the 1st and 2nd graders in particular, the results were pretty remarkable. The 1st graders improved their scores by about 15%. The 2nd graders improved it by about 10%. The older kids did not improve as much, and there are explanations for that. When kids are first going into school, the kids don’t know what to expect and the teachers don’t know anything about the kids. They don’t have any other preconceived ideas.

Once the kids are older, they’ve already got a reputation. The teachers will have spoken to the other teachers. They’ll have an idea of who is bright and who isn’t bright. For kids, when they first go to school, going to school is scary. If there is a teacher smiling at them, giving them encouragement, and giving them support, then they are going to thrive.

There’s been a great deal of work done with the Pygmalion Effect. They’ve done that with rats. They designated certain rats as being smarter than others. They found that the caregivers would give extra care to the smarter rats. The smarter rats learn the maze a whole lot faster. It goes beyond that. It has been done in business, the Military, and sales. When the person in authority believed that the people under them would do better, they did do better.

There is something else in here that I found interesting. There was one research study. It was in some sales office. They divided all the staff into three groups, those they expected to do well, those that were mediocre, and those that they weren’t expecting to do well at all. The leaders of each group were told this. The top group did perform even better. Their sales increased by 40%. What was interesting in this particular study is that the leader of the 2nd group didn’t believe that they were 2nd rate. She was told something but she didn’t believe it. As a result, her team didn’t do as well as the first group.

Belief is only going to go so far. If you’re working in basketball, it’s not going to turn you into Michael Jordan because you believe that you are good, but it stops you from getting in your own way. It helps you perform to your best. This 2nd group did not do as well as the 3rd group, but it still did a whole lot better because of the Galatea Effect. The Galatea Effect is when you’ve got enough self-belief within you. Mind training is all about instilling that self-belief within you so you’re not dependent on outside forces.

You get to see the Golem Effect in the third group because they were told that they weren’t good. They weren’t good. They quit and left, which made it a self-fulfilling prophecy as well because they were told that they weren’t going to be any good. They weren’t. Belief, though, has to be genuine in these things. You can’t pretend. If you say you are in a position of authority, you can’t pretend that your students, teammates, or whatever are the best. You have to find something that you can believe in.

They did video footage of the teachers or the authority figures in these things. What they found was that when the authority figure believed in you, they would smile more and they would nod more in agreement. There were lots of micro expressions that came along that reinforced the idea. We pick up information subconsciously, so we can tell, I can tell if someone likes me or they don’t like me, even if they’re trying to be polite. You can frequently tell, but you may not be able to discern exactly what it is. That is what they found.

You talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. Self-fulfilling prophecies happen all the time if you understand what’s at play there. This was way back. I was trying to count stamps. I had to get to $0.29. I had these miscellaneous stamps of $0.1, $0.2, and who knows? The authority figure was standing above me, demanding this right now. I couldn’t count to 29 because that pressure was so great with the glares and the tapping. It became ridiculous.

What we aim to do in my training is to instill enough self-belief to give you the power. Perhaps you’ve got a horrible boss. Your boss always stands over you. The boss always criticizes, micromanages, and all of that. You feel that you’re not going to get your work done. With some of the tools that we provide, you can turn that around. You can understand that your lack of success isn’t necessarily your lack of success. It is because you are allowing this other person to influence you. You can reframe that other person because often, insecure people are the ones who can become bullies.

Bullying seems like a microcosm of what you described before when the teachers were told about that special test. They had an attitude and it affected young kids. The older kids already had the reputation. The microcosm of that is bullying because one kid said, “This kid is horrible. Don’t play with them.” Nobody plays with them and they’re stuck in a rut that’s much harder to get out of.

With what you said about basketball, you even read it in the newspapers. Sometimes, you have an athlete. They’re a professional but they’re the bad game. Their confidence is shot, then, they have a great game and their confidence for the next game is high. From game to game, you can see it. I want to go back to a discussion we had a little while ago. You said people tell you 100 good things and then they tell you one bad thing. Why is this negative bias to take the good things for granted and to focus on that one negative thing?

The Negative Bias And The Participation Trophy Generation

They tend to attribute the answers for that to evolution or evolutionary psychology. As man was developing, you had to be alert to dangers. One mistake there and you could die, so you pay a whole lot more attention to the bad. Today, we are herd animals. We want the approval of the group. If we can’t be special in the group, we at least want to be normal. That fear of being ostracized all comes into play as to how we behave or how we react to some of these things.

I’m thinking about the notion that’s been bandied around related to Gen Z especially. In some parts of the country of the US, the younger Gen Zs were raised on what we like to call a participation trophy. They got a trophy even if they came in 37th out of 37. In a way, the mind is thinking, “I’m great.” Thinking you’re good at basketball isn’t going to make you into Michael Jordan. They go into the world and expect the trophy, and sometimes, it can clash.

It’s amazing the number of social experiments that go on based on particular ideas. That all arose from work that was done where the successful kids had higher self-esteem. Some decided that having higher self-esteem would make people more successful. They’ve discovered that it doesn’t. It is the achievement that helps kids develop their esteem.

