In Memory of Presidential Historian Doug Wead on ”Applying Leadership and Character Lessons From the Greatest U.S. Presidents”

In this transformative episode, join us as we engage with renowned pediatric occupational therapist and founder of Zensational Kids, Allison Morgan. Learn how yoga and mindfulness integrated into her therapy sessions have improved her clients' physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral wellness. Discover her motivation for writing curriculums for pre-K through high school students and the unique challenges that come with it. Dive into the importance of balancing the human nervous system and its impact on children’s functionality. Watch our interview on YouTube here https://youtu.be/mtj4zuuirbc  Uncover our conversation concerning the urgent need for increased mental health and social-emotional learning programs in schools, especially in light of the post-pandemic stress faced by many students. Learn about Allison’s incredible journey as a pediatric occupational therapist and her vision to alleviate the struggles of today's students, teachers, and parents through innovative solutions. Delve into the profound significance of social and emotional learning in an educational setting. Gather valuable insights on the teaching and learning dynamics and the vital role educators play in creating their classroom's atmosphere. Learn how to utilize mindfulness and self-awareness strategies to revolutionize the classroom environment and the importance of educators' mental and emotional well-being. Discover practical ways you can begin incorporating these strategies into your classroom or homeschooling routine today with our plethora of free resources. Subscribe to Allison's free video program for more resources, empowering discussions, and actionable strategies for your personal and professional growth. On today's episode #331, we have our final interview before the summer months. Today we will be meeting with Allison Morgan, the Founder of Zensational Kids.[i] She is a pediatric occupational therapist, author, international public speaker, and educational trainer driven to empower youth and the adults that care and serve them. She is passionate about training educators, parents, mental health professionals, and allied health professionals, giving them effective techniques to develop skills such as self-awareness, management skills, compassion, and resilience so they can model and authentically teach these skills to children. EPISODE #331 with Allison Morgan on “Making the Neuroscience, Mindfulness and SEL Connection” we will cover: ✔ Where Allison made the Mind, Body, Neuroscience Connection with her work as a pediatric occupational therapist. ✔ Allison’s Vision for the Schools of the Future.  ✔  Uncover the urgent need for increased mental health and social-emotional learning programs in schools. ✔  Learn how yoga and mindfulness integrated into her therapy sessions have improved her clients' physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral wellness. ✔ How to Access Allison’s work for a free to implement NEW strategies immediately. Allison began integrating yoga and mindfulness into her therapy sessions with children in 2007. Discovering the multitude of physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral benefits these practices offered her occupational therapy clients and recognizing the need for more mental health and social-emotional learning programs in schools, Allison began writing curriculum and developing teacher training programs to help others share these practices. For those who have followed our work over the years, you’ll know that when I came across Allison, I was thinking I wish I had known Allison in 2014 when we launched our curriculum into the school market, and got to see first-hand just how difficult that would be. She is the author of curriculums for pre-K through high school-age students: (which is not easy to be focused on both elementary and secondary students at the same time. They are both vastly different, requiring completely different strategies). Young Explorers: Yoga and Mindfulness in Early Childhood Education EDUCATE 2B: Mindfulness and Social-Emotional Learning for Educators and students in the K-5th grade Classroom EVERYDAY Mindfulness: Techniques for Teens to Develop Compassion, Calm, Focus and Resilience I had to be sure to connect with Allison before we take a break from interviews prior to the summer months, because of the importance of addressing the stress our kids are facing in the classrooms, especially post pandemic. I look forward to meeting Allison, and sharing her knowledge and expertise that this podcast was built around. Let’s meet the CEO of Zensational Kids, Allison Morgan! Welcome Allison, it’s wonderful to meet with you after our email exchanges.  We do have a lot in common, don’t we? Gymnastics, SEL and Neuroscience! That’s quote the combo! Can you walk us through your career as a pediatric occupational therapist, and orient us to your background? Q1: I’ll never forget the moment I saw just how impactful these important SEL skills are for students (in school, sports and in life). It was like a brick hit me in the stomach. What was it for you that made you take notice of these important SEL skills, (That back in the day were called soft skills and not given the merit they deserve) for you to create your own curriculum for mental and emotional well-being in the classroom? What made you put your hat in this field? Q1B: I loved to see Understanding the Brain AND Understanding the Nervous System in the beginning of your Educate 2B book. I can guess that it was your background as an occupational therapist that made you make the mind/brain/body connection, but tell me when this connection began for you? Q2: Before you had your eye on releasing your own curriculum, especially on Mindfulness, did you look at what other Mindfulness Curriculum was out in our schools? What did you notice was missing perhaps from what you saw? When was it that you decided to put your work out into the world? How did you differentiate yourself? I ask this because I remember looking and seeing Goldie Hawn and Dr. Dan Siegel’s program[ii] that almost deterred me from trying. Q3: When I was a teacher in the classroom in the late 1990s, we had zero training in working with behavioral students. It was the main reason I left the classroom. Now we look in our classrooms and especially since the Pandemic, we’ve got learning loss now to add to this equation. What should we know about the health and wellness of children today? Q3B: What’s the difference between the feeling of anxiousness, and the feeling of excitement? How can we differentiate the two?  Q4: I love your worksheets that have PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports) and RTI (Response to Intervention-that aims to identify and support struggling students early on)! As someone who has worked from the publishing side of education, I always saw a need to integrate SEL skills into our classroom, starting with the day to day work we are doing with our students. How do you integrate this important information into the day-to-day workings of a classroom? What is your philosophy/approach around the fact that we cannot support the well-being of students without first addressing the well-being of educators?  I can go off on a tangent here with Dr. Bruce Perry’s work. Q5: How are you identifying the major pain points that schools are facing right now (mental health, behavior, academic loss, teacher’s leaving at an extraordinary rate) and how shifting from typical top-down programs to  bottom up approaches that will actually address most of their issues? Q6: What’s the difference between a “curriculum” and the development of daily habits/practices to create internal mind/body change.  Q7: How have we adapted from requiring full-day and 3 day mindfulness trainings for educators to downloadable videos for direct student instruction where we lead all of the practices? Q8: Where are you based out of, and what Districts are you currently working with? Any success stories to share? Q9: What is your vision for your programs? Q10: What have I missed? Thank you, Allison, for reaching out to me, to share your vision for making a difference with mental health and resilience in our classrooms. This is important and critical work. If people want to learn more about you, is the best way through your website? https://zensationalkids.com/ RESOURCES: Free Video Tools to Try https://zensationalkids.com/freestuff/ Best Practices for Yoga in School   REFERENCES [i] https://zensationalkids.com/   [ii] https://www.kidstherapyfinder.com/videos/brain-health-goldie-hawn-and-dan-siegel-at-tedmed-2009-58        

Welcome to Episode 330 of the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, a part of our 18-week series on self-leadership. Join host Andrea Samadi and author Grant Bosnick as they explore the neuroscience theory behind creating solid health habits, establishing goals, and increasing productivity for greater achievement and well-being. Tap into the power of the AHA moment, and learn how to foster these spontaneous occurrences for instant performance improvement. Bosnick shares insights from his book "Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership" and offers strategies for organizations to solve problems creatively using innovative thought processes. Uncover the crucial role physical and mental health play, particularly the significance of adequate hydration for brain health and daily water intake recommendations. Learn about the concept of neuroplasticity and see examples of creative problem solving applied in real-life situations. Listen as we bring to light interesting perspectives from Professor Hod Lipson from Columbia University on AI and innovation, discuss the Silva Method, and recall our first series on creativity and innovation. Take inspiration from figures like Albert Einstein and learn about hypnosis from the work of Dr. David Spiegel. Cultivate self-awareness and personally tailored plans using our practical five-step method to foster more 'aha' moments. Experience the magic of wisdom acquisitions drawn from a poignant poem by Stuart Edward White. Ready to supercharge your personal and professional growth? Listen to our exciting and educational podcast that delves deep into the interaction of neuroscience and social and emotional learning. Don't forget to subscribe for more insightful episodes. On today's episode #330 we continue with our 18-Week Self-Leadership Series based on Grant Bosnick’s “Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership: A Bite Size Approach Using Psychology and Neuroscience” that we first dove into with our interview on EP #321[i] a few weeks ago.  