Power of Wishes: Neuroscience, Psychology & Manifestation. Brownell Landrum

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What's your pi?

Okay, listeners.

Think hard and make a wish.

Make it a brilliant, fantastic wish.

Will it come true?

My guest today will share how you can turn your wishes into

cosmic wishes by applying science.

Interesting.

Learn about the art and science of wishing.

Brownelle is reaching for the magic through science.

She will explain that wishing is a universal pastime beloved across cultures

worldwide, and each time you make a wish, you are practically a scientist tapping

into over a dozen fields from neuroscience and psychology to quantum physics.

And it's the Cosmic Wish Experiment, a global movement that she has aiming to

skyrocket collective joy to cosmic levels Brownell Landrum, author, podcaster,

And a cosmic wisher.

Welcome, Brownell, to the show, Your Positive Imprint.

Thank you, Catherine.

I appreciate it so much.

I'm glad to be here.

Oh, absolutely.

We have so much to learn because- Yeah … cosmic wish.

So people think what on earth is that, and how do you apply science to a wish?"

Because I can just sit here, close my eyes, make a wish at a birthday cake.

So how is that applied to science?

But before we get to that, Brownell, we wanna know a little bit about you.

So- Okay … where did you come from, and what was life like growing up,

and what brought you to the cosmos?

I like to make sure people know that I'm

a storyteller, not a scientist.

So if there's anybody watching or listening that is, h- has more science

background or has science insights, I am always-- I'm kind of an explorer.

I'm always looking for more information and looking to learn.

So please weigh in and tell us your thoughts if anybody's doing that,

because that's really important 'cause I'm constantly adding and

learning science about wishing.

And as far as… I grew up in Lexington, Kentucky.

I haven't lived there in many years, but that is where I was grew up, and then we

moved around a bunch when I was a kid.

But, pretty typical,

You mentioned you're a storyteller.

So-

Yeah

… . my background is marketing, m- and like corporate marketing.

And and so when I was like in high school and stuff, I did get into the

speech team, so I used to give a lot of speeches, and in fact, I just gave

a TEDx Talk a little over a month ago, so that was a big milestone for me.

And I got an ad- my undergrad degree was in advertising.

So I wasn't really the drama or writer in school, and I wrote my

first book, which was nonfiction 20 years ago, believe it or not.

And then I started writing fiction and got excited about fiction, and I've written

a bunch of novels and I came up with a novel that was semi-autobiographical.

I actually launched it last year.

And with that one, I started creating this magical world of wishes and how

wishes are, granted and like this kind of these wish fairies, and it's all

this like upstairs, how, what happens in this realm when people make wishes.

And that got this whole idea in my head of how does that work?

And what is a wish?

And what's the difference between a wish, a prayer, and a goal?

And as I was doing all of that, I I was listening one night, I was listening,

I couldn't sleep, so I was listening to a lecture on neuroplasticity.

, "Wait a minute. Is there science here?" And so that's how all of this kind

of got, got crazy, as I just started, more sciences popped up and popped up.

And the more I researched, the more it's just fascinating to

look at the different sciences.

It was on my YouTube channel.

And and the, and The Sleepy Scientist is the YouTube channel.

Oh my goodness.

And they have these two-hour lectures on science.

And I find them fascinating.

And they also put you to sleep, 'cause it's usually so over my head that

it's like, okay- … I can only handle so much till my brain turns off.

In that case, instead of putting me to sleep, it woke me up literally and

figuratively, and I was like, "Wait a minute, I gotta dig into this.

I gotta dig into the research." So it was pretty cool.

Absolutely.

You were writing this book, and then you were watching this show.

So I'm envisioning wish fairies.

I am.

That, that is in my head right now.

I can just see these own fairies in my head, my own visual.

Probably not what you had written, but my own visual after you said that.

Yeah.

So now, how… Tie that in now with the science.

You're wishing fairies.

And of course, it's not the wishing fairies that you're tying in, but you're

tying in the wishes, the, with the cosmos, because you started this movement, and

you have the word joy in there as well.

So let's talk about your Cosmic Wishes movement

yeah.

It, that all everything's tying together and it's just fun because

there's more things that pull in.

And as you mentioned, I've got a podcast

and and as I started more, I started understanding this whole concept of wishes

and wishing, there were a few factors.

It felt like a, I call it like this game of science Whac-A-Mole because all these

subjects and systems popping up all over the place and all this application.

