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---Transcript---When people talk about skincare, everyone thinks of products but there's so much more to it. Today I want to tell you how the way you perceive yourself has a direct influence upon the way you look and your actual physical aging process. We'll start with the study done by rogue psychologists who designed an experiment on a group of 75 year olds to prove this hypothesis.  So the big question is this - What do people with great skin do differently to have that? How did they achieve a great look without using celebrity beauticians or spending a paycheck to re-stock their beauty cabinet? What are their mindsets, their approaches, their rituals, the products and tools they use? That is the question and as podcast will give you the answers. My name is Damyan Nikolov and welcome to Skincare Secrets.  Welcome to Episode 8 of the Skincare Secrets show. I'm extremely grateful to everyone who subscribed, rated, and reviewed so far. If you haven't yet, please do so. Now let's get back to our rogue psychologist. The participants in this study knew very little about the nature of the experiment except that they would be at a retreat center and they could bring only pictures, newspapers, magazines, and personal belongings from 20 years ago.  When they arrived, the participants were gathered in a room and told they were to pretend as though it was 20 years ago and they were 55. To really enforce this role play they were supposed to dress and act like they did at that time. They were given I.D. badges with pictures of themselves from 20 years ago. Over the course of the experiment they were instructed to talk about whoever the President was twenty years ago and events in their lives that happened at the time. Some actually started referring to their old jobs in a present tense. They really got into it! To enforce the environment there were newspapers and magazines from back in that time displayed on the coffee tables. In short, everything was designed to make them see the world through this kind of positive, younger lens as if they were 55 and the results were nothing short of stunning.  Before the retreat the participants were tested on every aspect that deteriorates with age - physical strength, posture, perception, vision, short term memory, etc.. After the retreat most of them had improved in every single category. They were significantly more flexible, even though they actually didn't do yoga or any other exercise. They had better posture, even though there was no chiropractic adjustments. They had improved their hand strength, even though there was no weightlifting involved. Their vision, on average, improved by almost 10% and so did their memory. In more than half of the participants their intelligence, their IQ, which for the longest time has been thought to be fixed in adults, had improved as well.  Even their physical appearance changed. Random people who didn't know anything about the experiment were given photos of the people, before and after the experiment, and were asked to guess their age. Based on this objective evaluation people looked, on average, three years younger compared to when they started. All this because they were in this positive and uplifting state of mind acting twenty years younger. The most amazing part about this experiment is that the entire retreat only lasted one week. Imagine if you can cultivate such a positive/uplifting mindset throughout your entire life.  This experiment proves that your physical appearance is very highly dependent on your mindset and how you perceive yourself. Science has proven that positive happy brains have a biological advantage over brains that are neutral or negative. This holds when it comes to relationships, when it comes to health, when it comes to personal finances, and certainly when it comes to your physical appearance. On the opposite side even small bursts of negative brain activity can make us weaker, more prone to getting sick etc..  So the question is, how do we get our brain to be in this positive state of mind so it can serve us well? Our state of mind is, to a significant extent, determined by our environment. It is the average of all the positive and negative influences we are subject to every day. If you want to bring up the average, the easiest place to start is to cut out as many negative influences as possible. And where do most negative influences in our lives come from? It's from our social circle.  I had a childhood friend who was very dear to me up until my late 20s. Most times when we spoke, it was mostly a vent session. He would talk about issues at home, issues at work, drama with family. Something was always wrong. He's very much drilling into everything that was not going well, spewing this kind of negative energy and my natural reaction was to listen, to agree, to say "things will be alright", to say "tomorrow's another day", to point out good things we should focus on, to organize maybe some fun stuff that we can do together.  At some point I realized what I was doing. While he was offloading his emotional baggage, I was loading up my brain with it. While he was getting rid of negative energy, I was absorbing it. I catched myself being pissed off about similar things in my life, things that were always there and were not a big deal to me before, but now I was focusing on them as an issue. All because I have adopted this negative viewpoint and I was never taught how to deal with this burden. I was trying to fix the way he is, so he's not bogged down on those issues.  