From TV Star to Neuroscientist: Dr Sabina Brennan’s Reinvention

Intro music plays quietly behind first 1 minute.

00:00:03 Áine Maguire

Welcome to the 37%. This is a show that invites people to reflect on a significant career, leadership or life decision. My name is Áine Maguire

00:00:13 Susy Kenefick

And my name is Susy Kenefick

00:00:14 Áine Maguire

On our show we ask our guests about what led to a decision why they made it, how it was made and what happened next?

00:00:24 Áine Maguire

Hi, Susy, how are things today?

00:00:25 Áine Maguire

Things today I'm good. Thank you and you? How are you?

00:00:27 Áine Maguire

 All good. Really looking forward to a guest we have today. Doctor Sabina Brennan. Fascinating guest with lots and lots of decisions to talk about. What's your take?

00:00:38 Susy Kenefick

Yeah, I mean, what strikes me a lot about Doctor Brennan is and just it was the sheer.

00:00:44 Susy Kenefick

Variety that she has had in her in her life experience in terms of career and different, you know, different life decisions and big changes that she's made.

00:00:53 Susy Kenefick

and I just think there was a huge amount to discuss in that.

00:00:57 Susy Kenefick

A lot, a lot of very, very rich decision making material for us. I think to reflect on.

00:01:04 Áine Maguire

Yeah. I mean, she just kind of propelled herself really from the early stages of her life. You know, it was very interesting listening to her talking about at the beginning.

00:01:14 Áine Maguire

About the decision she took to essentially please her dad, a career decision and I think you will see that a lot over the series, how sometimes people's decisions are not necessarily.

00:01:26 Áine Maguire

Coming from what they actually want, they're coming from. Well, what What People often talk of community decisions or What she referred to as people pleaser decisions. But then following that decision, she then sort of propelled herself through different phases of her life and has really packed a lot in but seemed to be able to tell herself a narrative.

00:01:47 Áine Maguire

That would help her make those decisions rather than what most of us do, which is have a narrative which we've developed overtime since we.

00:01:54 Áine Maguire

We're born and then stick to.

00:01:56 Áine Maguire

That really would you agree with that?

00:01:57 Susy Kenefick

I think that's the right and I think overall she probably does portray a very rich picture of the path to authenticity that I think a lot of people do, perhaps take a little bit longer to get to in their lives should we go to the interview, maybe. And we can come back afterwards and have a chat about some of the more interesting topics that we covered.

00:02:16 Áine Maguire

Let's do that

00:02:20 Susy Kenefick

Doctor Sabina Brennan is a health psychologist and neuroscientist. She is also a regular media contributor with her work as a speaker, podcaster and author of Best selling books, including "100 days to a younger brain" and "Beating brain fog". But before embarking on her academic career, Sabina was a drama teacher and working actress. Some of you may even remember her from her long running, starring role In Fair city (an Irish TV soap opera)

00:02:42 Susy Kenefick

In her work in neuroscience, Sabina focuses her research interests on the promotion of simple everyday habits and techniques to optimise brain health and function, and developing resilience in the face of age-related brain injuries and illnesses such as dementia. Sabina believes that everyone has a super brain and that by unleashing our super brains, we can unleash our hidden potential in every area of our lives.

00:03:02 Susy Kenefick

Sabina, alot there for us there to explore.   You are so welcome our podcast and I think I speak for both Áine and I when I say we are very interested to hear what a neuroscientist can tell us about decision making.

00:03:13 Susy Kenefick

But let's start with you. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, where you come from, where you are and about your work?

00:03:17 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Yeah. Can I rob that for my CV, it's nice and succinct

00:03:24 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Yeah, but about myself. Uh gosh, where do I start? As you said, I'm, you know, a psychologist and a neuroscientist. And I am passionate about brain health and I'm on a mission.

To get everybody thinking about their brain health as routinely as they brush their teeth.

00:03:36 Doctor Sabina Brennan

I think the more we understand our brains, the more we can understand ourselves. And I think if you look after your brain and if you understand your brain, your mental health and your physical health actually will naturally follow. And I think you also get a greater awareness and greater understanding of yourselves and why you might make decisions etc.

00:03:56 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Tracking back before that, you know I did my leaving at 16 like much of my peers, it was really only the kind of particularly for girls, it was really only the daughters of.

00:04:10 Doctor Sabina Brennan

You know, parents in in law or in medicine or teachers who actually went to university. And so the majority of my class didn't go to university. We just got a job. And I got a job and worked in Irish life insurance company. And for 15 years. And that decision actually came about because I was the youngest 5 and my dad's biggest ambition was that.

00:04:30 Doctor Sabina Brennan

One of us would work in the same company that he worked in so.