And so I was looking at what's happening in the world and thinking, and I

know you they Arthur Brooks came out with a, an article in "The Atlantic"

last fall "America Needs a Mass Movement," and thinking this, there's

so much power in wishes and wishing.

And, the, the anthropology is the first science, that I get into, and that is

wishing rituals and collective wishing, like when people start wishing together.

And so I, wrote the book "The Art and Science of Wishing," and then

I started creating The Cosmic Wish Experiment, which is for people

who have a vision of something they want to accomplish collectively.

So it's like we all wanna get together and wish for world peace, or we all

want to get together and wish for, it could be s- a safer neighborhood.

It doesn't have to be, massive scale.

And then to experience the opportunity to wish together toward the common wish.

And so that's one element within all of this.

And then the Cosmic Wishes show or podcast is people come and they

have a wish and they w- and we s- we draw these science cards and these

activity cards, and we apply the science and the activity to their wish.

And, the whole idea of joy and the whole idea of unity, all of these things are

all are backed by a lot of science.

A wish needs to have what I call the three Ps. They need to be

peaceful, positive, and purposeful.

and that's not just what you're wishing for, but it's also

how you're making the wish.

And I've got a really cute children's book somewhere here.

And where it's called "Cosmic Wishes," and it's for kids to learn that, learn those

three Ps, and what does that mean, and what's the science behind, okay, peaceful,

the more peaceful you are, the more open you are, the more creative you are.

The, it, it's like the polyvagal system and the nervous, central

nervous system and everything else.

So it's just fun to layer on all these sciences with practice and action.

Let's go to the culture right quick.

Here in southwest United States, we have a lot of different Native American rituals.

Yes.

And they're important because they work together,

Use their smudge stick and they try to get all of what we have inside

up to the spirits so that what we need is taken care of, or the earth.

We used to go to retreats where Native Americans would come with

the smudge sticks and we would have our wishing, if you will, rituals.

Can you discuss one that you've been able to read about or

that you've had in your book?

, Brownell Landrum: Anthropology is important, right?

And ritual is so important.

And the idea of the, for a lot of reasons.

First of all, it is uniting.

If you're doing a cosmic wish experiment and everybody's wishing the same wish at

the same time, like if it's a certain time on the clock, or it could be while they're

doing, brushing their teeth or something.

And and when you start multiplying that effect of, not just one plus

one equals two, it all of a sudden starts becoming much bigger than that.

And the, in terms of the history of ritual, the smudge is a great example

because a lot of the history was centered around the elements, right?

So it's earth, fire, air, or water, and that's what blowing out the candle on the

birthday cake, you got a little fire and a little air, going on at the same time.

And the, one of the things I love about it the most Catherine, is

that it's y- you mentioned the Native American belief system.

It, wishing crosses all belief systems, and you can be super into one religion

or another religion or no religion, and you can just follow the science aspect

and when we talk about rituals like like the smudging, I don't know the,

the neurochemical reaction to sage, but I bet there's something there.

I bet there's some science behind that.

You sent me on another wild goose chase to find another science.

But there's probably that.

And and and then having that reminder, and then a daily ritual, which is something

we recommend in the program, is that if you do it every day, what you're doing

is something called neuroplasticity, and that is rewiring your brain for success.

Because if you're repeating that wish every day, then your brain

starts understanding and starts accepting it as reality and will

keep looking for those solutions.

So it reminds you every day, and then it also triggers something called the

reticular activating system part of the brain, and that's the part looking

for patterns and symbols and signals.

So all of this stuff's really worked so well together and and I

think we're missing this collective wishing that we used to do, frankly.

They would wish, especially in those kinds of cultures, wish for rain or

wish for plentiful crop or wish for, some sort of healing or something.

And the more we do things like that together, the more we can unite.

So can it be a selfish wish where it's just one, a wish

that is just for one person?

Or does it need to be collective?

It doesn't need to.

It-- with the cosmic wish experiment, it is about collective wishing.

That's the whole point of that experiment.

But cosmic wishing in general can be anything.

It's-- I would say that when they-- people come onto my show, they

can come in with a personal or a professional wish w- what I call a

wish that ripples or a whimsical wish.

It could be something that sounds silly, and then all of a sudden

you start looking at the science with that and went, "What the?"

Maybe, somebody the other day wanted to learn how to use the Force.

They've wanted to use the Force from "Star Wars" since they were a little kid.

And we had so much fun getting into the science of that.

It's much cooler, and it's much more realistic than you think.

So yeah.

So you can come in with any of that.