Now I realized I was just wrong because the formative years end in our childhood and character is something permanent, behavior is not. We all act a certain way on occasion, that we regret later, but people who act a certain way over and over again are just that way. When we are around people like that our brain protects us by making us more like those people so we avoid conflict. That's the dangerous part because we start adopting all this negativity and we have to learn how to deal with other people's emotional baggage. The best way to deal with the negative influence in our social circle is to cleanse our social circle.  You recognize a few different types of people you have around you. For example, those who always criticize. I'm talking about those who give you some honest feedback every once in a while. I'm talking about those who constantly point deficiencies in others - in their behavior, in their character and not in a constructive way but in a point the finger way. You can probably think of a few of those people in your life and chances are when you're not around they're likely pointing the finger at you too. You know that type, those who never actually look at their own behavior or take their own advice, who have no mirror, and are not capable of any kind of self reflection but always find faults in others.  There's also those who always see bad things happening to them. The world is always against them. Some negative event seems to hit them every day and it's never their fault. They are always the victim and they never take responsibility. They never ask how your day is going, they just want to vent for hours and hours. And you have the pessimists, those for whom the future is always dark. Those for whom nothing good can come out of anything. It doesn't matter what you do because things are what they are and they will always be bad. Then you also have those who lose their temper. You've seen the people that have those childish outbursts - yelling, screaming, and crying. Sometimes they may even resort to violence. They're kind of immature psychologically. You certainly know the type. Always saying no before you even ask. Every other sentence starts with "I can't" or "you can't". Always talking about the problem never about the solution.  I actually recently saw my dentist yell on the phone, at his daughter, for five minutes while I was waiting for him and I was thinking about this type of negative person. I certainly have people like this in my life and I've actually had some very honest, heart to heart, discussions with some of them. I've honestly never seen anyone actually recognize this as an issue or act on it. My conclusion is, you can't really fix them. They're drowning in their own way and you don't know how to help them and they don't know how to save themselves; basically, desperately grabbing on stuff around them, pulling others down to lift themselves up. You have to be extremely careful trying to help people like this because while you may help them, they may also bring you down.   They share one or more common feature which you will recognize if you think about these types of people in your circle. For example, they can't take a compliment. You'll tell them "you look really good today" and the answer would be "did I look bad yesterday". Even in the positive comment they would always find the negative. They would be very judgmental. They'd always judge you even though they may not have any accomplishments in that given area or may not even be in the game but they're always judging. They would be super demanding. They always need others to bend their way and accommodate them but they rarely do that for others. They're very closed and guarded - can't really open up and can't show any vulnerability.  Usually, you would have somewhat of a superficial conversation with people like that. Some of them have a need to control others. You will see this especially in people who always need to know where their significant other is, always need to be telling them how to dress and what to do and how to live their life. Keep in mind we all express these emotions and when you see a behavior consistent with these features you should know that it's normal. But when you see it consistently over and over again, you should recognize it as part of someone's character. The solution at this point should be obvious - it's to distance yourself. Just find a way.  You may not think it's possible, certainly, if it's close family or very close friends, but you can. Even if these people are immediate family you can move out and still love your parents. If you can't distance yourself a 100% you can certainly limit exposure. You can put a cap on how much time you spend around such people on a given week or a given day. Maybe you limit it to a phone call or text message and you just stick to it. At the same time try to bring more positive relationships in your life to outnumber the negative ones by as wide factor as you can - 5, 10, 20 x, so that your brain receives more positive influence than the negative influence. To conclude, I want you to remember that a smiling face is always beautiful.  People around you actually don't see your acne, your dark circles or your wrinkles nearly as much as they see your facial expressions. Psychologists have actually found that people with genuine smiles are much more likely to be seen as healthy and glowing and not only seen a certain way, but as the rogue psychologist's experiment showed the positive mindset can psychologically change our bodies for the better. So thank you for listening. And if you're thinking of someone right now who can benefit from listening to this message please share it, tag them and don't forget to subscribe and I'll see you next time.