Now that we have started this series, I hope you can see how practicing and strengthening the skills we are learning each week, is cumulative. Each week, we are learning something new, that builds off the prior week, to help take us to greater heights in 2024. We can even map out our “Journey of the Mind” as we go along the way. REVIEW Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 It’s here I’m hoping we will take the information we are learning, connect the dots to form knowledge and then apply this knowledge to our daily life. This is where we go from theory to practice with this podcast and it’s the application of what we are learning that contains the magic. REFLECT Back to Chapter 2 on The Neuroscience of Goals (and Kurt Lewin’s Force Field Theory): What are you doing today to gain the momentum needed to reach NEW and HEIGHTENED levels of performance this year? How are you improving your mental and physical health to gain the momentum we talked about in this chapter? REFLECT Back to Chapter 3 on The Neuroscience of Inspiration: How are you using people or places that inspire you, to take your results to greater heights? Think about this as it relates to your physical and mental health. What else can you do to take more action in this area? REFLECT Back to Chapter 4 on The Neuroscience of Mindfulness: Where are you in your Mindfulness Journey? Mindfulness, and breathing was listed often in Chapter 4.  How is mindfulness helping you with your physical health? REFLECT Back to Chapter 5 on The Neuroscience Behind Peak Performance: How are you practicing “getting into flow?” When do you notice it the most?  Is it during physical exercise, or meditation? Are you practicing this state to gain 5x more productivity in this state? REFLECT BACK to Chapter 6 on The Science Behind our Physical Health: Where we narrowed our focus from a wide and complex field, to something we can implement immediately with “The Hydrated Brain for Improving Our Cognitive Performance.” Are you keeping your brain hydrated? Do you know how much water you are drinking every day? Grant reminds us that “everyone is unique and needs different amounts of water per day (but suggests) an adequate intake for men is roughly around 3 liters (100 fluid ounces) a day, (and) for women it’s about 2.2 liters (74 fluid ounces) a day. This is one area I know I can do better with, especially living in the desert, I know I can improve this one with some focused effort. We will cover the remaining 6 chapters (Agility, Resilience, Relationships and Authenticity, Biases, Trust and Presence) after we take a break for me to navigate a new work schedule in my personal life. As soon as I have my footing here, and Dr. Shane Creado from EP 72[ii] reminded me the other day of our brain’s neuroplasticity, so I should be able to find the balance in a few weeks, and once I’m in the groove, and I’ll be back to finish this series. In the meantime, this will be a perfect time to put some serious thought into where we began this year, and where we are going. Think about the areas where we know we can improve, and get to work on these areas. I’ll be using this time to strengthen my own mindset and be sure I’m applying each of these episodes that guarantees the strongest version of myself this year. REMINDER: In this 18-week Series that we began in the beginning of February, we are covering: ✔ Powerful tactics from this Grant Bosnick’s award-winning book that illustrates how change and achievement are truly achievable both from internal ('inside out') and external ('outside in') perspectives. ✔Listeners will grasp the immense power of self-leadership and its transformative effect on personal growth and success by applying the neuroscience Grant has uncovered in each chapter. ✔Explore practical strategies for habit formation and the impact of a self-assessment system. ✔Gain insights from Grant's expert advice on maintaining a balance between strengths and weaknesses while chasing after your goals. ✔Embark on an intellectual journey that has the power to elevate personal achievement and self-awareness to uncharted levels while we map out our journey over this 18-week course. There is great power and self-awareness that comes along with mapping out a plan designed specifically for YOU and I do encourage everyone to take Grant Bosnick’s Leadership Self-Assessment[iii] so you can see the areas for you that score a high, medium of low level of importance for you to focus on this year. For Today, EPISODE #330, we cover Chapter 7, “AHA Moments, Creative Insight and the Brain” we will look at what Grant Bosnick covers on this topic, as well as a deeper dive into John Kounios and Mark Beeman’s fascinating book The Eureka Factor[iv] so we can all have a clear understanding of how these AHA Moments occur in the brain, and how exactly we can foster our own creative insights for unique and immediate improved performance. ✔ Tap into the power of the AHA moment, and learn how to foster these spontaneous occurrences for instant performance improvement. ✔ 5 Simple Steps for Illuminating our Personal and Professional Life with AHA Moments of Creativity. ✔ What Does Neuroscience Say About These AHA Moments of Creativity? Today we dive into Chapter 7 of Grant Bosnick’s book as we cover “The Science Behind Insight” which came out as MEDIUM importance (orange score) for me, alongside mindfulness and flow.  If you have taken the self-assessment, you’ll know it’s how you answer the questions, based on what’s of high priority for you, that determines the lessons that are important to begin now, or ones that you might think you have a handle on, so they show up as lower priority, or medium,  like this topic did for for me. I do block out time every day for mindfulness, and am working on getting into “flow” with my work, but insight is a new skill for me. I’ve never sat down to see “what insight” will come into my mind today, as these types of moments happen spontaneously, like Alexis Samuels mentioned on EP 328[v] when he made the connection with financial literacy and gamification, in the shower. What I loved about Grant Bosnick’s book Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership is that he opens up chapter 7 with a story of how insight was used by an organization to help solve the problem with the high number of babies that die within a month of their birth, specifically in developing countries.  This organization solved this specific problem using a thought process that took insight using “materials and human resources that could be used to address this issue” (Chapter 7, Bosnick) by building incubators made out of Toyota cars that were readily available in these developing areas. Instead of using their analytical mind and thinking “how do we get more incubators to these areas” someone on their team used insight and creativity to come up with the best solution. So how do we think up these creative ideas? Grant asks us to ponder where we have our best ideas. In the shower (like Alexis Samuels)? While exercising? At your desk while doing work? Just before falling asleep or waking up? While walking or hiking? While taking with a friend? Grant suggests that few people will come back with “at their desk while working” since this type of creativity involves breaking away from the analytical, thinking mind, and tapping into our “nonconscious” (Chapter 7, Bosnick) part of our brain. It was here I had to look deeper into how this type of thinking happens, and I found the fascinating book, The Eureka Factor: AHA Moments, Creative Insight and the Brain by John Kounios and Mark Beeman that Alexis Samuels mentioned during our interview, and I mentioned I had just started to read it. If you want to dive deeper into the science behind insight and creativity, I highly recommend this book. I wanted to know HOW to create these “AHA” Moments at will, not by chance and this is what these two cognitive neuroscientists who wrote this book, set out to do. Their goal of writing this book was to “explain how these Eureka experiences happen—and how to have more of them to enrich our lives and empower personal and professional success.” (The Eureka Factor). In the very beginning pages of The Eureka Factor, we learn that “insight is creative” (Page 9, The Eureka Factor, Kounios and Beeman) and when the authors went on to define “what creativity is” they suggest to not define it (yet) since “everyone intuitively recognizes creativity when he or she sees it” (Page 9, The Eureka Factor, Kounios and Beeman). I thought back to when we covered “Improving Creativity” on PART 4 of The Silva Method[vi] on “Improving Creativity and Innovation in our Schools, Sports and Modern Workplaces” and we tapped into Dr. Andrew Huberman’s research on creativity here. Dr. Huberman explains that “when we see something that’s truly creative, it reveals something to us about the natural world and about how our brains work….It must reveal something that surprises us” for it to be truly creative. So, going back to The Eureka Factor, John Kounios suggests that “creative insight is not an exotic type of thought reserved for the few. In fact, (he says) it’s one of the few abilities that define our species….most humans—have insights. It’s a basic human ability.” (Page 11, The Eureka Factor, Kounios and Beeman). HOW CAN WE BE MORE CREATIVE TO HAVE MORE INSIGHT? So now I want to know how we can we all have MORE insight to solve problems in our personal and work lives? How can we be more creative on purpose? Grant Bosnick has an exercise in his book to help foster this ability, and it begins with quieting the mind, and letting it drift.  Next, he suggests having a positive mood, and then be open to pattern completion, allowing new connections to form. Finally, he reminds us to NOT directly focus on the problem. In The Eureka Factor, Kounios and Beeman cover this concept of “pattern completion” and explained that we be open to unique solutions to our problems, letting the brain do what it was designed to do. They reminded us with a few fascinating discoveries in health, as well as an Oscar Winning Character that was created while the film writer was at a baseball game, that sometimes the answer we are looking for is opposite to what we commonly think to be true. I remember the advice that the Legendary speaker Bob Proctor[vii] would give to people every time they would have a problem they were looking to solve. He would say “go somewhere quiet and think” which covers Grant Bosnick’s first suggestion. I remember people coming to me when I worked with Proctor, saying “OK, I did that” I went somewhere quiet, and I’m still stuck” and I always wondered what else I could suggest to someone who really was stuck in this process. After reading Grant’s book, I can now connect the understanding of neuroscience to this equation. Having a positive mood is important, while you are quietly thinking, and also understanding that the brain doesn’t like incompleteness. When you are quiet, thinking of a solution, your brain will do the work to make the connections where you might never have thought before.   While reading The Eureka Factor, I came across an image that helped to explain this idea so we can ALL improve our ability to generate new and creative insights that will empower our personal and professional lives. IMAGE CREDIT: The Eureka Factor (Kounios, Beeman) Page 24 If someone were to ask me “Where do I begin to improve my ability to create NEW insights in my life?” I would say, start here: STEP 1: Go somewhere quiet and think.  