A competitive young athlete striving to reach the top of their sport, discovers that their body is suffering and breaking down due to scoliosis. Facing an inoperable diagnosis in Europe, they must explore alternative treatments to heal their body and mind- is it enough to make them a champion? But little do they know, their journey will bring an unexpected awakening that will reshape their perception of the world…
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Show Notes | Transcript“I found myself kind of getting more tuned in, my awareness more focused in different ways, and just essentially able to grasp things better and more in the moment.” – Dr. Conor Hogan
Dr. Conor Hogan, an Irish thought leader in business and marketing, is recognized by Time for his expertise in integrating neurosocio data and experiences to facilitate higher performance. As the author of “The Gym Upstairs: The Neuroscience of Future Champions,” Dr. Hogan delves into the mind and mental processes of individuals and organizations.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Optimize your mental and physical performance by mastering the powerful connection between your mind and body.
- Discover unique and alternative methods to enhance your well-being and skyrocket your chances of success.
- Transform your life by learning to rewire your brain through consistent meditation and powerful visualization techniques.
- Find the perfect balance in using technology while still maintaining a mindful, growth-oriented mindset.
- Understand the undeniable impact that small habits, curiosity, and being present can have on accomplishing your goals and dreams.
Related Live. Love. Engage. episodes you may enjoy:
Transforming Subconscious Minds with Krishna Avalon
Healing through Body Memory Release with Tatiana Vilarea
Tapping into Your Body’s Wisdom with Leah McQuade
Resources:
Connect with Dr. Conor here
Join the Soulful Women’s Network here
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TRANSCRIPT
Gloria Grace Rand:
I am so glad to be with you again today. And of course, these are always my favorite episodes when I get to have a guest with us on the program. And today I have got lovely gentlemen coming to us all the way from Ireland. And for those of you who may not know if you’ve been listening to my podcast for a while, I live in Florida, so I’m in the United States. So we’ve got about a five hour time difference. So let me tell you a little bit about, uh, Dr. Conor Hogan. He has been acknowledged by Time as one of the most influential thought leaders in business and marketing. And he integrates neuro socio data and experiences by studying the mind and mental processes of individuals and organizations to facilitate higher performance. And, um, for those of you who are, have the option of watching this interview on YouTube, you will notice there’s a book behind his shoulder there. He is the author of the Gym Upstairs, the Neuroscience of Future Champions. So I want to officially welcome Dr. Conor to live, love, engage.
Dr Conor Hogan:
Thank you so much, Gloria. Thank you so much for having me.
Gloria Grace Rand:
Well, I am really looking forward to this cuz I, I met you, um, a little while ago at a, publicity summit, and I was intrigued by the, the work you do. I’m, shall we say, a brain geek. I love learning about how the mind works and, uh, and I seems to be that that’s a bit of your specialty as well. And I know one of the things that we talked about before setting up the interview was to now talk about optimizing your mental performance. And we’re, we’re gonna get into that in a minute, but I always love to start off my interviews with asking my guests a little bit about their background and what got you interested in the type of work that you’re doing.
Dr Conor Hogan:
Yeah, well, once upon a time, if we go back that far, but essentially when I was younger, I was into sport. And so I played a couple of sports here in Ireland and dreamed like most children, not boys, but girls also, of course, that they wanted to reach the top, the very top of the games that they played. And so I was no different. I wanted to do that and I practiced andtrained, read, watched, this is pre-internet, did all of the things that would help me achieve my very best. And in correlation with that, as I was growing up in my mid-teens, well early teens really, I started getting problems. But it was kind of unbeknownst to myself because I just felt, hey, you know, I’m growing physically and these are the challenges of everybody because as we all know, teenagers, they change shape, they change sound, they change in many, many different ways.
Dr Conor Hogan:
And so I didn’t really kind of compare myself to others in the way in the rate and, and how I was growing. And all of the, the incidences of kind of pains and aches I was getting, uh, until essentially when I was about 16, I just broke down physically. My body just kept getting injured when I was playing sport. Now I was a big guy by the way. I was like probably about six foot two, six foot three at that time. I’m six foot four now. And so yes, there was a big rate of growth throughout obviously my teenage years. But genetically I’m from a big family. And so by that time I was then using that strength and that kind of athletic ability, size. And obviously I practiced a lot and had certain abilities in the sports I was playing. And so I was using that to play beyond my years with senior, with adult players.