It is super helpful from a science-based standpoint that it's

peaceful, positive, and purposeful.

And that can be, like in the children's book, there's an example of before and

after the three Ps. And the before is before peaceful s- it's like, it's a

little girl taking a test and she's "I wish not to fail this test," right?

And she's all nervous.

But then if she says it in a peaceful way, she says, "I wish to feel

peaceful while I'm taking this test," she's activating that biological and

biochemical neurobiology, those parts of her body, the polyvagal system,

all that, so that actually she relaxes and becomes… and can take the test.

So it's like, "Oh, I wish to be relaxed while I take this test," she's-- it's

going to trigger those things that's going to actually improve her performance.

So that's an individual type of wish.

And then the positive is just making sure you're wishing for

something and not against something.

So if it's a wish of, "I wish this would stop," that's not going to train

your brain in the positive direction.

It's to move forward.

And then the third one is purposeful, and that's in the vein of what your

question is about wishing for yourself.

The more you understand how your wishing can impact others in a positive way,

the more powerful your wish will be.

If it's wishing to do harm for somebody or wishing to compete with somebody against

something else, it's gonna have less impact from a science standpoint than if

you're wishing for something and know… Like the example in the children's book

is there's a boy and he's got a towel around his neck, and he says-- and he

look, he's looking in the mirror and he says, "I wish to be a superhero."

And he sees his reflection on the mirror.

And then we add the science of purposeful to him, and he changes his wish to,

"I wish to be a superhero so I can help others." And then the reflection

in the mirror is all these people, not only the people he can help, but

also the people who will help him.

Ah, wow.

So as you were talking and talking about the neuroplasticity and just the peaceful,

positive, purposeful, it reminded me of my dad growing up, because he used to

tell me that if I think things for too long about my body, then You could cause

a change because you're telling your mind all the time something, and- Good or bad.

Good or bad, … "You just need to live each day and be positive, and don't think

thoughts, just think purposeful. Think what you're going to do today, and think

of how you…" And this was when I was young, I was very young, because I had

issues with bullying, I didn't wish bad things upon them, I just, I wished me to

look different so I would not get bullied.

And- … that's where they were teasing me is how I looked and so on.

And yeah.

They'll always find something.

That's the thing with bullies.

They're gonna find something whatever it is, right?

The… And when you start realizing, oh, they're just gonna look for any

flaw, and we all have flaws, and- Yeah

flaws are what make us interesting, right?

Yeah.

No- as a storyteller, right?

Nobody wants a hero that doesn't have flaws.

Those are not interesting heroes.

That's not a s- interesting story if they don't make mistakes or have some flaws,

nobody wants a, "Oh, you, boy meets girl.

They get along." End of story.

That's not a very compelling story.

We wanna see people go through challenges and- Yeah … and, see that.

Yeah, absolutely.

And one of the other key principles of cosmic wishing is the three selves,

which is what you're touching on.

And whether you wanna use Freud, id, ego s- id, ego, super ego, or

Jung, conscious, subconscious, super conscious, or really the same thing

would be mind, body, spirit, right?

'Cause the body is the subconscious.

And so if you are connecting, and that, and it's important to connect your wish

on all those levels, because if your body is in conflict with what your wish is

and let's say your wish is, "I want to lose 10 pounds," or something like that.

And by this date, and your, and the, and your body's going, "Oh, I don't get to

eat my fun stuff, and I have to do this, and I don't get to go and do these things,

and, that means I have to cut this out."

But if you talk to your body and say, "Okay," don't take it as a goal,

'cause that's the difference between a wish, a prayer, and a goal, right?

Is turn it into a wish saying, "I wish to feel good. I wish to love how my

clothes feel. I wish to find foods that we love to eat, both of us, me

and my body, that l- that make us feel healthier and find an activity that

we like that makes us feel that way."

And so that turns your wish into a cosmic wish by making sure that

you're connected on that level.

That is an amazing way to look at it.

Absolutely.

And you explained it so well.

And using that is a, that, that's the joy.

That's

the

joy

It is completely the joy.

In fact that's one of the things I like to tell people is imagine you're

walking your dog and the dog runs off.

Generally what do people do?

They yell at the dog or they chase the dog.

But if you go instead going, "Hey, it's fun over here, let's go this

way," the dog is gonna completely follow wherever you wanna go.

Our bodies do the same thing.

It's if you say it's fun, the body's like, "I'm gonna do that."