We’ve mentioned a few times on this podcast that “Every man has the natural and inherent power to think what he wants to think, but it requires more effort to do so”[viii] (Wallace D. Wattles). I recently heard Professor Hod Lipson[ix] from Columbia University, speaking about the future with AI, and while his whole presentation was forward-thinking, eye opening and brilliant, what caught my attention the most was when he mentioned that while working with students with AI and robotics, the hardest part for them was to come up with a name for their robot, because he said “it takes a lot of effort to be creative.” Take the time needed for this process. STEP 2: You might think you are stuck, and might see a brick wall in front of you, metaphorically speaking, but know that there is always a solution to every problem. You just haven’t figured it out yet. It’s here that I share ways I’ve moved past where I’m stuck, and that’s by using The Silva Method. I’m reminded daily that many of our current listeners found us from the first episode we did in this 4-part series[x] that ended with an episode on “How to Be More Creative and Innovative”. I just heard from Fatima Kahedi this weekend that she found our podcast through Spotify, just by searching for The Silva Method. Then, this weekend, I was listening to a recent episode Dr. Andrew Huberman did an “Ask Me Anything[xi]” Episode from Melbourne, Australia. On this episode he reminded us of the work of Dr. David Spiegl on Hypnosis[xii] saying that there is a simple way to tell if someone is hypnotizable or not. It has to do with what Dr. Spiegl called an “eye roll” at the beginning of the test where he asked Dr. Huberman to look up, and then close his eyes. If the whites of his eyes showed for a certain amount of time, as his eyes were closing, (which they did) he would score a 4/4 on this test and be highly hypnotizable. I heard this and thought “That’s the Silva Method!” Jose Silva gets us to relax somewhere quiet by going to the alpha state (by counting backwards) and then by rolling our eyes upwards in our head while relaxed. It’s here he asks us to practice seeing things on the screen of our mind. Now that I’ve heard the science connected to this practice, I can see that by using The Silva Method, we are relaxing ourselves deeply enough to begin to “see” things more clearly. Or in essence, we are practicing self-hypnosis. STEP 3: Keeping your mood positive, break away, and do something that makes you happy. It could be going for a walk, or a hike, or playing tennis like the image from The Eureka Factor. Just break away and divert your attention away from the problem. If you are in a meditative state, just be sure to have positive, elevated emotions flowing through you. Looking at the image in the show notes from The Eureka Factor, we see a person playing tennis. You can use whatever method you want here (The Silva Method of Meditation, your own mindfulness practice, going for a walk or hike) whatever it is for YOU where you feel calm, rested and at peace. STEP 4: Be open to new ideas that might pop into your head. Be prepared for ideas that might be completely opposite to how you were originally thinking of solving the problem. We are all different here. Think back to the beginning of this episode, when Grant Bosnick asked us to consider where our creative ideas flow into our minds. Mine come in that time just before I go to sleep, or just before I wake up. Others might come in the shower, or while exercising. Be open to NEW ideas coming into your mind, and be ready to write them down. STEP 5: Know that there is much work going on from your unconscious mind. You’ll will become more self-aware in this process. Grant Bosnick lists a few inventions that were developed this way, in chapter 7 on Insight, and I found an article that lists “Great Eureka Moments in History: From Issac Netwon to Sir Paul McCartney, (where) inspiration arrived suddenly”[xiii] to help them with their famous AHA Moments. DID YOU KNOW that when Albert Einstein created his masterwork on the theory of relativity that he was “taken aback” when his breakthrough came suddenly? His mind kept wandering as he pondered the thought “if a man falls freely, he would not feel his weight.” It was “by linking accelerated motion and gravity (where) Einstein eventually created his theory of relativity.” (Dan Falk) John Kounios also lists some “concrete examples that illustrate the steps and features of the insight experience itself—in particular, their expanded perspective, sudden occurrence, reinterpretation of the familiar, awareness of the unforeseen relationships, subjective certainty, and emotional thrill.” (Page 18, The Eureka Factor). REVIEW AND CONCLUSION To review and conclude this week’s episode #330 on “The Neuroscience of Insight” DID YOU KNOW that “the moment a solution pops into someone’s awareness as an insight, a sudden burst of high-frequency EEG activity known as “gamma waves” can be picked up by (EEG) electrodes just above the right ear?” (Page 70, The Eureka Factor). “Gamma waves represent cognitive processing in the brain, such as paying attention to something or linking together different pieces of information.” (Page 70, The Eureka Factor). John Kounios recalled in Chapter 5 of The Eureka Factor with excitement after years of work that they “had found a neural signature of the aha moment: a burst of activity in the brain’s right hemisphere. Almost literally (he says) this is the spark of insight” but he did add to this conclusion that “in the world outside the lab, insights may need to be evaluated, verified, refined and applied, and this requires contributions from the more analytic left hemisphere” (Page 82, The Eureka Factor). Just like when Einstein came up with his famous AHA Moment of The Theory of Relativity, “it took him 8 years (using the analytical left hemisphere of his brain) to work through the mathematical details.”[xiv] So while we need both the left and right hemispheres of our brain to come up with these insightful AHA moments, there was another important key finding that they discovered with a patient who had a stroke that damaged the right part of his brain more than the left. The stroke didn’t interfere with this particular patient’s ability to speak and understand the spoken language, but the patient himself knew he was missing something important. This discovery led to an important finding that takes place in the right hemisphere of the brain, and is important “for filling in the gaps to make sense of things” (page 75) and that is the ability to “read between the lines” (Page 76, The Eureka Factor). Which is essentially what the brain is doing when it’s “filling in the gaps” and solving our problems with our AHA Moments. We covered 5 STEPS for How to Have MORE AHA Moments to Enrich our Personal and Professional Lives: STEP 1: RELAX: Go somewhere quiet and think.  STEP 2: LOOK PAST THE BRICK WALL: You might think you are stuck, and might see a brick wall in front of you, but know that there is always a solution to every problem. You just haven’t figured it out yet. STEP 3: KEEP POSITIVE: Keeping your mood positive, break away, and do something that makes you happy. It could be going for a walk, or a hike, sit somewhere quiet and meditate, or play tennis like the image in the show notes illustrates from The Eureka Factor. Just break away and divert your attention away from the problem. STEP 4: THE MAGIC HAPPENS HERE! Be open to new ideas that might pop into your head. Be prepared for NEW ideas that might be completely opposite to how you were originally thinking. If you decide to read The Eureka Factor, on top of the suggestions that Grant Bosnick suggests, you will learn how the left hemisphere of your brain and right must work together to “fill in the gaps.” This is where we open up our minds to NEW creative ideas. This concept is exactly like when someone tells you a joke, or uses sarcasm, or irony. Our brain that doesn’t like “gaps or incompleteness” taps into the right hemisphere to interpret language in this way. This is a prime example that demonstrates just as our “ability to use language requires two intact hemispheres, so does effective, practical, creative performance” (Page 82, The Eureka Factor) and it’s within “the right hemisphere (of our brain that) where the spark that ignites the creative fire” begins.  (Page 82, The Eureka Factor).  The magic happens when we can relax, with a positive mindset, close our eyes, and see what messages come “in-between” the lines. STEP 5: Know that there is much work going on from your unconscious mind. EPISODE #295 on “Unleashing the Power of our Subconscious Mind” is a good place to revisit as we peel back the layers and uncover who we truly are. Self-awareness is at the root of this process. To close out this episode, I’ll end with a poem that reminds me of how the AHA Moment is formed that we covered recently.[xv]   Isn’t it amazing how we acquire wisdom? When we suddenly “see” something that escaped us for so long. Stewart Edward White explains how AHA Moments of Learning can change us, in his poem where he writes: “Curious how we acquire wisdom! Over and over again, the same truth is thrust under our very noses. We encounter it in action; we are admonished of it; we read it in the written word. We suffer the experience; we gradually assent to the advice; we approve, intellectually, the written word. But nothing happens inside us. Then, one day, some trivial experience or word or encounter stops us short. A gleam of illumination penetrates the depth of our consciousness. We see! Usually it is but a glimpse; but on rare occasions a brilliant flash reveals truth fully formed. And we marvel that this understanding has escaped us so long.”   I hope you’ve enjoyed a deeper dive into the Neuroscience of Insights. We have one last interview to release this weekend, and we’ll see you in a few weeks (once I’ve got my footing) when we return to finish our review of the final chapters of Grants Bosnick’s Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership.         REFERENCES:   [i]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #321 with Grant ‘Upbeat’ Bosnick  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/insights-from-grant-upbeat-bosnick/   [ii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #72 with De. Shane Creado on “Sleep Strategies That Will Guarantee a Competitive Advantage” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/dr-shane-creado-on-sleep-strategies-that-will-guarantee-a-competitive-advantage/   [iii] Self-Assessment for Grant Bosnick’s book https://www.selfleadershipassessment.com/   [iv] The Eureka Factor: AHA Moments, Creative Insight, and the Brain by John Kounios and Mark Beeman Published April 14, 2015 https://www.amazon.com/Eureka-Factor-Moments-Creative-Insight/dp/1400068541   [v] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #328 with D. Alexis Samuels  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/exploring-neuroscience-and-gamification-in-financial-literacy-education-with-d-alexis-samuels/     [vi]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE 264 “The Neuroscience Behind The Silva Method: Improving Creativity and Innovation in our Schools, Sports and Modern Workplaces”  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/the-neuroscience-behind-the-silva-method-improving-creativity-and-innovation-in-our-schools-sports-and-modern-workplaces/   [vii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE 66 with The Legendary Bob Proctor https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/the-legendary-bob-proctor-on/   [viii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE 315 “Thinking and Acting in This Certain Way PART 2 Review of Wallace D. Wattles The Science of Getting Rich book https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/part-2-review-of-wallace-d-wattles-the-science-of-getting-rich-on-chapter-4-thinking-and-acting-in-a-certain-way/   [ix] https://www.me.columbia.edu/faculty/hod-lipson   [x]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE 261 PART 1 of our Deep Dive into Applying The Silva Method https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/a-deep-dive-with-andrea-samadi-into-applying-the-silva-method-for-improved-intuition-creativity-and-focus-part-1/   [xi] Dr. Andrew Huberman “Ask Me Anything” Melbourne, Australia  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/live-event-q-a-dr-andrew-huberman-question-answer/id1545953110?i=1000650096634   [xii] Dr. Andrew Huberman is Hynpotized by Dr. Spiegl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlTzVB6TGT0   [xiii] “Great Eureka Moments in History: From Issac Netwon to Sir Paul McCartney, inspiration arrived suddenly” by Dan Falk, Published September 2, 2005 https://magazine.utoronto.ca/research-ideas/culture-society/great-eureka-moments-in-history-famous-inspirational-moments/ [xiv] IBID [xv] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE 314 PART 1 of our Review of The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D Wattles https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/part-1-review-of-wallace-d-wattles-the-science-of-getting-rich-on-prosperity-consciousness/    