Dr Conor Hogan:
And so at 15, 16 years of age, I was physically obviously much bigger than many of the other players. And so, as well as that, we were doing training and, uh, practiced in a lot of athletic training was coming into the game, but the dieticians and all of those things never really came into the game. And so what was happening was we had a correlation of a bad diet, perhaps again, now we can look back with 20/20 vision, 20 odd years later. But also with this like sharp, harsher training regimes that essentially were duplicated by a lot of, uh, coaches that really just didn’t have the knowledge, didn’t have the ability, perhaps didn’t have the science behind them, and just so did what they saw on television, what they saw other champions were doing. And so my body just started breaking down.
Dr Conor Hogan:
And between the ages of about 16 to 20, there was just a catalog of injuries, a catalog of problems, and then it went deeper towards actual illnesses, sicknesses. I was on I think seven doses of antibiotics in a row at one stage. Oh man. And it was just ridiculous. I had a, you know, an operation on my nose and my nasal area. And of course there was other issues going on. I had a hernia at like 17 or something like that. It was crazy. And so old man injuries as such, old man illnesses. And it was all eventually put back to scoliosis where I had a twisted spine. And of course, many females listening or watching, would probably be more aware of this than males because I think it’s five or seven times more girls tend to get scoliosis. Now you can have it in a variety of ways and you can have it from birth and with a lot of other ailments or conditions, but also you can get it in your teenage years.
Dr Conor Hogan:
It’s called idio idiopathic scoliosis. And so for me it was like that. So obviously if you’re big and strong, you’re going to be, and these were contact sports, so you’re going to be targeted more. And so I was getting a lot of flack physically. My body was breaking down. It wasn’t able to take, I was getting all these illnesses. And so essentially I had to stop playing. And I went to medical practitioners and all the experts, and they told me I was, was inoperable in Europe. And so obviously I’m in Europe, I’m in Ireland, so therefore the operations would’ve potentially been in, in Europe. So, you know, you, you had all of these issues and then you’re, you’re 20 years of age, what do you do? So I had all this wealth of knowledge, all this kind of wealth of, um, drive, ambition and so on.
Dr Conor Hogan:
And so with the things that I was doing growing up, I wasn’t just reading into like physical things, but I was looking at the greats of all these sports and not just the native sports of Ireland, but also the native sports in America in all around Asia and Europe and so on. And the mindset and all of that area really kind of, uh, just really got I, I I got it, you know, I really enjoyed it. And so obviously when then physically I was inoperable in Europe, I was, uh, I had to go to other places. I had to figure out what was wrong with me. And so I went to what’s called a lot of alternative practitioners and a lot of those being known as complimentary practitioners now. And literally I spent my twenties with those type of people. And so I’d be lying down and physically they’d be doing work on my back or something like that.
Dr Conor Hogan:
And we’d just be chatting, discussing and learning. And I was learning so much about all the alternative things they were doing. And so I started studying myself and doing all these bunches of different courses. And eventually in the professional field, by the way, I was a teacher, I got into teaching. And so then in the teaching world, even though I was a high school teacher and then an elementary school teacher, I then fell into behavioral teaching. And that’s where all of my say ailment, sicknesses, conditions, studies, extra studies, and my healing and also my professional ability that I was working with as a teacher, kind of all crossed as a, at an intersection in a crossroads where I started working essentially during the day as a behavioral, uh, emotional social teacher with a lot of children who had, uh, depression depressive problems, were suicidal at even seven and eight years of age, uh, eating difficulties, had social problems at home and stuff like that. And also in the evenings I was coaching, I was helping out people, um, with regard to their mindset, with regard to their brains, their bodies and so on. And the mind body connection was huge for me then. And so it all just kind of came in together and finished my studies and here I am.
Gloria Grace Rand:
Hmm. Wow. Was there one particular alternative modality or anything that you found that really seemed to be the thing that really sort of started shifting the tide for you physically and, and maybe even mentally as well?
Dr Conor Hogan:
Yes and no. The no part I’d say first, right? Because what I found was, it’s almost like if we think of courses, right? Courses of education, whether we’re in high school or in college or school or whatever else, if we break it down, we have modules. And if I look at, say, everything I did, let’s just use the word or the term therapy that I did, if I break it down further each therapy into each module, yes, there was kind of like modules of each thing I did that then I felt better, perhaps temporarily or physically better, more long term. But then I kind of had to realize, look, I need to pull the, the horse by the reins here myself. I need to take more control of this. And so that’s when I started like saying to myself, you know what I’m going to do here?