Or if you, even if you say, "Okay, I've gotta do this task, we've gotta get

this done, we've gotta hunker down, but after that I'm gonna give you a

reward," the body's like, "Okay, I'm gonna hunker down." But if it feels

pressured or pushed or bullied into doing something, the body will rebel.

When we get ill sometimes we'll be like, "I'm mad at my body and

I feel bad and da," instead of okay, body, have a conversation.

I like to say you name your body, so you have a different name for him or her.

And that you go, "Hey, what are we doing?

And what, how can I nurture you today?

How can I get you… There's something going wrong.

Tell me the why so we can get to the healing, and let's work on this together

and find this positive solution."

And then these little cool things happen like neuroscience and the

reticular activating system are like, "Oh, there's the answer," and we

didn't even think about it because we're so caught up in the negative.

But if we get to the positive and go, "Okay, how can I help you?" The body

will show you because the body takes in millions of impressions a second,

whereas our conscious mind is like 50 or something like that, right?

So the c- the subconscious or the body is seeing everything that's going on.

We're missing it.

So the more we can talk to them, the more we're gonna be aware of

things that we weren't aware of.

thank you for sharing this.

So let's talk about your books.

"Cosmic Wishes" for this is the for kids.

The one before that is called "A Love Story to the Universe," and that's a

semi-autobiographical novel which was-- I decided I've been writing this book and

it-- I get into, just to make sure people know, , I wear a lot of hats and I always

like to be very clear about who I am so that people go she writes this, but then

she writes this," "Who is this person?"

Is that I write a lot of kind of metaphysical books novels.

So when I get into the novels, I get into the magical realism and the metaphysical

aspect and the not quite into the fantasy.

I don't really write about dragons and vampires or anything.

But but I do like to write about things that are in the realm of the, some

people call it spiritual, metaphysical.

And this one was, I decided when I was writing it, I'm gonna write it from the

point of view of what I call the upstairs.

So there's a team up here that is looking down at these humans going, "Okay,

why are they doing what they're doing? We're try- they're trying to help us

down here," and they're looking at us.

And and it's semi-autobiographical 'cause I'm writing about these, this

team up there that is is trying to move the… I call her Nelle, so it's not

exactly like I faked the name very much.

Um, How can they, what are like there is this Nelle person and why is she

not doing what we want her to do?"

"And how do we get her," and so like they, and they're, I call traffic

angels and then they g- you know, guides or whatever that are helping.

So that's what that one… And it's written, because life is like this,

it's written in four segments and the fourth segment is the one that

got into the, the realm of wishes and wish fairies and all of that stuff.

Yeah, it's really fun.

" Catherine: "The Art and Science- "The Art of Wishing" … of Wishing." Yeah.

And "Cosmic Wishes," which is the children's book.

Yeah.

And then of course- Those are my new ones … the, the one,

"A Love Story to the Universe,"

And then I had a trilogy come out a year before that, so I've

been doing a, a lot of different writing.

And where can people- And yeah, I just, I love getting into all these different

kinds of stories, and it's, to me, like I said, one of the things I love about this

whole idea of wishing is that you can be, super religious or super non-religious.

You can just be into the science and it all fits, and you can also

bring in things like smudging and rituals and religious and, these

metaphysical quantum physics, the fringe sciences and things like that, too.

Say, okay, what might be happening on a deeper level?

One of the, one of the things I have in the book is what I call the blue

balloon phenomenon, and that is, imagine you're driving home from work and you

have this vision of a blue balloon on your driveway, just out of nowhere.

, How did it get there?

And it's funny, when I wrote the book, I had three answers to that, and now it's

like over a dozen possible explanations of how that balloon got there.

And so I'm like, "Okay, I gotta start a blog because I'm g- I'm still exploring."

Like I'm still c- That's funny.

New stuff is still coming out every day.

Yeah.

It's, it is really funny.

It's funny.

So we know what a goal is,

A goal is generally something in your control, right?

It's like, okay, set a plan.

This is what I'm gonna do, and I'm gonna make these things happen.

Prayer is when it's out of your control, right?

It's like you're just releasing it to some other energy or entity or, higher

power or whatever, saying, "Please help me with this. Please, make this happen."

The wish is a lo- a lovely combination of both.

And it includes the things within our control, like I was saying, like the

lose 10 pounds or whatever that is.

But it also includes the things outside of your control, like the things that

might be, I call it cosmic collaboration.

When you-- there's some energy out there that you need to collaborate

with, and you can define that energy by science terms or by spiritual terms.