00:04:33 Doctor Sabina Brennan

I literally remember one day sitting at the table and kind of looking and kind of going, oh, Mum I could do that for dad because the others all failed the entrance exam. And I said I could do that. And actually, that was the reason behind why I went to work in Irish life. And it's the reason behind why a lot of people ultimately further on in my career, I mentored uh medical students in Trinity and.

00:04:53 Doctor Sabina Brennan

That was actually why a lot of them became doctors to please their parents. You know, it's funny. Mine was just kind of, you know, less ambitious down the scale.

00:04:58 Áine Maguire

So you went back to college or not back to college. you went to college, isn't that right? In your 40s? Tell us about that decision.

00:05:10 Doctor Sabina Brennan

That kind of decision came accidentally, really, in a way

00:05:17 Doctor Sabina Brennan

I had just finished a huge story on Fair City and there was a lot of media coverage around it because I played a woman who was and I'm actually must get the politically correct term. Who Who was I hate to say victim, but she was a victim of domestic violence

00:05:33 Áine Maguire

Survivor

00:05:34 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Yeah, survivor. Yeah. She was a survivor of domestic. Well, no, she wasn't a survivor.

00:05:37 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Actually, because he murdered her so.

00:05:40 Susy Kenefick

The victim, I think is saying in those circumstances, yeah, yeah

.00:05:41 Doctor Sabina Brennan

So yeah, then I think victim is probably correct but.

00:05:46 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Yeah I thihnk it Was kind of one of the first time something like that was covered on television, so there was a lot of media interest and a lot of discussion around it an.

00:05:54 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Very high profile and front magazines and kind of in Ireland It's very small, kind of acting community and back then like it really was. And I was kind of told by casting directors and agents, just look at it be a while before you kind of get anything else. So I thought well I might do a night course. I was interested in acting because I'm interested in the human condition.

00:06:14 Doctor Sabina Brennan

I trained as a theatre actor and I qualified as a drama teacher with the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and but it was film and television that interested me because I got my buzz out of understanding why

00:06:28 Doctor Sabina Brennan

The character did what they did and how to portray that rather than performing on stage sort of every night, repeating it. Like for me the.

00:06:36 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Buzz was, yes.

00:06:37 Doctor Sabina Brennan

You know, I got into that and I understood that and whatever. So I thought I might do a course in psychology and I've always been interested in understanding that.

So I knew nothing about nobody in my family had ever been to university, and I knew nothing about those. So I was just kind of scouring. It was the early days of, you know, kind of people having Internet in their homes. Yeah, look to see was there any night time course saw that there was one kind of in Maynooth University, and I knew nothing about CAO etcetera. And I just rang them to inquire about their night time course. And they said oh, you know

Well, you know what? We have a full time course and mature students can apply. We have 5 places for matures and would you be interested in applying and it was 13 hours a week. And of course in my ignorance I thought 13 hours a week. You know, that's not very much. I still do my acting and all the rest.

And I said, well, when's the deadline is at 5 o'clock today. So you had to write sort of a little essay or whatever. And then I got called in and you sat an exam and then you got called in and you were interviewed. And I got. I got in. So there was little kind of suddenly I was going to University

00:07:42 Áine Maguire

What was the hardest thing for you going back to education in your 40s?

00:07:48 Doctor Sabina Brennan

It actually wasn't hard to be perfectly honest. The actual doing and I made it beforehand. The bigger issue, you know, worrying about, oh, you know, I won't be good enough. I won't be this, and they'll all be brilliant. And I won't know how to do it. And actually once I started, yeah, I found it very easy.

And I worked very, very hard and I'm not saying I didn't, but I I think and that's one piece of advice I would give out if you are going to university, you pick something that you absolutely love.

And then it's a joy, you know, because you're learning you're I aat up the information.

Oh my God, I didn't know that. And I didn't know that. So it's kind of much easier to do it that way

00:08:25 Áine Maguire

Was the joy a surprise to you. Did you know you'd feel that?

00:08:40 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Yeah. Probably was a surprise. I don't think I knew that. And I knew that I was fascinated by the subject. But I didn't know that I would. I would love it. Now I'm not saying it wasn't. I mean, there was stress there as well, you know, kind of studying. But in a way that was self-imposed. I wanted to get the best results I possibly could get.

00:08:53 Susy Kenefick

And obviously you're very passionate about the subject and yeah, and that as you say really helps to motivate you.

00:08:59 Susy Kenefick

How did you feel about leaving your acting career behind? Because I think that's something, you know, I've heard you speak about this, that you also really loved and were really passionate about from a young age.

00:09:04 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Yeah, no, I was passionate about it. I was devastated. I was absolutely devastated. I mean, I found out that that I was going to be unemployed by one of the other actors. They hadn't told me they hadn't said anything. And literally one of the other actresses, you know, I'm going to kill you in about four weeks.