Dr Conor Hogan:
I’m going to qualify everything that I find beneficial and obviously don’t bother the rest. And again, if there’s only one module of each therapy there that I find beneficial, well then as you just said there, and here’s coming to the yes part with regard to not just the body, but if it helps your mind. And coincidentally it did. So I didn’t realize that, you know, I had problems mentally or anything like that, but it wasn’t so much that I did, I really didn’t, I was probably an ordinary guy, but I found myself kind of getting more tuned in my awareness, more focused in different ways and just essentially able to grasp things better and more in the moment. And for certain, one of the things that got the ball rolling for sure was yoga. And again, you can think of a big guy, six foot four inches tall mad into sport and macho and all of this kind of stuff.
Dr Conor Hogan:
And then having to go into a yoga class. And I remember my very first yoga class where I was like the most uncoordinated with regard to these stretches as I knew them at the time. And all of these positions and, you know, even the gear and what they were wearing, the uniforms. And then I go in and there’s like 30 beautiful women and I’m like, okay, this is strange. So I’m at the back of the class and because I was so big, it was like in a chalet, a beautiful, uh, type chalet on the water. And literally, I don’t think I had headroom, so like arms over the head kind of thing. It just wasn’t working for me. And I came out worse, I’ll be honest, the teacher was fantastic, but I came out worse with like all these pulls and strains because I physically was too big for the area that it was being taught in.
Dr Conor Hogan:
And so, you know, just even doing, working on the body, the mind followed. And then I realized that the connection that’s, that’s essentially there. And again, even previous to that, like I said before, just lying on plinths or beds with therapists there and just going into a session with the good therapist or good therapy and coming out, just the difference that you’d have in the mind. And when I say the mind, by the way, this is like interchangeable with the brain because of course, at the time I didn’t realize what was going on. You know, I didn’t realize what part of my brain was perhaps relaxing as opposed to being anxious, you know, with somebody touching you that you didn’t know that was new or whatever else. And so, yeah, there was like, it, it was really a journey all the way through.
Gloria Grace Rand:
So how can someone optimize their mental performance since that’s, I, I guess that’s, is that what the book then essentially is about? Or actually, yeah. Lemme go back there. First. Let’s, let’s talk about what, what is your book about a little bit and then we’ll then we’ll kind of go there.
Dr Conor Hogan:
Yeah. Cool. So the gym upstairs, uh, as you said, there’s the gym upstairs, the neuroscience of Future champions. It’s, it’s set in a sporting context. So there’s a lot of research of NBA coaches, players. There’s NFL, there’s MLB, there’s Olympians, all champions, world record holders, soccer, you’ve got the premiership in England, you’ve got the Champions League, you’ve got, uh, the World Cup in soccer, which is coming up in the us are in it soon,
Dr Conor Hogan:
Now, that’s where I’m leaving the sporting part because pressure can come in anybody’s life at any time. You can find yourself under pressure at work. No matter what your occupation is, whether you’re an employee, uh, or an employer, whether you’re head of a company or a CEO or, or an entrepreneur or a startup or whatever else. Or if you’re a student, if you’re younger, male, female, and so on. So we, it’s how we perceive pressure, right? And then of course that has the flip effect on us physically with stress. And again, stress can be good or bad, right? It’s not just bad. And so if we can use that bridge from, say, when the pressure or we perceive pressure is coming along and we can use that and flip that over and use that in a more positive way, well then we can certainly attain and achieve and then have a future that we are champions essentially.
Dr Conor Hogan:
And that’s where the book kind of looks at that and looks at all these people, these high class athletes and coaches that are under pressure all of the time because their performance today is fantastic. If they win and they achieve and they score and so on. But tomorrow, next day, you know, they gotta prepare for the next outing in a couple of days time. And so the cons, especially now with social media, like everybody’s under the thurmb. For example, we have a fantastic athlete here in Europe. He’s won the World Cup and Soccer. His name is Paul Pogba, and he’s played with the top teams like Manchester United, Juventus and so on in Italy. And he’s an incredible guy. He’s a brand, he’s made himself a brand by tweeting and doing all these great things, but in the meantime, his career has just gone to the toilet.
