Did you know that there is a way to train your attention, feel more emotionally regulated, and generally feel less stressed? And it only takes a few minutes a day. It costs nothing, and it’s something you can do with your kids too. It’s meditation, and it’s something that you can easily learn even if you are not a spiritual person.

In this episode I’m going to cover how to meditate, so that if you’re a beginner you can feel comfortable getting started, and what actually happens when you meditate. Listen out for the amazing info about why it’s ok for your mind to wander!

I’ll also cover the brain science on what happens when you’re meditating, and some of the benefits to cognition and emotions that have been found in the research.

If you want to dive into further with meditation, try the following options. They’re not sponsors, but they’re great resources!

Find out more about the basics of meditation from expert Tara Brach: https://www.tarabrach.com/howtomeditate/

There are many mediation apps, but I can personally recommend these to get started: Insight Timer, Smiling Mind.

Papers mentioned in the episode:

Bostock, S., Crosswell, A. D., Prather, A. A., & Steptoe, A. (2019). Mindfulness on-the-go: Effects of a mindfulness meditation app on work stress and well-being. Journal of occupational health psychology, 24(1), 127.

Hasenkamp, W., Wilson-Mendenhall, C. D., Duncan, E., & Barsalou, L. W. (2012). Mind wandering and attention during focused meditation: a fine-grained temporal analysis of fluctuating cognitive states. Neuroimage, 59(1), 750-760.

Norris, C. J., Creem, D., Hendler, R., & Kober, H. (2018). Brief mindfulness meditation improves attention in novices: Evidence from ERPs and moderation by neuroticism. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 12, 277779.

Stapleton, P., Dispenza, J., Douglas, A., Dao, V., Kewin, S., Le Sech, K., & Vasudevan, A. (2024). “Let's keep calm and breathe”—A mindfulness meditation program in school and its effects on children's behavior and emotional awareness: An Australian pilot study. Psychology in the Schools, 61, 3679–3698.

Tang, Y. Y., Hölzel, B. K., & Posner, M. I. (2015). The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation. Nature reviews neuroscience, 16(4), 213-225.

Tang, R., Friston, K. J., & Tang, Y. Y. (2020). Brief mindfulness meditation induces gray matter changes in a brain hub. Neural plasticity, 2020(1), 8830005.

Tsai, S. Y., Jaiswal, S., Chang, C. F., Liang, W. K., Muggleton, N. G., & Juan, C. H. (2018). Meditation effects on the control of involuntary contingent reorienting revealed with electroencephalographic and behavioral evidence. Frontiers in integrative neuroscience, 12, 17.

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⏳️ Want to dive in further? Join my signature time management course TIMEWISE where you’ll learn how to move from busy and burnt out to feeling productive and at ease. Go to liveanintentionallife.com.au/timewise to learn more.

📝 If you’re looking to take the ideas in the podcast and turn them into meaningful action, go to my online store where you’ll find beautifully designed workbooks and planners that help support your personal development. Go to my Etsy store at www.etsy.com/au/shop/AnIntentionalLifeAU. Use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off!

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Struggling to focus? There are so many distractions these days, and it’s hard to know how to sit down and do deep work. Without an intentional plan, you may get to the end of the day and realise you didn’t actually do what you should have done, and you end up feeling frustrated and defeated.

Doing meaningful work is satisfying and important, and in this episode you’ll learn exactly how to focus your attention so that you can work at your best. I explain a two-part framework of how the attention system actually works, and then cover EIGHT strategies and tips that will help you focus based on this attentional framework.

Scientific articles for further reference:

Basu, S., & Banerjee, B. (2023). Potential of binaural beats intervention for improving memory and attention: insights from meta-analysis and systematic review. Psychological Research, 87(4), 951-963.

Beck, M. R., Trenchard, M., Van Lamsweerde, A., Goldstein, R. R., & Lohrenz, M. (2012, September). Searching in clutter: Visual attention strategies of expert pilots. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society annual meeting (Vol. 56, No. 1, pp. 1411-1415). Sage CA: Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.

Katsuki, F., & Constantinidis, C. (2014). Bottom-up and top-down attention: different processes and overlapping neural systems. The Neuroscientist, 20(5), 509-521.

⏳️ Want to dive in further? Join my signature time management course TIMEWISE where you’ll learn how to move from busy and burnt out to feeling productive and at ease. Go to liveanintentionallife.com.au/timewise to learn more.

📝 If you’re looking to take the ideas in the podcast and turn them into meaningful action, go to my online store where you’ll find beautifully designed workbooks and planners that help support your personal development. Go to my Etsy store at www.etsy.com/au/shop/AnIntentionalLifeAU. Use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off!

✨️Follow me on Instagram for all the latest tips and inspiration: instagram.com/live.an.intentional.life

🎙 Don’t forget to rate and review the show so you can feel really good on the inside! Subscribe to the podcast to hear about new episodes.