Join us in the riveting Season 11 of the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast as we delve into the exciting world of neurotechnology. Our featured guest, Nolan Beise, is the CEO of Circl, a path-breaking Canadian neurotechnology company, whose pioneering strides in brain-computer interfaces and brainwave-sensing technology are reshaping our understanding of the human mind. Raised in Toronto, Nolan’s academic pursuits led him from a secluded town in Northern Vancouver Island to become a top academic at the University of Toronto and later found companies like Suva Technology and Circl. In this episode, we discuss the scientific insights behind brain health, cognitive performance, and the possible applications of neurotech in various sectors from dementia care and first responder training to professional sports. Watch our Interview on YouTube here https://youtu.be/J78FZ9CTHTg As mental health issues surge globally, innovative technological advances offer a new spotlight of hope. From detecting early signs of cognitive impairment to managing the brain's capacity for a 'mental garbage can', this episode touches upon personalized intervention strategies, monitoring brain health, and enhancing treatment efficacy. We also delve into the associated health risks that may arise from mental burnout, such as sleep disruption and reduced cognitive prowess. With an aim to offer affordable and accessible brain health technology, Nolan envisions a future where tools akin to Fitbits for the brain can help people understand their brain's evolution and proactively tackle changes detrimental to their mental wellbeing. This episode is a must for anyone interested in exploring neuroscience, brain health, technology, and optimizing human potential.   EPISODE #329 with the CEO of Circl.com Nolan Beise, we will cover: ✔  Nolan Beise’s vision to help the world to improve their brain health and cognitive performance in the future. ✔ How his Circl Headset takes older brain scan tools to new heights with measuring our brain’s function as it relates to our health, detecting early signs of cognitive impairment.  ✔ Why we should be paying attention to our brain health TODAY to prevent major neurodegenerative diseases in the future and the health risks associated with burnout. ✔ Where Nolan’s focus is with this headset today, and his vision for this device in the next 5-10 years. Today, we meet with someone who is from my hometown, Toronto, Canada, but now is in Victoria, British Columbia. Our next guest, Nolan Beise is the CEO of Circl[i], a Canadian neurotechnology company pioneering brain-computer interfaces designed to understand the human mind by producing research-grade brainwave-sensing headbands and related software applications. Before Circl, Nolan founded Suva Technology, a company specializing in mobile EEG research software. He also brings a wealth of experience from his time as a Senior Advisor at Mitacs. In addition to these, Nolan holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biochemistry from the University of Victoria. With his extensive background in both science and business, Nolan is dedicated to advancing neurotechnology and shaping the future of brain-computer interfaces. When I see someone like Nolan, dedicating his career to helping the world to improve brain performance using brain wave tracking technology that he has pioneered, I want to have a conversation with him. I have some questions for Nolan that I hope will spark some innovation in our thinking as it relates to the future of health and wellness. Let’s meet Nolan Beise and see what we can learn together about ways to improve our mind and brain health in the future. Welcome Nolan! Was I correct that while you went to school at the University of Toronto, you are now in British Columbia?   INTRO: I went to Teacher’s College in Toronto, at U of T back in the late 1990s. I remember all of dreams I had back then, of how I would change the world. Can you share where your mindset was when you were a student, walking around those streets in downtown Toronto? What was your vision for the world back then? Q1: I’ve said this over and over again on this podcast, where our goal is to connect the most current brain research to our daily life (whether we work in our local schools, sports environments or modern workplaces). Back in the day, no one EVER asked me “what are you doing for your brain health.” When did you FIRST start to consider the importance of your brain, and think that the world needs help with optimizing this important, yet complex organ? Q2: What have you invented, how does it work? Q2B: How are regular people using this headset that measures brain performance? I can guess there would be an interest from the sports world? How does tracking how our brain processes visual stimuli help us? Q2C: How would the headset help our first responders? Q3: I became interested in Alzheimer’s Prevention strategies around the time of the Pandemic, and have focused a few episodes on this topic. I even took my husband to Dr. Daniel Amen’s clinics[ii] to get our brain scanned to see if either of us showed signs of any disease, since I know that our brain health is what would drive our future success. Not everyone can get a SPECT image brain scan, (they are expensive and not covered by insurance). Tell me how most people gain access to your headset. I know your headset costs significantly less than a SPECT image brain scan for those who also want to look at their brain. Q4: I saw that your company was founded recently, in 2021, consisting of a team of neuroscientists, mathematicians, engineers, and designers. Who is your team, and tell me about this award you won for creating such innovative technology? Q5: Why did you want to create something that allows us to see our brain performance? What’s YOUR WHY behind your work? Q6: What makes your headset stand out from the crowd? What are you hearing from those who use it? Q7: Where would you like to see this technology go in the next 5-10 years? Q8: What stumbling blocks do you face with your goals? Q9: What have I missed that’s important? Nolan, I want to thank you for taking the time to meet with me today. Who knows, we could have walked past each other in the streets of Toronto back in the day. You never know. I’ve always got my eyes wide open to learn more about what’s innovative in the world, and I look forward to seeing more from you in the future. For people to learn more about you, is the best place https://circlbrain.com/? SOME FINAL THOUGHTS:  I learned so much for speaking with Nolan Beise! He emphasized that while people can go to his website and purchase a headset, that wasn’t his main motivation for meeting us today. His goal was just to let the world know about his vision, and let others know about him. I did connect him to Dr. Shane Creado, and think that when 2 powerful like minds come together, they form a third mind, with potential to take creativity and innovation to greater heights. If you want to connect with Nolan, you can visit the Contact Us page of his website https://circlbrain.com/pages/contact Most importantly today, I hope we all have a renewed vision for the importance of our brain health. I’ll see you next week!   CONNECT WITH NOLAN BEISE   LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/nolanbeise/   Website https://circlbrain.com/   Learn More About the Circl Headset https://circlbrain.com/products/circl-headset   REFERENCES: [i] https://circlbrain.com/ [ii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EP #84 PART 3 “How a SPECT image Brain Scan Can Change Your Life” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/how-a-spect-scan-can-change-your-life-part-3-with-andrea-samadi/  

Join us in episode 328 of the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast for an insightful discussion with D. Alexis Samuels, the founder of Brain Game Learning Systems, FineLitX, Global Corporation, and Prosperity Nation. Discover how he integrates neuroscience and gamification to educate and uplift underserved communities, with a special focus on financial literacy, socio-emotional learning, and legal and ethical understanding. Watch this interview on YouTube here https://youtu.be/R8FUuCR403o Alexis Samuels uses game-based learning systems rooted in neuroscience to make complex topics accessible and enjoyable. Here, you will learn how his innovative approaches are not only educating but altering behaviours and perspectives, instilling hope and inspiring success in individuals and communities. You will get a glimpse into the founder's journey, from his humble beginnings to his endeavours to tackle financial illiteracy and fear, and why he believes financial literacy is vital for mental well-being and socio-emotional learning. We delve deep into the workings of Brain Game Learning Systems, FinLitX, and Prosperity Nation, explaining how concepts from neuroscience are incorporated into games and curriculum. Hear how the companies collaboratively tackle challenges of poverty, targeting school systems and non-profits alike, and partnering with institutions like Notre Dame University on groundbreaking research studies. This episode provides a unique look into the link between neuroscience and financial literacy, shedding light on the role of dopamine in learning and the effectiveness of rewards and affirming feedback in education. As a major takeaway, experience how the combination of neuroscience, gamification and financial literacy can create compelling, immersive, and educationally-rich experiences, with potential to greatly impact cognitive and social development in societies. We also talk about real-life applications of these techniques through a credit score-based game, showing how such innovative approaches can reduce fear and anxiety towards adult responsibilities, and spark much-needed conversations. Get ready to transform the way you view education, financial literacy, and neuroscience, and begin to see the game-changing potential when these fields intersect. Lastly, we touch on the broader societal relevance of neuroscience today, underlining its potential for personal improvement and the urgent need for more active discussions to