00:09:21 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Time or something to that effect. And I kind of went, no. Nobody had told me, and actually that's the way it worked. Do you know you didn't get to see the scripts. You didn't know what was going to happen next. Well, in hindsight, I accepted it. Kind of at the time, but in hindsight, it's not a very nice thing to do to people who that whom That's how they earn their living. When I say accepted it, I accepted.

The method that they used, I didn't really sort of accept the decision. I felt Oh my God, this is awful. This is everything I've always wanted to do and you know, like it was just. I was so fortunate to have got that work. And work was very sparse and back then work was very even.

Incredibly sparse for women, you know? I mean, it's brilliant to see now. So many women leading TV series and Detective series and drama series. But there was very few parts and decent parts for women sort of back then.

00:10:19 Áine Maguire

So having qualified. Yes, it got your degree. How did you find the draught that sucked you into being a neuroscientist?

00:10:35 Doctor Sabina Brennan

And well, I was always interested. Really. In the relationship between the brain and human behaviour. That's kind of the aspect of psychology. I was interested in. You know, what is it about us, what happens? And so I was fascinated. So basically just at the end of second year, one of my lecturers said to me, you know, would you consider doing a PhD? And I didn't know what a PhD was like. I had no idea. So they said, oh, we think you'd, you know, you'd be really good sort of doing that. So I kind of again.

You know, again, something I probably really fell into because someone else said to me, oh, maybe you should do a PhD.

So yeah, I applied for a scholarship, which was a government of Ireland scholarship, and I got that and I did my PHD. That was much harder for different reasons than doing an undergrad degree, it's very well, I had very little guidance and I did like the structure of an undergrad degree. I liked the control, was very you felt very much in control, you just knew well.

Have to do this, this, this and this I have to study this topic and then I'll have to write this essay, whereas PHD is like just three years ahead of you, and you've got to produce novel research.

00:11:34 Áine Maguire

And do you? Were you regretting that decision?

00:11:47 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Probably at times. Yeah. I kind of, you know, I mean, I would have qualified as a doctor sooner, kind of, you know, in a way that kind of thing. You're kind of going because you don't really get paid very well in research either and yeah, there's a lot of reasons around and a lot of reasons. I think as a woman in academia.

I think as a woman in academia that are challenging. I certainly experienced them. But having said that, in the PhD, if I hadn't done that PhD, I wouldn't kind of discovered the research that kind of sparked my interest really in what I do now.

00:12:07 Áine Maguire

So tell us a little bit about what you do now?

00:12:08 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Yeah. So basically, I suppose what I do now is I translate complex neuroscience into easy to understand information and for the general public so that they can better understand themselves, keep themselves fitter, healthier, look after their brain health, reduce their risk of developing diseases like dementia, because that was the first spark was, you know, finding papers that had been written like more than 20 years before I was doing my PhD.

That had information about how you reduce your risk of developing dementia.

Yeah. And nobody knew, you know? Well, obviously the research is knew and the other people researching that knew, but nobody was telling the general public actually really felt like a moral compulsion.

Now this is wrong and I think that came from in a way, being an outsider, because a lot of people in academia.

00:12:57 Doctor Sabina Brennan

They do their Leaving Cert they do with their undergrad, they do their PhD, become an assistant professor, associate professor, professor. They actually don't live in what I would call the real world. And there's certain rules that you play by and here's how you write an academic paper. And here's how you progress your career.

Whereas I came from a completely different background, having worked in business then also having worked in acting, to actually I think I just had that wider view of kind of well hold on a second. Are you doing this for your own career?

Which I think you know, I suppose it's fair enough in a sense, but I felt most research is funded by the general public. So I felt that compulsion to share that information with people. And so, yeah, as soon as I finished my PhD.

I applied to the European Commission for funding these calls come out and again naively, I didn't know that to apply to coordinate what was then an FP7 project is what they were called was aimed at professors like people who had a long career. I was completely ignorant.

So I wrote a proposal and they loved it and they gave it to me and I suddenly found myself like straight out of a PhD being responsible for a multinational £1 million project, one of only I think at that time 1 of only 17 people in Ireland had ever kind of got that. And again I would say from that as well, in terms of making decisions and going for things if you feel you can do something you know kind of go for it.

00:14:32 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Because I wasn't aware that I wasn't technically qualified enough or I wasn't because I was oblivious of that. I just went for it.

Do you know and I I think things in life.

00:14:47 Áine Maguire

Yes.

00:14:49 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Well, that wouldn't be for me. And I think it's particularly, with media with women rather.

We have a great tendency to feel we should tick all boxes before we can be considered suitable for, and research shows. If men take one box out of the ten, they'll go. Oh sure, I'll give it a shot and I kind of learned that a lot with media requests. I kind of would turn them down 1st and  then I kind of was asked about one.