Dr Conor Hogan:
So his performances have gone way down. And in fact, so many followers he has is that they’re more than Manchester United at one stage and one social media. So it, it’s ridiculous, you know, and Manchester United, it’s massive and huge in Asia and Europe and so on all around the world. But it just shows you the changing times that athletes and people we all find ourselves in, because we have these smartphones now, they’re not going to go anywhere. We’re going to get watches and glasses or eye goggles and goggles, whatever else in the future as well as the internet explores and expands. So again, pressure and how we perceive that and how we put that into our daily context and how we want to achieve in life is looked at within the book.
Gloria Grace Rand:
Now, did you find any similarities in, in the athletes you wrote about in the book of what they were doing to be able to manage that pressure and, and use it to help them to be, you know, champions?
Dr Conor Hogan:
Yeah, so the interesting thing, obviously you’ve got a lot of athletes that almost have ability when they’re very young and then they come up to say 18, 20 years of age. And because they have been talented and because there’s a lot of footage perhaps online and when they were younger playing and that, that they just literally slip into a team where they, they just achieve. So they’re used to achieving, they’re used to pushing themselves. So things like that, for some of them are definitely very, um, definitely very kind of, you know, it, it’s, it’s regular, but there’s also others that are in another way. So they’re more developmental. So physically they might be as developed and they might have just peaked really at 18, 20, even 25 years of age. And again, it depends on the sport, it depends on the particular thing. But the one thing is their mindset with regard to how they see the world.
Dr Conor Hogan:
Like it’s bigger, right? They, they start going, well, I wanna be at the very top and I know one can be there, right? So if I wanna be a top, uh, footballer or I wanna be a top, uh, basketball player or whatever else, you know, they see the road, they begin to plan it. And if we look at the brain and the human brain, a lot of things that are like not working when people like say five years of age or 10 years of age, or 15, 20, even 30 or 40, 50 years of age, and they go, Hey, I wanna be this or I wanna develop into this, that area of the brain is like the frontal cortex. Like it’s also referred to as the CEO almost of our like whole brain structure. So if we think of a company and the CEO is the head and you’ve got the COO and all the accountants and the human resource people and all the other areas of the, uh, company, it’s the same way.
Dr Conor Hogan:
You’ve got the CEO so that the frontal cortex just over, uh, or behind our forehead, over our eyes and that area of the brain is showing us how we can direct ourselves, how we can plan, how we can organize, how we can facilitate and use timing better in many ways as well. And so a lot of these people that have looked at, they’re able to do that at a younger age group so they can see things, they can actually then go and do things and take the action. So like no matter what we’re doing, whether it’s health, wealth, relationships, whatever aspect of life, we all only have 24 hours in a day. We only have seven days in a week and god knows how many weeks we have and months and so on. But it’s how we use that time. And if we can’t have the, let’s say, over overarching belief in ourselves to be able to plan, organize, and so on, then we’re not going to use that time in a better way to develop probabilities or to be, and again, athletes take athletes as a good example.
Dr Conor Hogan:
Again, like I said before, somebody who has all of the ability, bags of ability physically perfectly, um, can just seamlessly go into a sport at any level, top level at 18, 20 years of age, but they can get injured. And that’s one thing that say a 40 or 50 or 60 year old person doesn’t really get, or, you know, has to worry about essentially when they’re working or in their relationships. Cuz injury is not a big thing. So they can’t be pushed, they can’t be physically, you know, challenged in that way. But we do have in life, in other aspects of life, of course sickness and illness. And that’s where a lot of kind of future research is looking at as well, with regard to how we can think ourselves better. How much, say for example, if we look at the realm of depression, again in a lot of studies in depression, and of course there’s many, many different types of the depression, but a lot of kind of studies on depression, you can see this area of the brain, again, the frontal cortex is these people have not got as developed an area.
Dr Conor Hogan:
Now traditionally you’ve got the younger people, they physically, the the brain physically is not developed until like mid twenties anyway. And so that’s why we got a lot of students or whatever doing goofy things and parents kind of go, why did you do do that? Like, what was the reason? You know, we told you so many times, but as we know, young people need to experience, so they need to do, it’s not just, Hey, listen to your mom, listen to your dad, and then, you know, not do it. Like, it’s like you gotta do it, you know? So it, that’s why peers and peer pressure are so, uh, important and so revolutionary, good or bad. And so yeah, it, you know, it can affect all areas of life in many ways.