raise awareness. Join us in unpacking how neuroscience can hold the key to unlocking a world of possibilities in cognitive and social development. EPISODE #328 with D. Alexis Samuels on “Making the Neuroscience and Money Connection for our Next Generation” we will cover: ✔ Discover how Alexis integrates neuroscience and gamification to educate and uplift underserved communities, with a special focus on financial literacy, socio-emotional learning, and legal and ethical understanding. ✔ Learn about his game-based learning systems rooted in neuroscience to make complex topics accessible and enjoyable. ✔ What BIG NAMES have taken notice of Alexis Samuels and his work on ending generational poverty? ✔ Learn how his innovative approaches are not only educating but altering behaviours and perspectives, instilling hope and inspiring success in individuals and communities. ✔ Look closer into the link between neuroscience and financial literacy, shedding light on the role of dopamine in learning and the effectiveness of rewards and affirming feedback in education. ✔ How you can get involved with D. Alexis Samuels to help him reach more people with his noble mission On today's episode #328 we meet with someone who caught my attention through LinkedIn. He sent me a direct message, like people do often (I do appreciate these messages), and he was letting me know he was enjoying the podcast, highlighting that his passion was to help bridge the gap with the latest discoveries in brain science and mental health interventions to underserved populations. He went on to explain how he was doing this, and I was captivated. First because I still find it difficult to bridge this gap with science that we were not taught in schools, but come to find out it’s really important for us to understand. ALL of us, not just as teachers, educators and members of society, but this understanding is coming to be as close to what oxygen is for our survival.  It’s of critical importance that we understand this organ that controls everything that we are, and everything that we do. And I know what it takes for me to work on grasping this knowledge, breaking it down so that I understand these concepts first, and then work on a way to explain it to others, so we can all work on implementing these powerful ideas for change in our lives. I find this difficult work, but something I’m dedicated to doing, and then while talking with our next guest, I come to find out that he has created something to help us with this understanding-- a game, curated in neuroscience, that educates and addresses mental wellness in a way that we all can understand, using gamification.  Our next guest has a vision of evening out the playing field, using neuroscience with a game, that teaches economic power, specifically towards our underserved populations. I can’t wait to see what we can learn from our next guest, D. Alexis Samuels, the Founder of Brain Game Learning Systems, FinLitX (Fine-Lit-X) Global Corporation and Prosperity Nation to help us to all open our eyes to new ways we can bridge this gap with making neuroscience more applicable for all of us in our day to day lives, especially those in our underserved populations, who need it the most.   Welcome Alexis, it’s wonderful to meet you! Let’s start from the beginning, Who is D. Alexis Samuels? You are the Founder of Brain Game Learning Systems, FinLitX Global Corporation, and Prosperity Nation. That’s a lot! What are these companies and what motivated you to found them? Have you worked with any science or research institutions? Tell me more about the societal issues that form your missions’ focus. Specifically, what aspects of neuroscience do you incorporate in your service, and what results have you achieved? Do you have case studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of introducing neuroscience in learning environments? What do you feel is the future of neuroscience adapted curriculum in general education? Others write books, but you create games. Is that intentional? Speaking of neuroscience, what’s next for D. Alexis Samuels? Where can we learn more about your games, online curriculum, and platform? If someone wanted to speak with you, partner or collaborate, how can they reach you? Thank you very much for reaching out to me. You did stand out from the crowd as you offered ways to make my understanding of this complex topic to greater heights. I’m grateful to have had this time with you. CONNECT WITH Alexis Samuels LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/d-alexis-samuels/ Website https://finlitx.com/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/d.alexis.2330/?hl=en Get on the Road to Prosperity Board Game https://youtu.be/2Dq88VoDlrk   REFERENCES   NBA Kenny Smith Endorsement https://youtu.be/YJjz7PsJvHk   John Kounios and Mark Beeman The Eureka Factor: AHA Moments, Creative Insight and the Brain Published 2015 https://www.amazon.com/Eureka-Factor-Moments-Creative-Insight/dp/1400068541    

Join us as we revisit episode 327 of the "Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast", where we hone in on the critical relationship between hydration and brain health. Host Andrea Samadi delves into the sixth chapter of Grant Bosnick’s book during an 18-week self-leadership series, elucidating how focusing on our physical health can sharpen our cognitive performance. This episode is a paradigm shift, captivating listeners with the powerful impacts of nutrition and hydration on the brain. Andrea explores the benefits of water for our brain health and productivity, explaining how adequate hydration can improve concentration, cognition, mood and memory. The episode also explores other aspects of physical health like exercise, sleep and mindfulness, and how they contribute to overall wellness, well-being, achievement and productivity. Welcome back to SEASON 11 of The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we connect the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning and emotional intelligence training for improved well-being, achievement, productivity and results—using what I saw as the missing link (since we weren’t taught this when we were growing up in school), the application of practical neuroscience. I’m Andrea Samadi, an author, and an educator with a passion for learning and launched this podcast 5 years ago with the goal of bringing ALL the leading experts together (in one place) to help us to APPLY this research in our daily lives. On today's episode #327 we continue with our 18-Week Self-Leadership Series based on Grant Bosnick’s “Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership: A Bite Size Approach Using Psychology and Neuroscience” that we first dove into with our interview on EP #321[i] just a few weeks ago.  Now that we have started this series, I hope you can see how practicing and strengthening the skills we are learning each week, is cumulative. Each week, we are learning something new, that builds off the prior week, to help take us to greater heights in 2024. In this 18-week Series that we began in the beginning of February, we are covering: ✔ Powerful tactics from this Grant Bosnick’s award-winning book that illustrates how change and achievement are truly achievable both from internal ('inside out') and external ('outside in') perspectives. ✔Listeners will grasp the immense power of self-leadership and its transformative effect on personal growth and success by applying the neuroscience Grant has uncovered in each chapter. ✔Explore practical strategies for habit formation and the impact of a self-assessment system. ✔Gain insights from Grant's expert advice on maintaining a balance between strengths and weaknesses while chasing after your goals. ✔Embark on an intellectual journey that has the power to elevate personal achievement and self-awareness to uncharted levels while we map out our journey over this 18-week course. There is great power and self-awareness that comes along with mapping out a plan designed specifically for YOU and I do encourage everyone to take Grant Bosnick’s Leadership Self-Assessment[ii] so you can see the areas for you that score a high, medium of low level of importance for you to focus on this year. For Today, EPISODE #327, Chapter 6, “The Science Behind our Physical Health” we narrow our focus from a wide and complex topic to something we can implement immediately: Today we will consider “The Hydrated Brain for Improving Our Cognitive Performance” ✔ A Review of the Top Health Staples that we have covered on this podcast over the years, specifically since the Pandemic. ✔ How Dehydration Affects Our Cognitive Performance ✔ Tips Grant Bosnick Suggests for Keeping Our Brain Hydrated ✔ Focusing on One Area of Your Physical Health at a Time Today we dive into Chapter 6 of Grant Bosnick’s book as we cover “The Science Behind Our Physical Health” which came out as LOW importance (red score) for me, alongside emotion regulation.  If you have taken the self-assessment, you’ll know it’s how you answer the questions, based on what’s of high priority for you, that determines the lessons that are important to begin now, or ones that you might think you have a handle on, so they show up as lower priority like this topic did for for me. Not that physical health, or emotion regulation is of low priority for me, it’s quite the opposite, but I block out time in the day for both of these topics, and this time is non-negotiable. I will say that while the broad term of physical health (that Grant covers in Pathway 4 of his book) is extremely important to me, it is a very complex topic and one we’ve been focused on since the pandemic geared us into looking closer at our physical and mental health. We created the Top Health Staples[iii] That Are Scientifically Proven to Boost Our Physical and Mental Health where we’ve now added a 6th with stress reduction, for Podbean’s Wellness Week back in 2020, when I was asked to cover this topic. It was here where we shifted our attention to be equally as focused on the health of our mind (our mental health) in addition to our physical health. You can’t have one without the other. When guests have approached me over the years to join us on the podcast, if they fall into these health staples with an angle I’ve not yet covered, it’s easy to say yes, so we can keep moving our physical and mental health forward. We are always looking for WHAT’S NEW and INNOVATIVE in this area. How many times have we seen Dr. Gregory Kelly[iv] from Neurohacker.com who is focused on pioneering systems for human optimization and longevity? Twice so far and he’s on the schedule the middle of April to cover Qualia NAD+ where we will learn more about NAD+ that is often called the “aging” molecule due to its profound influence on how well (or how poorly) we will age. We recently met Dimitri Leonov[v] with a new nanotechnology I’ve been wearing since our interview the end of this year, that’s been spotted on celebrities like Robert Downey Jr. We are always looking for what’s new to take us to new heights with our physical and mental health, with some exciting and NEW innovators who we will be covering in the next few months. So what does Grant Bosnick say about physical health is his book “Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership?” He begins with the importance of looking at what we eat and asks “what is it doing to your brain?” (Chapter 6, Bosnick). What I like about Grant’s book, and why I wanted to cover EACH chapter over the next 18 weeks, is because it’s a paradigm shift for us to think about how ANYTHING we do impacts our brain. THINK ABOUT THIS FOR A MINUTE: 25 years ago, when I was setting goals for my future, no one said to me “Hey Andrea, think about how your brain will tie into the goals you are setting” or “what foods are you eating for your brain health” or even “Did you know that exercise will build a stronger, more resilient brain?” I didn’t even begin to consider my brain until 2014 when Jeff Kleck, an Arizona School Administrator that we met on EP 246[vi] shared all his notes, books and resources with me, urging me that understanding how our brain operates, will be of critical importance in our future. Boy was he ever right. I still keep in touch with him, and let him know all the time just how grateful I was for the time he spent explaining what he had learned about the brain with me.   