Have you ever felt so overwhelmed, like your brain is totally full and you just can’t think straight?! In this episode, I’m going to show you five tips on how to support your brain so that you can kick stress to the curb.

Your working memory is a really important cognitive skill, and I explain what it is, how it works, and exactly what you can do today to start reducing the load on your mind so that you can feel more at ease.

Relevant research articles:

Baddeley, A. (1992). Working memory. Science, 255(5044), 556-559.
D'Esposito, M., & Postle, B. R. (2015). The cognitive neuroscience of working memory. Annual review of psychology, 66(1), 115-142.
Klabes, J., Babilon, S., Zandi, B., & Khanh, T. Q. (2021). The sternberg paradigm: Correcting encoding latencies in visual and auditory test designs. Vision, 5(2), 21.
Nückles, M., Roelle, J., Glogger-Frey, I., Waldeyer, J., & Renkl, A. (2020). The self-regulation-view in writing-to-learn: Using journal writing to optimize cognitive load in self-regulated learning. Educational Psychology Review, 32(4), 1089-1126.
Sternberg, S. (1966). High-speed scanning in human memory. science, 153(3736), 652-654.

⏳️ Want to dive in further? Join my signature time management course TIMEWISE where you’ll learn how to move from busy and burnt out to feeling productive and at ease. Go to liveanintentionallife.com.au/timewise to learn more.

📝 If you’re looking to take the ideas in the podcast and turn them into meaningful action, go to my online store where you’ll find beautifully designed workbooks and planners that help support your personal development. Go to my Etsy store at www.etsy.com/au/shop/AnIntentionalLifeAU. Use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off!

✨️Follow me on Instagram for all the latest tips and inspiration: instagram.com/live.an.intentional.life

🎙 Don’t forget to rate and review the show so you can feel really good on the inside! Subscribe to the podcast to hear about new episodes.

I have had some pretty major changes in my life, and it’s only been in the last 7 years or so that I’ve really intentionally decided what I want from my life, and took small regular actions to get there.

This is my story on what I went through when my marriage ended, and how I changed my career from neuropsychologist to graphic designer and life coach.

I also discuss four lessons that I’m working on at the moment in my personal development.

Listen to this episode to be inspired to dream big and make your own changes to your life, and get to know me a little more.

P.S.! The book I mention in the episode by Kristina Karlsson is actually called Your Dream Life Starts Here - oops!

📚 Prefer to read? Check out this episode on the blog: https://liveanintentionallife.com.au/blog/my-personal-story

⏳️ Want to dive in further? Join my signature time management course TIMEWISE where you’ll learn how to move from busy and burnt out to feeling productive and at ease. Go to liveanintentionallife.com.au/timewise to learn more.

📝 If you’re looking to take the ideas in the podcast and turn them into meaningful action, go to my online store where you’ll find beautifully designed workbooks and planners that help support your personal development. Go to my Etsy store at www.etsy.com/au/shop/AnIntentionalLifeAU. Use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off!

✨️Follow me on Instagram for all the latest tips and inspiration: instagram.com/live.an.intentional.life

🎙 Don’t forget to rate and review the show so you can feel really good on the inside! Subscribe to the podcast to hear about new episodes.

In this very first episode I share 12 principles to living an intentional life, which is what my business is all about. My focus in the personal development space is on learning about your cognition and how your brain works, so that you can find that elusive balance between meaningful work, quality play, and restful sleep.

This podcast is for you if you are a working parent who is burning the candle at both ends, but want to spend your days doing the stuff that lights you up - but you don’t know where to start! You’re on the hamster wheel and you’ve blinked and a year’s gone by. It’s time to make YOU a priority, by learning about your brain, time management, and achieving goals, and then start putting it all into action.

I’m Dr Natalie Barre, and I want to show you how to craft the life of your dreams.

I mention the following research article in the episode: Job, V., Walton, G. M., Bernecker, K., & Dweck, C. S. (2013). Beliefs about willpower determine the impact of glucose on self-control. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(37), 14837-14842.

📚 Prefer to read? Check out this episode on the blog! https://liveanintentionallife.com.au/blog/life-of-your-dreams

⏳️ Want to dive in further? Join my signature time management course TIMEWISE where you’ll learn how to move from busy and burnt out to feeling productive and at ease. Go to liveanintentionallife.com.au/timewise to learn more.

📝 If you’re looking to take the ideas in the podcast and turn them into meaningful action, go to my online store where you’ll find beautifully designed workbooks and planners that help support your personal development. Go to my Etsy store at www.etsy.com/au/shop/AnIntentionalLifeAU. Use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off!

✨️Follow me on Instagram for all the latest tips and inspiration: instagram.com/live.an.intentional.life

🎙 Don’t forget to rate and review the show so you can feel really good on the inside! Subscribe to the podcast to hear about new episodes.