The secret to developing esteem in kids then is to find out what their talents are. It’s not about participation awards. That doesn’t work. That leads to entitlement. That is one particular social experiment that did not work. I don’t think it’s as popular now as it was. That seemed to come in and it’s fading out. Kids have a whole different set of issues with all the social networking that we have, such as Instagram and TikTok. They’re going online and constantly seeing what looks like everybody else having a great life or everybody else looking perfect, for girls in particular.

You can’t put it in their brains, but logically, let’s say that you, me, or somebody starts an account on one of those social media and we are going to document our life. Are you going to document when you had food poisoning? No. You’re going to document when you’re out and dancing. If I look at your feed and I’m here having food poisoning and you are out there dancing, I’m saying, “I don’t measure up to her.” All those things are so skewed.

Especially for girls, it has become a huge issue when it comes to anxiety and attempted suicides. The rates have increased with places like Instagram because not only are people documenting the best parts of their lives, but they’re filtering it. They can take pictures of themselves, add filters, do a bit of Photoshop, and make themselves look a whole lot better. For girls, especially when appearance seems to be so important and they’re so concerned about it, they’re looking out at all these other girls who look amazing and they look up in the mirror and see themselves. Some of these things are very harmful.

In the last example, you mentioned, “For girls especially.” This is a broader conversation, probably into the reinforcement of both sexism and racism. Preconceived notions create a feedback loop between the two parties. Why did you say especially girls?

The Impact Of Social Media And Technology On Mental Health

It’s two different directions. The research that has been done has shown a much greater effect in girls, but there is an effect in boys as well. All of that particular generation, people who grew up with iPhones and were brought up with technology, have a reduced ability to relate to people and read social cues. The anxiety levels in that generation are high.

Jonathan Haidt is the author of The Anxious Generation. It’s an incredible book. That’s a book that you should read, especially if you’ve got kids in those age groups. You get to see the effect it has. It is boys too. The anxiety has increased. Their ability to relate and their feelings of loneliness are high, but it’s higher in girls. It’s a matter of degree. The number of suicide attempts among girls is higher than the number of suicide attempts among boys. They’ve got the additional level.

Part of what they attributed it to was that people spend so much time looking at their phones that they’re not talking to the person next to them. I hear lecturers going in to give a presentation. Whereas before they would walk into the classroom and the kids would be talking amongst each other and interacting, now, they go in and it’s silent because they’re on their phones.

We learn social cues by practicing them. We have to talk to people. It’s going on in our high schools, even earlier than that in some instances. Kids aren’t talking to each other. They’re on their phones, so they’re not learning how to communicate. We saw that particular problem during COVID and all the face masks. They were concerned about small children not being able to learn facial expressions, how to relate, what is good, and what is bad. As herd animals, we need that feedback.

I happen to also study and explore some of the natural phenomena that we are changing in the last generation. One of them is when I was little, and I’m assuming that it’s true for you too, I played outside most of the day. I was in the sun. I saw the blue sky and the green trees. I ran around, touched the trees, and climbed the trees. My parents had to call me in for dinner. Now, if somebody sits indoors and plays a video game all day, that light in the blue light and all of that story also makes a huge difference.

If we talk about the lack of ability to read social cues and facial micro expressions that you mentioned before, the rates of people on the autistic spectrum have skyrocketed. I don’t know what it is now. Is it 1 out of 33 kids? It is enormous. It used to be one out of many thousands. Supposedly, when you’re on the spectrum, you are not particularly good at treating microexpressions. That’s why you’re socially awkward.

If regular kids are around you and they can see the microexpression even in a nanosecond, they don’t know if they offended that person or not. The person gets offended and then starts the process that you’re talking about. They say, “This kid is horrible,” so then nobody wants to play with them. The whole thing together is creating a difficulty.

Mind Training: Taking Control Of Your Mind To Achieve Your Goals

There is research going on that is looking at the relationship between technology, smartphones, and social networking and the increase in autism and ADHD. It’s all part of the same spectrum. There has been a significant increase. I’ve not seen anything definitive yet but they are certainly exploring that. It’s that social experiment. We’ve handed our kids these smartphones without realizing the consequences.

As adults, mind training is written for adults who want to take charge of their own lives. When you are aware of this kind of information, then you can start taking steps to change it. There are mechanical ways to increase your own happy brain chemicals to help you feel happier. There are techniques that you can use to help yourself feel calmer and to access subconscious information to find these answers. It gives you lots of areas where you can take responsibility for your own life and the things that you can achieve. One of the biggest mistakes people make is it’s common for people to say, “I am the way that I am. Genes made me and nurturing made me, but this is who I am.” Who you are now is not who you have to be.

This is bolstered by some old expressions like, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” or “I’m old enough to be set in my ways.” There is another thing that I wanted to ask you before I dive into the resources that you have, because I, for one, am greedy to know as much as possible what I can do and get help from you and your resources.