Which was for the BBC Science Channel, and I was going to respond and say, well, actually that's not my area. And then I went.

But it's a fascinating topic and I am a neuroscientist, and if I read up on this, I will be able to do this and that kind of was a life changer for me. It was a nice melding of my acting and my science

00:15:39 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Because it was a series marking, it was for their Science Channel and it was a series marking. The 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth or something, and they were exploring a science topic within each of his plays, which was really fascinating to me. And again, so I was drawn to it and yeah, they asked me to explain hallucinations.

And that's part of what I love around what I do in terms of media and radio. And, you know, they'll always come to me now. Initially, it was always about dementia or brain health. But now if they want a neuroscience angle on any topic.

They've kind of come to me and I love that because that means I'm continually learning.

00:16:16 Susy Kenefick

I mean it says something really fascinating to me about what guides people in their decision making, because I think what's coming through here for you is that often it's about going where your interest lies are going, where the thing that sparks the curiosity lies. Whereas for a lot of people, and I wonder what you think about this?

00:16:33 Susy Kenefick

They seem to have this this.

00:16:35 Susy Kenefick

Real compulsion to know everything and to have all the information and do all their data collection and research before they make a decision so they feel sufficiently informed and  maybe that's not where the emphasis should be. Maybe it should be a little bit more on. Well, what is the thing that sparks your interest?

00:16:47 Doctor Sabina Brennan

so I think it's really interesting that you do say curious because that's something I I talk about in the talks I give so.

Part of what I do is I give a lot of corporate Wellness talks to companies and but giving a neuroscience angle on it and curiosity is one thing that's hugely interested.

Because I'm sure you've heard of neuroplasticity, which is essentially just describes this amazing capacity that our brain has to change with learning, and that's how we have survived as a species and it's how we're adaptable, we're flexible, and it's how we cope with many of the challenges that come into our lives. Essentially, it really describes the brains resilience to change so that we can adapt and change. 

But what's really interesting is if you are naturally curious about something neuroplasticity becomes enhanced in your brain, so when you're curious about something, you learn it easier. And I don't mean I say this frequently in my talks. I wish there was another word for learn and learning because it's got such connotations with school and academia, but everything that we do in life that's new or that involves challenge.

Anything is learning acquires you acquire it. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is learning.

00:17:57 Doctor Sabina Brennan

But when you're curious about something that natural capacity to learn is enhanced and really rather interestingly, I think it's relevant for teachers, but it's also relevant for anybody who is doing something that maybe they find a bit challenging or maybe don't have a natural interest in. If you engage in something that you're naturally curious about you get this enhanced ability to learn this enhanced neuroplasticity.

That lasts beyondthe moment that you're interested in so, then that's the moment that if there's something you want to learn that you're struggling with, that's  your peak moment.

00:18:30 Aine Maguire

Yeah. Fascinating.

00:18:36 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Think often. I mean, if people know of teachers that were really good that help them learn. They often let kids do stuff that they really enjoy and then say OK, now we've got to do maths for 10 minutes. Yes. Yeah. Do you know? Yeah. So their ability to learn that maths and focus on it is taken in because they've done something that they are curious about.

00:18:53 Áine McGuire

Something I wanted to ask you was because this is a podcast about decision making. Do you think peoples brain health, nutrition.

do you think it is an impact on the quality of the decisions or how they make decisions?

00:19:06 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. If you take stress, for example, now, there's nothing wrong with stress. In fact, it is, you know, a system in our brain that we have to harness in order to rise, to challenge and do new things, right. So it has evolved for a very adaptive reason

What becomes problematic is, poorly managed, chronic stress, actually too little stress is  not good for your brain, either poorly managed chronic stress impacts negatively on your brain health, but also on how it functions. It actually alters how your brain functions. 

So if you have encounter a threat in some form. If we take a very simple, you know, a loud bang as you're walking along the road and that sounds like a gunshot, we'll say, that information, that sensory information comes into your amygdala, which is your fear centre in your brain through two roots, 1 is a direct fast route that is unconscious. And that's the route that will save your life. You'll jump out of the way or you know if, you hear a noise or a car careering towards you or whatever and that's unconscious and immediate. 

00:20:17 Doctor Sabina Brennan

But then the second route is a little bit slower and it comes it goes to your amygdala ultimately, but it comes through your frontal lobes, which are the most well connected part of your brain, and it is the last part of the human brain to evolve. And it's also the last part of our brain to develop it isn't really fully developed till we're in our mid 20s, which is why decision making and assessing risk etcetera are problematic prior to that because you actually don't have the full capacity to do that.