Grants goes over foods that are important for our brain health and productivity, specifically foods that have a low glycemic index “which means they release energy slowly into the bloodstream.” (Chapter 6, Bosnick). We’ve covered this topic on various episodes, specifically with “The Damaging Impacts of Sugar on the Brain and Body”[vii] and we’ve even used a glucose monitor to test what happens to our body with too much sugar, and how it can tank our overall health and productivity. While reading this chapter, Grant echoed many of the experts I’m sure you’ve heard us mention, like Dr. Daniel and Tana Amen, from their Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast who reminded us to always make decisions with our brain in mind by thinking or saying out loud with everything that we do “Is this decision GOOD for my brain, or NOT” Dr. Amen said many things that caught my attention while listening to his podcast years ago, and I often took his words of wisdom and created graphics to keep his thoughts close. While talking about our daily habits and aging (which I know we all want to do gracefully) he reminded us that “your everyday habits and decisions are either boosting or stealing your brain’s reserve and are either accelerating the aging the process (which none of us want to do on purpose) or rejuvenating your brain.” It was Dr. Amen[viii] who first caught my attention with the importance of loving my brain, this organ that controls everything that I am and everything that I do. Finally, it was when Dr. Amen mentioned that “Your competitive advantage or disadvantage is the actual physical functioning of your brain.” (Dr. Amen from The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast) This statement made me take a good look at whether I was boosting my brain reserve and rejuvenating the aging process, or accelerating it. Grant covers many of the Top Health Staples in chapter 6, highlighting what many experts have been hitting home for us over the past few years, like the importance of sleep, taking power naps and adding in ideas for relaxation with mindfulness, and massage, but it was his focus on breathing that “helps with emotion regulation and memory recall” (Chapter 6, Bosnick) that caught my attention in Chapter 6. I remember watching Stanford Professor Dr. Andrew Huberman demonstrate how to “Self-Regulate Your Brain in Less Than a Minute”[ix] on one of his podcast episodes and it was so impactful to me that I use his method all the time now. I love how Grant covers how to use pranayama breathing for “emotional recognition and memory” (Chapter 6, Bosnick) as well as for “increasing concentration.” This topic of Physical Health is complex, and we can go into many different directions, which is why we created the Top 6 Health Staples to stay focused on moving the needle towards physical health with one idea at a time. I noticed that I would work on one area, like sleep for instance, and could see improvements here, but another area would suffer. It’s a balancing act for sure, requiring focused attention. So today, to keep it simple, I want to focus on something that we might forget about our brain, and our physical health and that is that “our brain is 75% water. (And) When our brain is functioning on a full reserve of water, we will be able to think faster and be more focused and experience greater clarity and creativity.” (Chapter 6, Bosnick). Grant reminds us in Chapter 6 of the importance of hydration, and says that “water is essential for delivering nutrients to our brain and for removing toxins. When our brain is fully hydrated, the exchange of nutrients and toxins will be more efficient—thus ensuring better concentration and mental alertness.” Grant mentions that our brain is “75% water” (Chapter 6, Bosnick) and of the importance of hydration, and I remembered learning that “90 minutes of sweating can temporarily shrink the brain as much as one year of aging does.” From Deane Alban’s 72 Amazing Brain Facts. This brain fact brought home for me, just how important hydration is for our brain health. You will need to read Chapter 6 of Grant’s book to receive all of his tips, but he does cover the many BENEFITS of drinking water. He says that keeping our brain hydrated helps us with: Improving concentration and cognition Helping to balance our mood and emotions Maintaining a good memory Boosting our brain’s reaction time Increasing blood flow and oxygen to the brain Preventing and relieving headaches Reducing stress REVIEW AND CONCLUSION To review and conclude this week’s episode #327 on Chapter 6 on Physcial Health, we narrow our focus to “Our Hydrated Brain.” DID YOU KNOW: “That our brain is 75% water and when our brain is functioning on a full reserve of water, we will be able to think faster, be more focused and experience greater clarity and creativity?” (Chapter 6, Bosnick). Grant reminds us that “everyone is unique and needs different amounts of water per day (but suggests) an adequate intake for men is roughly around 3 liters (100 fluid ounces) a day, (and) for women it’s about 2.2 liters (74 fluid ounces) a day. THINK ABOUT THIS? Knowing how important water is for the brain, do you know how much water you drink?  I’ve definitely started paying more attention to this, especially knowing how “sweating can temporarily shrink the brain.” I’ve been using an infrared sauna, and another health device that calls for an increase in water intake, and I can tell with 100% certainty that when I’m not drinking enough water, it shows up with my ability to think with clarity. What do you think? Could you improve your water intake? Just by thinking about ways to improve our brain health, we will over time begin to move the needle in the direction of physical health and wellness, which was the concept that Grant wanted us to uncover in Chapter 6. I hope you learned something new, perhaps a new angle for your physical health, as you think about ways to stay hydrated as we all look for new ideas to improve our health in 2024. REVIEW Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 It’s here I’m hoping we will take the information we are learning, connect the dots to form knowledge and then apply this knowledge to become wise. This is where we go from theory to practice with this podcast. REFLECT Back to Chapter 2 on The Neuroscience of Goals (and Kurt Lewin’s Force Field Theory): What are you doing today to gain the momentum needed to reach NEW and HEIGHTENED levels of performance this year? How are you improving your mental and physical health to gain the momentum we talked about in this chapter? REFLECT Back to Chapter 3 on The Neuroscience of Inspiration: How are you using people or places that inspire you, to take your results to greater heights? Think about this as it relates to your physical and mental health. What inspiration do you need to take more action in this area? REFLECT Back to Chapter 4 on The Neuroscience of Mindfulness: Where are you in your Mindfulness Journey? Mindfulness, and breathing was listed often in Chapter 6.  How is mindfulness helping you with your physical health? REFLECT Back to Chapter 5 on The Neuroscience Behind Peak Performance: How are you practicing “getting into flow?” When do you notice it the most?  Is it during physical exercise, or meditation? Are you practicing this state to gain 5x more productivity in this state? I’ll close out this episode with a quote that I’m hoping will urge all of us to grab a glass of water as we THINK about how we will implement this powerful concept into our week. Loren Eisley said “If there is Magic on this planet, it is contained in water” and I’ll have to agree.  Grant taught us how drinking water helps us, improving our concentration, cognition, mood, emotions, memory, reaction time, increasing oxygen to our brain, preventing head aches and reducing stress. So go grab a glass of water, and I’ll see you next week with Chapter 7 on Insight.  REFERENCES: [i]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #321 with Grant ‘Upbeat’ Bosnick  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/insights-from-grant-upbeat-bosnick/   [ii] Self-Assessment for Grant Bosnick’s book https://www.selfleadershipassessment.com/   [iii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast BONUS EPISODE Recorded for Podbean’s Wellness Week “The Top 5 Health Staples” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/bonus-episode-a-deep-dive-into-the-top-5-health-staples-and-review-of-seasons-1-4/   [iv] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #285 with Dr. Gregory Kelly on “How to Beat Aging and Stress with Qualia Senolytics”   https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/dr-gregory-kelly-from-neurohacker-collective-on-how-to-beat-aging-and-stress-with-qualia-senolytics/   Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #305 with Dr. Gregory Kelly on Qualia Synbiotics https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/returning-guest-dr-gregory-kelly-on-qualia-synbiotic-optimizing-digestion-and-mood-with-prebiotics-probiotics-and-postbiotics/   [v] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #318 with Dmitri Leonov on Taopatch, Nanotechnology for Health and Wellness of the Future https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/dmitri-leonov-on-taopatch-understanding-nanotechnology-for-health-and-wellness-of-the-future/   [vi]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #246 with Jeff Kleck on “Using Neuroscience to Inspire Thinkers in our Schools, Sports and the Workplace”  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/jeff-kleck-on-using-neuroscience-to-inspire-thinkers-in-schools-sport-and-the-workplace/   [vii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #275 “The Damaging Impacts of Sugar on the Brain and Body” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/brain-fact-friday-the-damaging-impacts-of-sugar-on-the-brain-and-body/   [viii] The Daniel Plan by Dr. Amen https://www.danielplan.com/change-your-brain-change-your-life-2/   [ix]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #273 On Self-Regulation  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/brain-fact-friday-on-self-regulation-using-neuroscience-to-regulate-automatic-negative-thoughts-emotions-and-behaviors/   Click here for more episodes of the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast

Welcome back to the 11th season of the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning podcast. In today's enlightening episode, we unfold the phenomenon of 'flow'—a state of profound immersion leading to peak performance. Our exploration is rooted in the teachings of Grant Bosnick and psychologist Mike Csikszentmihalyi, as we look at how strategies like rigorous self-awareness, customized planning, and potential improvement assessment contribute to achieving this state of blissful productivity. We delve deeper into the neuroscience of flow by understanding the brain changes that occur during this state. This discussion is enriched with insights from neuroscientist Arne Dietrich. We learn about the shift from conscious to subconscious intrinsic system that results in heightened creativity and enhanced mood—making tasks appear effortless and enjoyable. The episode also sheds light on the key neurochemicals responsible for inducing and sustaining the flow state - dopamine, noradrenaline, serotonin, and endorphins. This understanding paves the way to comprehend the ecstasy felt during flow, accompanied by an absence of pain and hunger, resulting in a beautifully enhanced mood. Flow is reported to multiply productivity and happiness. It accelerates learning and creativity while improving problem-solving skills. We conclude the episode with practical tips to help you understand better, induce and maintain flow and thus multiply productivity, reach your goals, and experience profound joy in your efforts. On today's episode #326 we continue with our 18-Week Self-Leadership Series based on Grant Bosnick’s “Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership: A Bite Size Approach Using Psychology and Neuroscience” that we first dove into with our interview on EP #321[i] just a few weeks ago.  Now that we have started this series, I hope you can see how practicing and strengthening the skills we are learning each week, is cumulative. Each week, we are learning something new, that builds off the prior week, to help take us to greater heights in 2024. In this 18-week Series that we began in the beginning of February, we are covering: ✔ Powerful tactics from this Grant Bosnick’s award-winning book that illustrates how change and achievement are truly achievable both from internal ('inside out') and external ('outside in') perspectives. ✔Listeners will grasp the immense power of self-leadership and its transformative effect on personal growth and success by applying the neuroscience Grant has uncovered in each chapter. ✔Explore practical strategies for habit formation and the impact of a self-assessment system. ✔Gain insights from Grant's expert advice on maintaining a balance between strengths and weaknesses while chasing after your goals. ✔Embark on an intellectual journey that has the power to elevate personal achievement and self-awareness to uncharted levels while we map out our journey over this 18-week course. There is great power and self-awareness that comes along with mapping out a plan designed specifically for YOU and I encourage everyone to take Grant Bosnick’s Leadership Self-Assessment[ii] so you can see the areas for you that score a high, medium of low level of importance for you to focus on this year. EPISODE #326, Chapter 5, “The Neuroscience of Flow” we will cover: ✔ A Review of Peak Performance and Using Flow for Increased Productivity in the Workplace with EP 27 with Friederike Fabritius. ✔ What is the Flow State? ✔ How to prepare for the Flow State. ✔ What does the Flow State feel like? ✔ Getting into Flow ✔ The Neuroscience of Flow ✔ The Benefits of Flow in the Workplace and Beyond ✔ 4 TIPS for Getting into the Flow State to Increase Productivity     Today we dive into Chapter 5 of Grant Bosnick’s book as we cover “The Neuroscience of Flow” which came out as MEDIUM importance (orange score) alongside the topics of Mindfulness[iii] that we covered last week. Flashback to Friederike Fabritius on Peak Performance What I loved about seeing this topic included in Grant’s 18 chapters was that I remember watching Pioneer in Neuorleadership, Friederike Fabritius presenting on “The Recipe of Peak Performance and Flow” that I shared on our first interview together back on EPISODE #27[iv] in October 2019.  When I watch some of these earlier interviews I remember what life what like before I had invested in a high-tech recording system. You will hear some bugs that today, AI can erase, taking our peak performance to new heights. Talking about Peak Performance, these days, I record as usual, (using a Rodecaster Pro Recording System) and then after production, AI cleans up every recorded for me. It’s new, and still ironing out some bugs with it, but mind-boggling to see where we started out, and where we are today. We can always strive forward and improve where we were yesterday. What I remember loving the most about Friederike’s first talk that I found back in 2017 that she did for high level executives in Barcelona, Spain, was that she accurately described what the psychologist, researcher and “father of flow”[v] (known in his work environment as Mike C) that he devoted his entire lifetime to. And that is, what constitutes a happy life. “Mike C,” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, (from Claremont Graduate University in CA) along with Professor Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania (who we’ve mentioned before on this podcast “set out to develop a focus on happiness, well-being, and positivity with a goal to create a field focused on human well-being and the conditions that enable people to flourish and live satisfying lives.”[vi] Friederike explained this concept of “flow” or “peak performance” as an optimal state that occurs when our brain releases three chemicals: noradrenaline (released with a challenge), dopamine (released with anything that gives you pleasure), and acetylcholine (released when you have focused attention). She reminded us about learning to find our “optimal level” of performance by knowing thyself. Some people she says, need challenge to perform optimally (I’m like this for sure), and other people, you must take the challenge or pressure away for them to perform at their best.  One person performs better with an element of “threat” that they perceive as a “reward” and this motivates them, while another person shuts down with this “threat.” To reach peak performance levels with YOUR work, it helps to know how you reach your optimal levels best. Take This Understanding to Create Flow in the Workplace How can we create this “flow state” with our work? If you are working in an environment that’s too easy, or not challenging, you will be under challenged, and reaching peak performance in this scenario is difficult as you will be bored. Or, be careful if you are in a workplace with too much challenge, where you are over aroused, constantly putting out fires, and under high stress or pressure, all the time. Over time, without balance, this person will burn out. At the brain level, their amygdala grows bigger, and they will begin to see threats where there are none. Friederike reminds us to find a workplace where we can reach optimal levels of challenge, (if you look at the image in the show notes, it’s at the peak of the curve). Boredom or too easy on the left of the curve, and stress/anxiety at the right of the curve, with optimal levels, or our sweet spot for peak performance at the top.  It’s working here where we can access peak performance or flow where we are able to get into the zone with our work, and lose track of time. [vii] (Image credit: Achieving a flow state) You can see why it’s important to find your optimal level of performance for this magical brain state to occur. THINK ABOUT THIS! When have YOU accessed flow? What were you doing? Maybe you’ve lost track of time reading an enjoyable novel, or while writing, or running? There are two activities where I’ve experienced this state: hiking in the mountains, or writing these podcast episodes. I can be running through the mountains, and hours can go by before I look at my watch and decide to turn back before darkness hits, or I run out of time, or I can sit down at my desk in the early morning, to write one of these episodes, and find myself still there, and the whole day has gone by. I can easily lose track of time in both these scenarios, and feel exactly what the research supports, that this state of mind “is accompanied with a sense of accomplishment, meaningfulness, and positive mood.”[viii] So what does Grant Bosnick say about flow in his book “Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership?” He mentions the “father of flow” in the second paragraph, and defines flow as “the mental state of being fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of an activity we are doing. In essence, it is characterized by complete absorption in what we do, performing at the edge of our capabilities, peak performance. In this state, it feels effortless, as if things are flowing together.” (Chapter 5, Bosnick).  Grant mentions that “we are in micro flow all the time. When we look for it, we can ride it into jacked flow. We can train ourselves into flow. And heighten our performance.” (Chapter 5, Bosnick). Now we are talking. I’ve only noticed flow AFTER it has occurred, and have not been in the habit of training myself into flow, so this is going to be a new practice for me this year. PREPARING FOR THE FLOW STATE: Grant prepares us for flow, just like Friederike, who suggests that we find the right amount of challenge, and then says that “it’s something that we make happen; it is not something that happens to us.” (Chapter 5, Bosnick). “Flow depends on our ability to control what happens in our consciousness moment by moment. Each of us has to achieve it on the basis of our own individual efforts and creativity. We are in control of consciousness when we have the ability to focus attention at will, to be oblivious to distractions, and to concentrate for as long as it takes to achieve a goal, and not longer.” (Chapter 5, Bosnick). We have talked about ways to develop our higher faculties of our mind[ix], like our will, on recent episodes, which is one way to help us to focus our attention, moment by moment and block out distractions, and Grant brings us back to chapter 4 on Mindfulness that he mentions helps us to control our attention at will. See how all of these chapters work together? Developing Mindfulness, will help us to strengthen our ability to access the flow state. HOW DOES THIS STATE FEEL? Grant gives some examples from a dancer who describes flow as “your concentration is complete” or a rock climber who says “you are so involved in what you are doing that you aren’t thinking of yourself as separate from the immediate activity.” (Chapter 5, Bosnick).  Grant shares that he feels this state while drumming, or designing a presentation saying that “his body and mind are one, working together.” (Chapter 5, Bosnick. When I’m running in the mountains, in this state, it’s like me and the mountains are one. I don’t see what’s around me, just the small area of pathway right in front of me.  Or when I’m writing at my desk, it’s just me, the keyboard and the computer screen. All sounds are blocked out, and it’s difficult to break me away from the desk, mid-thought. I have to finish writing, or the flow is gone, and my family knows when I’m in this state, and not to knock on the door, which will break this state of deep focused concentration. GETTING INTO FLOW: Grant has a reflection activity to help us to practice getting into this flow state.  