I want to ask about something called imposter syndrome. We have a person who carries the belief that they are not successful or that they’re not good enough and yet they succeed. People succeed maybe by chance or by a fluke. Maybe they were in Downtown Palo Alto exactly when Facebook was raising money and they said, “I’ll kick in my $5,000.” They are a billionaire or whatever. They’re successful but they walk around with imposter syndrome. The external world sees them as successful, but they feel they’re fakers. They will be discovered any minute because there’s no way that they can be successful. What do you say to all of that?

Imposter Syndrome: Confronting And Overcoming Self-Doubt

Imposter syndrome is incredibly common. Most successful people have it to some degree. That was one of the things that helped me out the most. Everything that I talk about in mind training, I’ve practiced. I use these techniques. I told you it started early on with me having hypnotherapy. I’ve been learning constantly and slowly. You don’t see the changes in yourself.

When I first started work on mind training, I didn’t think I was capable of it. There are a number of professors of psychology at prestigious universities who have endorsed the book saying that it’s realistic and doable. It is based on hard science. To the person who has imposter syndrome, I would say, “Welcome to the club.” When you realize that everyone has it and it’s normal, then all you can do is find ways to deal with some of the tension that comes along.

Resources For Self-Empowerment:  Books, Coaching, And Your Inner Wisdom

The best encapsulation of imposter syndrome is what Groucho Marx said. “I don’t want to belong to a club that would have someone like me as a member.” Let’s dive into the fun part. From the very first moment, I had this sense of, “There’s something here that can be grand. I want to know more. I want to get more.” Let’s start with all the available resources that are accessible to me or my audience. You mentioned a book. You have a book.

The book is Mind Training: The Science of Self-Empowerment. It is science-based. I wanted to keep it very science-based, so it’s hard-hitting. I drew on over 200 independent scientific studies for it. I don’t only tell the results of the study. I will explain it because the book is about self-empowerment. I want the reader to fully understand the material so they can personalize it for their own lives.

Let’s pretend for a second that I carry the belief, which is unshakeable for me, that I’m a lazy bum. Even if you give me a book with exact recipes of what to do, I will not do it because I’m a lazy bum. That is my belief. Let’s go deeper. For the lazy bums amongst us, what can we do to reach you? Can we work with you one-on-one? Where are all of the stuff that we might be able to get via your resources and expertise?

You can go to my website, RavinderTaylor.com. That’s where I will be advertising everything that I do. I’m not doing one-on-one coaching at the moment, but I am doing some group coaching. If you subscribe to our newsletter, you’ll get to hear all about that. Subscribing to our newsletter means that you’ll constantly receive information that tells you about the power of the mind and what can be achieved by changing your thoughts.

The first step of mind training is fully understanding what your mind is capable of and having a definite awareness that you can get into the driver’s seat of your life. It doesn’t have to be all driven by old programming in your subconscious mind. You can take conscious control over that and choose the person that you want to be. Visit my website, RavinderTaylor.com, sign up for our newsletter, and pick up the book.

Is there a possibility that in the future you may work with people one-on-one?

I will. I’ve been very focused on the book. I am certainly planning one-on-one coaching as well.

I can explain my logic when it relates to that. You are busy and I’m busy. He’s busy and she’s busy. We are all extremely busy. Each one of us usually is an expert in our field. I’ve been in my field for decades. I’m an expert. If I work with somebody one-on-one, I can save them an enormous amount of time. It’s the same for you. Why wouldn’t I want to work one-on-one with you? You say, “You’re going to have to pay me.” I’ll pay you gladly for your time. That’s a given. At least this one person would like to register an interest in working one-on-one.

Drop me an email. Let’s see what we can come up with. I have been doing some of that training and I’m certainly open to doing more of it. My email address is simply Ravinder@RavinderTaylor.com.

For the sake of general interest, where are you located geographically?

We’re in Spokane, Washington.

I want to thank you very much for taking the time. I know you’re busy. I learned a lot. I hope that our audience learned a lot. I know that I will certainly be in touch. Thank you so much.

I look forward to it. Thank you so much for having me on. You have a wonderful day.

You too. Bye-bye.

Important Links

• Ravinder Taylor
• Ravinder@RavinderTaylor.com
• Mind Training: The Science of Self-Empowerment
• The Anxious Generation

About Ravinder Taylor

Ravinder Taylor is a seasoned mind science researcher and editor, co-authoring this book alongside the renowned mind expert Eldon Taylor. Together, they’ve compiled over 200 scientific studies to create a toolkit for readers to rewire their brains, break free from limiting behaviors, and maximize their potential. Ravinder has a passion for making complex brain science accessible and practical, offering audiences real tools they can use to change their lives. Ravinder is an excellent speaker who has made many media appearances in the past.

Her remarkable journey includes overcoming the challenges of racial bigotry while growing up in the UK, healing herself from Osteoarthritis, transitioning from the biology lab to the transformative worlds of hypnotherapy and psychotherapy, and embarking on a 30-year career dedicated to researching the extraordinary power of the mind—culminating in the creation of this fantastic new book!