So that part of your brain, the information comes from there and it actually can assess the big picture and has relative information and context and can say, OK, let's switch off the stress response because that's a false alarm. It was a car backfiring or let's ramp up the stress response. We may have to fight. We may have to freeze so as not to be seen. It's a man with a gun.

00:21:12 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Now ordinarily, then you know when that stress has passed, it all comes back down and we go to rest and digest. If stress becomes chronic, as it has done for a lot of us in in modern life, because there's so many, we live in a very different world to the world from which it evolved. There's lots of noise. There's lots of stressors. If it becomes chronic.

What happens is, neuroplasticity that I mentioned, that ability to learn and change and grow new connections in your brain is suppressed in your frontal lobes and it is enhanced in your amygdala. So what actually ultimately happens is your amygdala becomes stronger, your frontal lobes become weaker and your amygdala starts to override your rational thinking, frontal lobes. So you move from rational behaviour to reflexive behaviour and the loop is broken and basically you just start behaving and making decisions, and assessing risk reflexively so from emotions, from gut feeling, without actually looking at the big picture without actually rationally assessing the information.

00:22:18 Doctor Sabina Brennan

So that's one huge way that our Physiology can impact on how we make decisions.

00:22:30 Susy Kenefick

Would it be fair to say that actually making big decisions in circumstances where you're under chronic stress it's almost akin to making big decisions when you're intoxicated or overtired or any of those other circumstances

00:22:35 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Yes, in a wwy and actually you just said overtired, so you know if you haven't had adequate sleep, your ability to concentrate, focus, learn, take new information, or all compromised. Even just after one night. So they're not good times to make decisions, nor is it a good time to make a decision when you're hungry. You know what I mean? 

00:22:55 Áine Maguire

They say never. Don't go shopping when you're hungry. 

00:22:56 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Yeah. Yeah. Cause you buy everything you know, but like, you have to remember aswell, the primary focus of your brain is to keep you alive and when you're in that context of something impacting on that upsetting the status quo, so your brain has to keep all your systems, your temperature, your blood pressure etc has to keep all of those going and anything that is impairing that is going to be brain's priority.  That's why brin

And that's why, you know, brain Fog

00:23:22 Doctor Sabina Brennan

My second book was about brain fog and beating brain fog, and it was commissioned before COVID even existed. But I was writing it during Covid and I, you know, I mean, I really just wasn't remotely surprised that, you know, brain fog would be a huge issue it's not unusual after a serious life threatening illness. It's very common after something like sepsis and way back in 2020, I wrote a feature for the Irish Times about it and I made a an episode of my podcast about it. And, you know, and I was kind of trying to warn and say, let's not just focus on deaths. 

00:24:01 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Let's focus on the consequence of you know, this terrible assault on your system. So essentially, really, it's not surprising your body is your brain is focusing on keeping you alive. And so it doesn't matter if you can, whether you can figure out how much the shopping in your basket is going to cost, you know.

00:24:13 Áine Maguire

Yeah, so as a neuroscientist, how do you make decisions?

00:24:17 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Well, it's probably very different than I did in the past. My biggest life decision recently was.

I suppose it sort of began a little bit during COVID. I've always been interested. This is kind of my sound side tracking, but I've always been interested in interior design. If I wasn't what I am, I think I'd be an interior designer, so I've always looked at houses for sale. Now, I love my house that I live in, so I was never looking at them to move. I was looking at them for.

You know ideas and design stuff and that sort of thing and we had a very bespoke house in Clontarf which is where I was born and raised and I remember coming across one house in Wicklow and I said oh, that's a house I would swap this House for and it was, you know, near a lake and it had gardens and it had it just it was fabulous. But by the time I read the article it was sold.

But it was the first time I'd ever seen another property that I would be willing to give up my home for, because that's what it felt like. So then kind of my, you know, my kids had grown up, they left home, we had the pandemic.

My husband and I had actually become aware that we were a little bit like ships passing in the night because he was travelling for work. I was travelling for work, giving talks etcetera and we had four dogs that we adored, so it wasn't the case like a lot of people can manage relationships like that by both going away at the same time. But we were kind of going well. Will you be home for the dogs?

00:25:43 Doctor Sabina Brennan

My flight is at this time and that time, so it was very funny actually. The Christmas before the pandemic we had said right, we need to make a conscious effort to do more things together and watch our time apart, we were kind of aware of that. And then of course the pandemic came and then I suppose a lot of people start like a lot of people, you start to just sort of reassess things. So we started looking for houses and basically how I coming back in the long winded way to ask how I made decisions. I'm an excel freak.

So I gained and that's how I would gain clarity. So I literally had an Excel file with everything that I had to have, so I had to be near water, had to be within 60 to 90 minutes of Dublin airport, had to have gardens. That's what I wanted. I knew I was missing gardens and you know, we didn't have enough space. No neighbours. You know, in the sense of nobody, right beside you or looking over you. And it had to be either. Uh, really unique, modern house or a substantial period house. So I, you know, I mean, I lived and there was probably more items on the list if I went down it, but I was really clear.