Gloria Grace Rand:
You had said, how can we actually then mo optimize our mental performance? Cuz you said that we, what actually concretely could we do, you know, every day to be able to, you know, get our minds focused on accomplishing whatever it is that we wanna do each day?
Dr Conor Hogan:
Yeah. So first off, and this is really important and it sounds very basic, but first off, we have to habitually do it. We really have to sit down and do it like every other thing we’ve had to learn up until this moment in time, like brushing our teeth, tying our shoe laces. We have to commit to a practice and doing this. The next thing is to do it as much as humanly possible as early as possible in the morning time. And so when we commit to that and we do it over time, our brain changes. So there’s studies on this where brains can physically change and there’s huge technology out there with regard to how we can look and envision the brain and see what happens. And with all the different technologies out there, they can see that several procedures as a base together and use in the correct manner can actually help rewire our brains over time.
Dr Conor Hogan:
And that includes, by the way, you know, and I mentioned a lot of people who are 18, 20 years of age, but also includes older people, 40, 50, 60, and even older. Again, we can rewire our brains call this neuroplasticity that’s out there. And so there’s a lot of technology out there, okay? And we, yes, we can use a lot of technological things, but we don’t need to do that. That’s the beautiful thing. If we literally use several things like meditation, our senses, then if we use the things like our visualizations correctly, if use things like how we speak and speak to ourselves, more specifically our affirmations, how we write all of the things that all of our physical body can do, how it senses and perceives things, if we can orchestrate that with regard to our intention of what we want to achieve, we certainly can get there.
Dr Conor Hogan:
Now does that mean it will happen overnight? No, it doesn’t mean that there’s no quick fix. However, there’s one thing guaranteed if you go the other route and you don’t do that, you don’t organize yourself, you don’t try to optimize yourself, you will definitely not achieve because it’s like winning the lottery. It’s like trying to go viral online or something. Try and go viral the second time and you won’t be able to do it because you just don’t have a strategy. You don’t have a way of doing it. So the science is saying all of these things, if we can use what we have and how we see things and how we hear things and how we think then and how we practice with those procedures in place, and that cocktail of how we use it like in the morning time and all of those different things is really important that will optimize ourselves.
Dr Conor Hogan:
Now, I said, okay, you won’t get like overnight kind of, um, changing or alterations or improvements, but how long is the average? Usually within a few months. Okay. Now that might sound like a huge thing to a lot of people, especially younger people, like, oh my god, I have to wait a few months. But remember, you’re physically changing your brain and what does your brain do? Your brain then controls your body, but it also controls how you communicate. It also controls everything else, everything else like our digestion system, everything else. So if we take for example, weight gain, very simple example. There’s so many people in this especially western world who are overweight. Okay? The human body is not hugely different in the west of the world as it is in the east of the world. And so why then though, we have this huge difference.
Dr Conor Hogan:
So it has to come down to how we think about what we eat, how we think about other aspects of our life. And usually 18 plus year olds don’t have people that are grabbing food and putting it in their own mouths. It’s usually yourself that does that. And so yes, consciously we are doing something, or maybe it’s not conscious, maybe it’s subconsciously where we’re actually eating. We’re, you know, having a bigger plate. We’re actually putting more pro, portions on our plate. We’re eating at certain times, we’re eating all that stuff and so on. So maybe consciously, yes, we can understand it, but we’re not being conscious when we’re doing it. And so when we rewire our brains, even with that general example, we’re consciously and very confidently able to know that, Hey, I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna eat this amount, you know, eat it at this time.
Dr Conor Hogan:
I’m going to eat this specific type of food and so on. And it’s going to help me. Why? Because in a week I’ll be a pound lighter or two pounds lighter, or in a month I’ll be fitter or whatever else. And I have a goal. And again, going back to goals, going back to planning organization and that part of the brain and being able to train it. So it’s like the dog, you know, you’re, you’re walking your dog, is the dog walking you or you walking your dog? Right? And there’s so many different things in this world now that are leading us astray individually and meeting people. I did a particular podcast there recently, and it was an interesting fact that came out, which I didn’t know. I was told by the presenter, which was 85% of people are unhappy at work.
