AlphaMind Podcast 55: Dr Tara Swart; On 'Brain Agility' and being 'the Wendy Rhodes of London'.

This week we are delighted to have Dr Tara Swart on the Podcast. Tara is a qualified psychiatrist and neuroscientist. who left the world of medicine to set-up her own Neuroscience based leadership coaching consultancy and became a coach, working with leaders and increasingly with top traders in Hedge Funds. Tara also lectures in Neuroscience at MIT, is an in-demand speaker, and author of ‘The Source: Open Your Mind, Change Your Life', which has been has described very favourably as ‘The Secret' based on Science, and by some as Life-changing. The Source has become a UK best seller, and is now being translated into 36 different languages.

Tara’s work with Hedge Funds has seen her described as the ‘Wendy Rhodes of London’. For those of you unfamiliar with Wendy Rhodes, she was the Psychology Coach in the Primetime hit show ‘Billions’.

In this episode we had a great discussion about Tara's book ‘The Source’, and expanded this out to explore how traders can develop an ‘AlphaMind’ by developing their ‘Brain Agility’. Brain agility facilitates the mastering of your emotions, developing greater resilience, being aware of the brain-body connection, accessing your intuitive abilities, making good logical decisions, staying motivated and thinking creatively.

This conversation is laced with references to neuroscience, psychology, emotions and references to our cognitive abilities allied to how people think about and make decisions in risk, trading and investment situations.

One of the fascinating parts of this interview was a talk about a topic rarely discusses, but that we see often as a factor in people's behaviours as traders, inter-generational trauma. This is part of the field of epigenetics, which is the influence of the environment on the expression of our genes. The point of this is that trauma’s experienced by parents and even grandparents can influence and shape how we are and how we behave when taking and managing risk and plays out subtly in people's work as traders. Tara makes that point that we do have the capability through Neuro-Plasticity to override this and take back control.

We also discuss later in the episode how fear and anxiety play out and how there are behaviours which can allow us to better a get a handle on these elements.

Listen to a soundbite from this episode 

You can find out more about Tara on her website https://www.taraswart.com/.

You can also read the Spear Magazine Article which Tara refers to later in the interview at this link: https://www.spearswms.com/stop-work-killing/

Another great article worth a read mentioned by Tara was Ghosts in the Executive Suite : https://syncreticsgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/Ghosts-in-the-Executive-Suite-2-26-16.pdf

Tara is married to Robin Bieber, one of the world’s leading technical analysts and a guest a few podcasts earlier.

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The AlphaMind Podcast

The AlphaMind podcast is co-hosted by Steven Goldstein and Mark Randall, market veterans with over seven decades between them in the financial markets. The podcast delves into the lives and stories of extraordinary guests whose experiences provide a fresh and powerful lens through which to understand the mental, emotional, psychological and behavioural challenges people face when encountering risk and uncertainty in financial markets. To find out more visit the AlphaMind podcast website. The AlphaMind Podcast is produced in partnership with 'The Society of Technical Analysts'.

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The AlphaMind project is a collaboration between AlphaRCubed Ltd and the Mark Randall Consultancy. Its aim is to explore, understand, educate and inform about the key factors which lead to successful trading and investment performance at the human level.

We work with many businesses in the Trading and Investment Industry to help them and their people improve their 'Risk Capability'. Our clients are some of the leaders in the trading world, including names such as Bank of America, Cargill, RBS, Balyasny Asset Management amongst many others. If you would be interested to know more about us and how we could help your business. Please email steven.goldstein@alpharcubed.com. 

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