00:26:57 Susy Kenefick

So it was very data-driven.

00:27:00 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Very data driven

00:27:01 Susy Kenefick

I think well, it's the head and the heart, isn't it? Because I think that the first part was the emotional realisation that actually I might be ready to do this. And I I'm not as attached to my home in the city as I thought I was

00:27:11 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Yeah.

00:27:11 Susy Kenefick

Was but then there was the process of going through it and actually working out what the different criteria were. Yeah, yeah.

00:27:11 Susy Kenefick

Was but then there was the process of going through it and actually working out what the different criteria were. Yeah, yeah.

00:27:14 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Yeah.

00:27:15 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Absolutely, absolutely. And actually in, in, in my next book that comes out, that's actually, it's really all these processes that I talk about and uh, so it's the neuroscience manifesting and a lot of manifesting projects start with, oh, get clarity about what you want. But actually I take it I have two or three chapters before that, the first one being actually to be compassionate about yourself, like, being kind to yourself on just, well, hold on.

And in a way, that's what I was doing with kind of go well, no, hold on. What do I want?

00:27:45 Áine McGuire

Yeah, What's going on for me?

00:27:45 Doctor Sabina Brennan

What? What? What do I need? Because you know you when you raise kids, you know?

00:27:52 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Well, well, certainly in my case, I think some of them were at home nearly up till they were 30, you know? And that was lovely, you know? And my son and my son-in-law lived with us for a few years before they even got married, you know. And that was lovely. So I did feel that huge loss when they all left. I'll be really honest that that was a bit. And I think that's a moment in a lot of people's lives.

Is that empty nest syndrome they call it, but it wasn't, you know, I mean, I had a job I had a career, but then there was a hole that I kind of felt needed to be filled, and I also felt needed to be filled between myself and my husband in that we needed a joint project

00:28:16 Aine Maguire

Because I was going to ask you, it was interesting that you talked about you're an Excel, you know, freak and you had all the things you wanted. And it sounds like a decision that you came to kind of emotionally as Susy said, but what I was going to ask was how do you collaborate with someone else to arrive the same decision?

00:28:49 Doctor Sabina Brennan

His reply is always once you're happy, I'm happy. Which is terrible in a way.

00:28:54 Susy Kenefick

Put a footnote on the spreadsheets

00:28:58 Doctor Sabina Brennan

There you go. Yeah.

00:28:55 Áine Maguire

Well, you could say that's a risk based decision making style for him

00:28:58 Doctor Sabina Brennan

There you go. Yeah.

00:29:01 Áine Maguire

Maybe this thing with the risk to my happiness is her unhappiness.

00:28:59 Doctor Sabina Brennan

That's probably true. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that is probably. I mean, I would be a driver of those kind of things, but I would then discuss them with him and say, well, you know this this this and this

00:29:15 Susy Kenefick

And I I think a lot of your life story shows that you're not someone who follows the linear or conventional path when it comes to the decisions that you make. So I wonder, would you see yourself as a little bit of a rebel when it comes to your decisions?

00:29:25 Doctor Sabina Brennan

I don't know about a bit of a rebel. I did want to be a rebel when I was younger. I had blue hair and shaved sides to my head. That kind of new romantic slash.

00:29:41 Áine Maguire

When we were talking earlier, I think this is the same point you're making. Susy, You were saying that you feel people are discouraged as they get older to make braver decisions and that you think that that that's unrealistic given the way we live now

00:29:54 Doctor Sabina Brennan

And I think the older I've got, the more valuable life has become and I think we have a lot of things the wrong way around in Western society we value youth, you know, the one thing we can't hold on to, you know, we age and actually ageing starts from the minute you're born. And so I think we live in an extremely ageist society and it's something I'm passionate about changing

00:30:20 Doctor Sabina Brennan

I have found that actually anytime I've ever spoke, I'm not on social media as much as I used to.

00:30:24 Doctor Sabina Brennan

But any time I've spoken out against ageism, the resistance I've got is incredible. People don't accept that it's, you know, a thing or that it's detrimental and it very much is a thing, particularly in our medical sphere. You know, you will get different treatment based on your age or you won't get treatment based on your age because you're not considered worthy

and to me, that's no different than treating someone by the shade of their skin, you know? Absolutely

00:30:54 Susy Kenefick

And you talk a lot about, you know, your work that we have an ageing population. So I think there's even more of an owners on older people now to plan for maybe perhaps more time than they thought they had and also what you talk about is is having that optimal brain health during that period, so you can really optimise that time.