And then, like I said, with the goal, understanding that taking that goal

and turning it into a wish can make it a much more powerful thing, 'cause

it's like you're working with your body to make the solution as opposed

to just telling it what to do or forcing that kind of goal onto it.

So it's, it's-- And the idea of cosmic came up because if you look

at Merriam-Webster and the definition of cosmic, it means three things.

It's got a three-part definition.

The first one is the vastness of the universe, so it's big, right?

The second part is it delves into the spiritual or metaphysical, and then

the third part is it's comprehensive.

And so the idea is that a wish, we know what those are, and they can

be birthday cakes or whatever, but when you start adding the science,

that's when it becomes a cosmic wish and it begets more in your control.

Because the more you understand the science, the more you can

bring your wishes in your control.

So that's the kind of framework for it all.

It's brilliant.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's also fun.

Enjoy.

It is

fun.

Abs- brilliantly

fun.

There's science in fun though.

That's the thing I've got, right?

It's just it's the more you start researching just how important it is to

be fun and have the wishes be fun and have fun making the wishes, and the whole idea,

like the word wish is this beautiful word.

We say it all the time, but like wish.

It's got this phonetic, resonance to it that's that's really special.

So there's a lot of really, really fun things that go with it.

Bronelle Lendrum, you are truly cosmic yourself.

You're out of this world.

Your your positive imprints are truly amazing.

This is fun.

You are correct.

But it's also brilliant because it brings joy and in ways when people start doing

this, they can also bring about their own positive imprints because they might

wish to become better at something or maybe some way to help other people, and

so that brings out a positive imprint that they can actually put into action.

And that's one of the things that I, I just love

so much about what you're doing.

You're bringing some of these stories out into the consciousness, right?

And people, some people really making huge, beautiful differences in the

world and those are the stories, and you're bringing them out to light,

and maybe what we can also do is help them turn those missions into

wishes that other people can follow.

So that, so that they're-- I know you're a firefighter, and so therefore you've

got probably all kinds of beautiful wishes that would, you would like to bring to the

world in terms of, whether it's prevention or whether it's, healing or, probably

a million things that tie into that, as well as all these guests you've had and

think more people, if they could set this, they're setting their imprint, and if it

can turn into a wish, wish more people could do this or what they're doing, they

could make a wish and say, "Okay, we wish this would happen or this would happen."

And I know you had a musician on there., if they could wish for more

people to understand the power of music to heal or turn that into a wish.

I have an activity.

You look at your values and turn your values into a wish, right?

That makes them active.

It's not just a word on a wall or some word you say.

Now all of a sudden you've got something that you're gonna start looking for the

answers to make those things happen.

Even on something like world peace, I was talking with somebody the

other day and it's think of all the things that you can enact if , every

day you're wishing for world peace and that other people are wishing.

And then they're like we could get together and write a letter to Putin to

say withdraw from Ukraine." And there could be a thousand kids do that or

something like any kind of ideas that could pop up when people are wishing

in a positive direction together.

Thank you Brownell.

You can learn more about Brownelle Landrum from brownellelandrum.com, and that

is B-R-O-W-N-E-L-L-L-A-N-D-R-U-M.com.

And her podcast, "Cosmic Wishes," . And then she has her books.

And where can listeners find your books?

Amazon- they're, pretty much we're by, Amazon and other

places where you buy books online.

Barnesandnoble.com and Apple Books, and all of those kinds of places.

So yeah.

Well congratulations on authoring so many of those amazing books.

I will definitely have to pick up "The Cosmic Wishes." We have

a lot of children in our family,

oh, I would love to hear what you think, 'cause I've

had some really beautiful reviews.

People s- some of them are like, "Even my five-year-old, they didn't

necessarily understand, the central nervous system, like terminology,

but they still kinda got it," and that's what's really, that's what's

really fun, is they get the message.

So thank you.

We end with your last inspiring words,

just I think the easiest thing that I would love

people to remember is if you could remember the three Ps and just to be

peaceful, positive, and purposeful.

Even if you're not even making the wish every day, but if every day for

one minute you're just taking that moment to be those three things, to be

peaceful and positive and purposeful you're training your brain to do that,

and that would be really beautiful.

Thank you for the peaceful, positive, and purposeful.

We need to remember that each and every day, and to bring joy

to each other all of the time.

Thank you.

And remember to activate those u- positive imprints in each of us.

So Brownell, thank you so

much.

Let's wish for that.

Let's wish for everyone to make their positive imprint.

Oh, I love that.

Thank you.

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