Dr Conor Hogan:
Now I won’t doubt this person because they’re top, top person with regard to, I mean, they’re like one of the creators on LinkedIn. LinkedIn have reached out to them and so on. 85%. Like, think of that. Like, that’s huge. So that means there’s people ghost walking through their days unhappy largely with what they’re doing. You know, they’re waking up in the morning like unmotivated, truly unmotivated. So you only have to take a few minutes every day to look at yourself and say, okay, gosh, what am I doing here? You know, I need to put in place something else, a different plan, and this will scientifically be proven to control me, to control myself. And that’s where Freud and all the psychology, like this self and the ego, you can kind of grab the leash, grab the dog, and pull it along, rather than being pulled along by the dog. So yeah. Yeah, it’s, we just really need to take control of ourselves a little bit more, I think.
Gloria Grace Rand:
And, and that’s it. It really is. It’s about deciding, you know, what is it that you really want and then taking action to do it. And I, and I would just also remind people that when you’re at least, and, and certainly I’ve, I’ve had this in my experience, but I know I’ve also read it as well, is that when you want to make some serious changes, like say in your life, maybe you can comment on this as well, is, you know, don’t try to change everything all at once. Start with like one thing. So say you decide, okay, I wanna start meditating. Okay? So you could start doing that and, you know, spend some time say, okay, I’m gonna spend some time every morning, you know, spending a few minutes in meditation. And then after you’ve done that for maybe a month or six weeks or something, then you can start tackling, okay, well now I wanna improve my diet. What can I do in that area? Because if you try to make all of these radical changes, you just overwhelm yourself and then nothing gets done again. What, what do you think? Have you found that as well?
Dr Conor Hogan:
I couldn’t agree more with you. Right? It’s like, I’m, I’m so glad you brought up meditation because if somebody wants to come to me and do work with regard to like a huge achievement based thing, I insist on meditation. I absolutely insist on it. So I look at it like this with regard to think of an artist, right? A visual artist, visual artist will have a canvas and it will be a blank canvas. They will go down and they will pay money for this. And as we know, like we look at all the things in the world and consumerism, productivity and so on, there’s so many mach machines out there, there’s so many different, uh, ways now through globalization. Here we are in a podcast, you know, speaking across two different continents, ways of communicating and so on. And so there’s ways of manufacturing things like visual art pieces.
Dr Conor Hogan:
But if you are an individual artiste and you’re truly wanting to paint a unique picture, you’re physically having to go down and put money into a picture of a canvas or a blank slate as such. And then you have to create, and more than likely without a mistake, you have to get it right first time. So what meditation does is it allows you to have a blank canvas to do all the other things, all the other methodologies. So that on top of that you are painting your perceptions from, as I said, you know, what you hear, what you see, how you see it, and all of these things. And then how you can put it in place and think of the picture then and shape it going forward. So it’s really important to have that blank canvas. And what we have right now in the world is a lot of, with all the great things like technology and super, super, um, manufacturing and speed and internet and you know, we have got 3g, 4g, 5g, and you know, technology everywhere, people everywhere, wonderful, exciting.
Dr Conor Hogan:
But it can also distract us. And that’s the other thing. Cause our brains can truly only do one thing at a time. And so if we’re trying to do something new, like do all the things I’m saying and change a lot life overnight and things like that, we have to just integrate one thing at a time and then get really good at that, then get comfortable with that. And it’s like, remember I remember many years ago when I was starting researching and I was asking like a supervisor, well how much is too much? Where do I go? Like how do I know? I like, do I need to get 50 people? Do I need to get a hundred? Whatever? And the answer I was given was, until you start seeing the, the research or the same authors or the same things, being duplicated. Being replicated. And so if you get really comfortable with, say for example meditation, you’ll know the day you don’t meditate or the week you don’t meditate or the time you travel or the stresses that come on you from outside, you’ll know your personal reaction to that and how you should alter yourself or double down, do a bit more meditation or whatever else. And so keep that blank canvas, that blank slate and then work from there.
Gloria Grace Rand:
Yeah. I couldn’t agree more
Dr Conor Hogan:
And the human beings haven’t really changed size that much, you know? Yeah. The babies are coming out within a pound of each other, whatever else. So yeah, it’s like if you become accustomed to something, it’s like even the lockdowns, you know? If you’re used to doing certain things in the lockdowns, more than likely your kind of good or bad habits Yep. Have now changed the way you spend time or who you spend time with and so on. And that’s probably not going to change again until something the opposite of a lockdown is going to happen perhaps. Right. And you’re enforced to do it. Yeah. And yeah, I mean it’s the same here in Ireland, it’s really interesting because I first went to the states when I was 20 and that was in the year 2000. And so when I went into a shop there, I remember seeing all these different candy bars that were totally different.