00:31:09 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Well, you know what? Actually, if you keep active and you keep doing stuff, you're more likely to stay active and able to do stuff.

00:31:17 Susy Kenefick

But a self fulfilling prophecy, maybe if people can give up soon and I know you have a new book coming out on the 6th of June and I was wondering if you maybe wanted just to tell our listeners a little bit about.

00:31:20 Doctor Sabina Brennan

Yes.

00:31:26 Susy Kenefick

That it's called The Neuroscience of Manifesting.

00:31:28 Doctor Sabina Brennan

I suppose I kind of touched on it, really. You know that it's really just having taken the time to

delve into this notion that you can manifest the life you want. You can manifest a new reality and a lot of scientists would kind of diss it really and kind of go. Seriously, you know you can't magic a future, but I wanted to delve into it. And the more I delved into it, the

and the more I realised, well, I've manifested my dream life.

And there is a lot of science behind actually, if you hone it down to some of the key steps that are common across various practitioners, you realise essentially other well respected professions engage in those things like psychologists use visualisation, sports coaches use visualisation. And essentially it's goal directed behaviour. So it's about getting clarity around who you are, what you really want. I'm sure it's actually very akin to the kind of work that you do. It's about understanding yourself better, understanding why you're doing things and why you might feel at a crossroads, or why and what you might want to do differently. 

For me, from a neuroscience perspective, I kind of get people to question where like basically the story of you who you think you are is really just a story made-up by your brain from information. Yeah, it's just made-up. And. And so really I start the book by getting people to question where that information came from and whether it's remotely valid, whether it was ever even valid and to start making their new narrative.

Well, no, actually I'm a person who is good at this. No, actually, I'm a person who can do this or whatever and kind of then when you get to the point of understanding who you are, only then can you start to see what.

00:33:24 Áine Maguire

The possibilities are.

00:33:24 Doctor Sabina Brennan

What you might want.

00:33:26 Doctor Sabina Brennan

To do what you really what really gives you your joy, finding your joy and then having clarity about what that is and actually the steps that you need to take to get there and then making sure that that you have coherence across how you act, how you think and how you behave, they all have to be goal directed towards that and then you know actually taking action and moving towards that. So there's a lot of neuroscience to support kind of those steps and I suppose I just wanted to kind of sort of empower people with science to understand what they actually can achieve. And also I suppose I wanted to. When I call it weed out the “woo”. There is a lot of woo kind of around it, but there's really good solid core principles that are used by other sort of professionals that help people help guide people towards their goals.

00:34:23 Susy Kenefick

That sounds fascinating.

00:34:24 Áine Maguire

Well, Doctor Sabrina Brennan, thank you so much. And congratulations on the new book. And we hope we can talk to you again soon. Thank you

00:34:38 Susy Kenefick

So Áine, really enjoyed that discussion with Sabina and hearing about her, her decision making processes throughout her life. What in particular struck you about her story?

00:34:48 Áine Maguire

Very well. She's got an incredible sense of energy I think about her and how she seems to have packed in about 3 people's lives in, in, in one and she's only she made it very clear she's not done yet. So I thought it was it was just a very interesting story from a human perspective, 

I think from a decision making perspective there's lots to analyse there. I think the difference between how she made her decisions at different parts for her life, I think was really interesting and maybe relates to the story that she was telling herself at the time, and I think also I suppose the decision she made, for example, to go to college at 40 is a tough decision. It's one a lot of people make. It's one that actually in coaching comes up a lot when people decide that they need education or want education.

Or have time or capacity to explore things that they didn't have in in the field of education before now.

It's often a huge decision for people, but it's one that really challenges you and yourself concept of yourself, because often people at that stage have been quite, quite established and  have a lot of sort of self concept in terms of you know who they are and the decision to go back to sit in a room with people who are in their teens and 20s and have had a different education and don't have all the stresses, strains of life that you might have in your 40s is a really big one. And it really I think there's a vulnerability for people making that decision so I liked that.

00:36:19 Susy Kenefick

Yeah, I would agree with all that, but I think.

00:36:21 Susy Kenefick

Other thing that that struck me about that decision point in her life, the decision to leave her acting career and go to college, one might think that that was a really significant decision and that she would have laboured over it long and hard and it was. It was something that she had to consider but actually, what was fascinating was to learn that actually some of it was circumstantial. She was. She was told that her acting career was going to take a bit of a dip for a while and she thought, well, I'll just fill my time by going back to college or doing a night course or something like that and it shows how often times what emerges from circumstance can be quite significant and then through that path she found something that she was really passionate about in the academic sphere.

00:37:04 Áine Maguire

You're right about that and she made it clear she was devastated by the loss of the acting career. She clearly did a lot of grieving but yet managed to, you know, to do the grieving, allow herself to do that and then move on.

00:37:12 Susy Kenefick

Well, I'm not remotely religious, but I don't know. Is that another way of saying when God closes a door he opens the window somewhere. 

00:37:20 Áine Maguire

I think it is. Yeah, I think. But I think those phrases are motivate your phrases and what I think Sabina has, which maybe some of us need a bit more of a times is a great deal of motivation around the decisions she made.

But I suppose what she's she has also done is she's propelled herself towards things that she's, as she said herself, interested in, energised about, so that the hard work that comes from making a decision, as you have said a couple of times, making a decision simply leads to another set of decisions. But and but those decisions were easier for her and I thought the her experience at college was very interesting because she just put her head down and saw it as an opportunity to find out everything she could about something that really interested her. And it feels to me like listening to her talk about her life, that every decision she's made has uh propelled her and given her confidence and energy about making decisions in the future.

00:38:27 Susy Kenefick

Yeah and I think something that her story tells us aswell is that alot of decision making in yoru youth and in your formative years can be circumstantial, it can be for lots of different reasons that maybe you're not always consciously aware of but ultimately it's experimental and it involves a bit of trial and error, but through that process you might find the things that give you a sense of really who you are and where your authentic interests lie. 

And it's, you know, amassing that data as you go through life and then being able to paint that picture for yourself when you're a little bit older. So when it comes to decision making at a later stage in life, it's more informed and it is really more authentic. And it is more about who you are and that's that was what was, so I suppose, nice to hear when she talks about that decision to actually to leave Dublin and move out the country that that seemed to be such a considered decision and it seemed to be really, really rooted in who she was and what she decided was important for at this point in her life, yeah, I think.

00:39:08 Áine Maguire

You're right. And she was very clear that she knows who she is now. But I think her, the bit that was probably the most interesting for me was the reflecting bit that she. At the end, when I think she was saying I know who I am now, but looking back at maybe some of the decisions I made, I didn't really know who I was. And I think that's probably true that the decisions you make are earlier on in life when you've less self knowledge are ones you make to find out more about yourself. And I suppose the other thing that I thought was really relevant was her interest in ageism and decision making, and how people you know, are kind of forced to be a bit more conservative, or how there's an expectation of people being a bit more conservative and maybe as we as we live longer and hopefully have better brain health, we have more opportunities to make more bolder decisions than maybe people before us have had as we as we age.

00:40:03 Susy Kenefick

Yeah, I I think she's she's really on to something there and that's that's obviously something that will be close to a lot of people's hearts as they age, just having perhaps that different perspective about what does healthy look like into, you know, at a later stage in life.

I mean, maybe just just on a final point and something that struck me, which I'm not sure we've we've heard from from other guests, we've spoken to about decision making, but something about her experience going into academia having not been in that world before and how that might have influenced some of her decision making. She talked actually about maybe, somewhat counterintuitively. The naivety she had or the ignorance around the right way of doing this, or the process that you need to say to apply for a grant for scholarship funding and she just sort of threw her hat in the ring and thought, well, I'll give that a go because it's interesting. But she didn't know about all of the politics, maybe and and all of the conventions or the unspoken rules in that arena that might have perhaps influenced somebody else not to go ahead with something like that. And I think that's something that maybe we don't talk about enough in the context of decision making how sometimes being somewhat ignorant of the reality of the situation might work to your advantage.

00:41:13 Áine Maguire

Completely, I mean I think she was an outsider in in most of the decisions she discussed in the programme and yes, I was thinking, even if you were a, if you were a seasoned academic, you would have approached that decision to apply for the EU funding in a much different way, but not necessarily helpfully so and so I think it really just shows that maybe it's useful to be guided by your interests and your instincts and things that you're drawn to and that maybe we all need to have a bit of more courage of our convictions and to think about well, I'm interested in something. So there's something there for me. But also I think what she what she displays is she's not afraid to fail. She doesn't have her, her self concept is not invested in remaining successful. She's willing to be successful in something and then say that's ended and move on. And I'm going to here's something else I'm interested in this is an opportunity so she's good at reframing, which is what coaching is all about and saying this is an opportunity to go and investigate something else I'm interested in.

00:42:12 Susy Kenefick

Well, as you said, there's a huge power in the story we tell ourselves about ourselves and that maybe sometimes just letting go of that story and being prepared to adopt a different narrative could be could be equally powerful and open up all kinds of other opportunities. So yeah, a really, really rich and interesting discussion. And that's all we have time for today.

So thank you from Áine and I and we'll talk to you next time on the 37%.

(ending music playing quietly behind for final wrap up).

00:42:39 Susy Kenefick

Thank you for listening to the 37%. If you want to know more about us, what we do and how we might be able to help you with key decision you're considering, check out our website at www.persuasion.ie