Dr Conor Hogan:
Candy bars that what we had in Ireland or in Europe. Now some were the same, but many were different. And so what struck me was not only the, the sh the obviously the packaging was really cool. Yeah. And different colors and shapes and so on. But it was the size, size was just alarming to me. And it’s funny because when I was younger there was a lot of, obviously we, like, there’s huge history between say Ireland and the US right? There’s, there was a movie, wasn’t there, um, the Irish built in New York and that. So you’ve got like so many, like even my, my family and my, um, I have a lot of second cousins in the US that I’ve never met, for example. But for example, you know, the size of that, the changes, I mean like in Ireland at the time, we had U.S. visitors regularly and they were a little bit overweight and Irish people were not. And now 20 years later we have those chocolate bars and brands here and the sizes have got bigger as well. Guess what happens? We have the people now that are big as well. Yeah. And so it’s spread and so you’ve got this like huge portion and that, that’s just on portion alone.
Gloria Grace Rand:
It yeah, it is. Yeah. I’ve been watching some documentaries about, well about, uh, entertainment and just the messages that the United States has been exporting all over the world. Not always the greatest, but again, that’s for maybe another show,
Dr Conor Hogan:
Well, honestly, I’m curious about a lot of things. It’s funny because I said with regard to the brain can only do one thing at a time. I think it’s like, there’s some things that we, we need to realize, like people are fun, they’re entertaining, they’re educational. The night you feel nice to be around them if they have a variety of things to sincerely be interested in rather than like talking about whatever else. Um, but you have to be curious, I think being curious is, is one of the life kind of affirming dictators of our being. Just to kind of be curious about the next thing or what if I do this, what if I do that ?When you’re a child, we’ve all been in the back of the car or the back of the bus, where, where are we going next? You know, we hear that kind of, are we nearly there yet?
Dr Conor Hogan:
Kind of thing. And so you’re, you’re curious about like, well, is it going to be this way or is it gonna be that way? Or, um, what is that person going to be like? You know, you have to be curious about something if you get into the humdrum in life, in any aspect of life, job, again, relationships, you know, you know, we hear these words like spice it up, things like that. You know, in jobs, if you don’t have the ability to grow, if you don’t have the ability to get a promotion or at least compete for one, you become stale. And it’s the same way in, you know, we talk about athletes, you know, if they win something and, and that’s it, that’s fantastic. But if they attain everything, they get world acclaim, wonderful. You’re only 22, what next? You know, unless you set the bar to, I wanna win five or 10 more of these or 20 more, or whatever else. I mean, like, what else is there? So you have to realize that. And, and then of course people were tired, be in sports or in life or they change jobs. Again, we’ve talked about the, the lockdown. So we, I think being constantly curious and going back on meditation, one of the things, the benefits of meditation is those little kind of, we call them back thoughts or you know, around the corner thoughts, they’ll come to the fore and that’s where your instinct kick kicks in and that’s where you feel more confident in yourself going forward.
Gloria Grace Rand:
If someone is listening to this today and would like to maybe even get a copy of your book or learn more about what you do, where’s the best place for people to, uh, connect with you?
Dr Conor Hogan:
Yeah, sure. So you can go on, obviously the book, the gym upstairs is on amazon.com. It’s also on all the other Amazons. And also if you want, you can just go to my website docconor.com, D o c c o n o or.com. You can just shoot me an email if you want. Worst case scenario, I’ll just redirect you to something or somebody else. But it’s, it’s always great to help, always great to connect as well. And that satisfies curiosity for a lot and for me too,
Gloria Grace Rand:
Dr Conor Hogan:
Thank you so much, Gloria, for having me.
Gloria Grace Rand:
And I again, just wanna thank all of you for listening and for watching. And I encourage you, if you did receive some benefit out of this today to tell a friend about the show, share it with them, and make sure that you are subscribed either on YouTube, at Gloria Grace Rand, or on your favorite podcast platform. And until next time, as always, I encourage you to go out and live fully, love deeply, and engage authentically.