He suggests: THINK: When have hours passed by without you realizing it? THINK: When did things just click into place and felt effortless? OBSERVE: Once you know what flow feels like for you, notice the type of activities you were doing to obtain this state in other areas of your life. The Neuroscience of Flow DID YOU KNOW that in flow “as our attention heightens, the slower and energy-intensive extrinsic system (conscious processing) is traded off for the far faster and more efficient processing of the subconscious, intrinsic system?” (Chapter 5, Bosnick). Grant quotes Arne Dietrich, a neuroscientist from the American University of Beirut who says “It’s an efficiency exchange of the energy in our brain—trading the energy we normally use for resource-intensive conscious thinking activity for (resource-efficient) heightened attention and awareness. The technical term for this exchange is transient hypofrontality.” (Chapter 5, Bosnick). Grant also explains the changes in our brain waves. “When we are in flow, we transition from the faster-moving beta waves of normal waking consciousness to the slower, deeper alpha waves and even borderline theta waves. Alpha waves are like a day-dreaming mode…theta waves are the ones we experience during REM or just before we fall asleep, where ideas combine in amazing and unique ways.” (Chapter 5, Bosnick). When I got to the part of this chapter where Grant wrote about the neurochemistry of flow, I stopped and remembered Friederike’s presentation from 2014 and the graphic I created with the three brain chemicals she listed that were important for getting into flow; noradrenaline, dopamine and aceylcholine. Grant sited the research from Neuroscientists at Bonn University who determined 5 neurochemicals present during this flow state. They found that endorphins (that help with pain and stress relief), norepinephrine which is the same neurochemical Friederike mentioned, noradrenaline (not sure why scientists have two words that mean the same neurochemical…maybe they couldn’t agree on this name and so now we’ve got two words for the same thing (that’s released with a challenge), anandamide (that regulates pain, anxiety and hunger) and serotonin (that plays a key role in our mood) that are all present during the flow state. Understanding the functions of these neurochemicals helps me to understand why during this state of flow I don’t notice aches and pains I have, hunger and thirst disappears, and I’m happy for hours at a time.  WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF FLOW? When you are in flow, I’d say it feels almost dream-like, or trance-like as our brain waves slow down, allowing us to access higher levels of creativity. In Chapter 5, Grant points out that “In a ten-year study at McKinsey, top executives reported being five times more productive in flow.” “Flow helps us to learn faster. Recent research says somewhere between 400% and 500% faster according to research by Advanced Brain Monitoring and DARPA, subjects had a 490% increase in skill acquisition in the state of flow.” “Flow enhances creativity and problem solving. The University of Sydney tested flows impact on creative problem-solving abilities…in a flow state, creative problem-solving increases by 430%” The father of flow, Mike C “Csikszentmihalyi also found, through his research, that the people on earth who have the most flow in their lives are the happiest people on Earth.” “When we are in flow we forget the unpleasant aspects of life.”   I knew that the flow state was powerful, but until reading the research that Grant put into this chapter, I didn’t realize just how powerful the flow state really is. Now I’m thinking I want to use this state to make life more enjoyable and help me to develop new skills at a faster rate. HOW TO GET INTO FLOW You’ll have to read chapter 5 for all of Grant’s tips. I liked his tips on Getting into Flow Through Mental Stimulation, since this is what I’m doing while writing this episode. I’ve been sitting at my desk, writing this episode since early this morning, and I just looked at the time and it’s well into the afternoon. I’ve been in flow, writing for at least five hours. How can I use Grant’s Tips to ride myself into what he calls “jacked flow” that will help me to 5x my productivity and accomplish more with less effort? Grant suggests: PICK A GOAL: Think of whatever it is you are working on a decide on the goal. Finish the presentation, or write the proposal or for me, finish writing this episode so I can record it tomorrow. PRIME YOUR BRAIN FOR FLOW: Next he suggests bringing in mindfulness, that takes us back to our last episode where we learned about PQ reps. Use mindfulness to filter out your distractions and maintain control with your attention. I found it does help to let others around you know you’ve blocked off a time where you cannot be interrupted. THINK ABOUT THE BENEFIT OF THE GOAL: Why do you want to complete the thing you are working on. For me, with each podcast episode I write, record and release, it helps me to not only implement these new ideas into my own life, but I know I’m gaining skills that help me far beyond the content. Hosting this podcast, writing and recording these episodes, helps me to improve my presentation skills, communication, which improves my overall levels of confidence, let along what I’m gaining from implementing these ideas myself. What benefits do YOU receive from whatever it is that YOU are working on? PUT YOURSELF ON THE EDGE: Ask yourself, is this challenging me? If it’s not, it might not get you into the flow state. If it is, then keep working, and see how far you can get. How long can you stretch your flow state. REVIEW AND CONCLUSION To review and conclude this week’s episode #326 on “The Neuroscience of Flow” we asked the question: DID YOU KNOW THAT “When we are in flow, we transition from the faster-moving beta waves of normal waking consciousness to the slower, deeper alpha waves and even borderline theta waves” and “we are five times more productive in this state.” (Bosnick, Chapter 5).  We reviewed an early episode with Friederike Fabritius where she taught us about Peak Performance and How to Create Flow in the Workplace. We dove deep into how to prepare for the flow state, what it feels like, urging us all to think about WHEN we access this state ourselves. We looked into The Neuroscience of Flow, the neurochemicals that are present in our brain during flow, with some additional ones that were new for me. We covered the benefits of flow, that opened my eyes to how important this brain state is for workplace productivity, creativity and innovation. The research from McKinsey mentioned productivity soared by 5x while using the flow state, making me decide it was time to work on inducing flow more often in my work week. We ended with 4 STEPS to getting into “jacked flow” as Grant calls it, to give ourselves 5x more productivity, with less effort. Grant tells us to: PICK A GOAL: With what we want to accomplish is this state. PRIME YOUR BRAIN FOR FLOW: By using PQ reps from our episode on Mindfulness, and blocking out all distractions. KNOW THE BENEFIT OF THE GOAL: Which takes us back to the deeper meaning of “why” we do what we do. PUT YOURSELF ON THE EDGE: You must be challenging yourself. This made me think of something my mentor Bob Proctor would say all the time. He’d say “If you aren’t sitting on the edge, you’re taking up too much space” and I used to think about this. What exactly does he mean? Don’t slouch in our chairs? He meant always lean in, take on difficult, challenging work, or you are wasting valuable time.  It’s here I want us to think back to where we began on the map of Grant’s Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership.  REVIEW Chapters 2, 3, 4 EPISODE #323, Chapter 2, “Using Neuroscience to Level Up Your 2024 Goals” ✔ What is Kurt Lewin’s “Field Theory” and how can we use it to improve our performance towards our goals in 2024? REFLECT: What are you doing today to gain the momentum needed to reach NEW and HEIGHTENED levels of performance? EPISODE #324, Chapter 3, “The Neuroscience of Inspiration” ✔ Uncover WHO or WHAT inspires you. ✔ Learn what happens to our brain when we are inspired (by a person or a thing). ✔ Apply the Neuroscience of Inspiration to our life in 3 steps: WRITE, THINK and LEARN to Level Up Our Results in 2024. REFLECT: How are you using people or places that inspire you, to take your results to greater heights? EPISODE #325 Chapter 4 “The Neuroscience of Mindfulness” ✔ A review of our past episodes where we covered the topic of Mindfulness. ✔ Defining Mindfulness and where many people begin their practice. ✔ Putting Mindfulness into practice using PQ Reps, coined by Positive Intelligence Founder, Shirzad Chamine, to build our mental muscles over time. ✔ My challenge to you to keep working on Mindfulness for improved productivity in our personal and work lives. REFLECT: Where are you in your Mindfulness Journey? Which leads us to connect the dots to chapter 5 on The Neuroscience of Flow. REFLECT: When do you experience this brain state, and how can you use it intentionally to reach 5x your usual levels of productivity in your work life? With that thought, I’ll close out this episode, with a quote from the “Father of Flow” Mike C, who reminds us The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen. No one is going to do this work for us. I’ll see you next week for our review of Chapter 6 on Physical Health. See you next time. REFERENCES: [i]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #321 with Grant ‘Upbeat’ Bosnick  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/insights-from-grant-upbeat-bosnick/   [ii] Self-Assessment for Grant Bosnick’s book https://www.selfleadershipassessment.com/   [iii]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #325 on “The Neuroscience of Mindfulness”  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/insight-from-grant-bosnicks-tailored-approaches-to-self-leadership/   [iv]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #27 with Friederike Fabritius on “The Recipe for Peak Performance”  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/pioneer-in-the-field-of-neuroleadership-friederike-fabritius-on-the-recipe-for-achieving-peak-performance/   [v] https://www.cgu.edu/people/mihaly-csikszentmihalyi/   [vi] IBID [vii] Achieving a flow state by Allaya Cooks-Campbell March 7, 2022 https://www.betterup.com/blog/flow-state   [viii] The Neuroscience of Flow: Involvement of the Locus Coeruleus Norepinephrine System by Dimitr van der Linden et al Published April 14, 2021 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.645498/full   [ix] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #294 “Beyond our 5 Senses and Using the Six Higher Faculties of the Mind”  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/beyond-our-5-senses-understanding-and-using-the-six-higher-faculties-of-our-mind/  

Dive into the deep corners of mindfulness and neuroscience in this captivating episode of the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast. Join us as we delve into Grant Bosnick's insightful book, 'Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership' while exploring the neuroscience of mindfulness. In episode 325, we introduce you to PQ Reps, a robust method to build mental muscles for better mental resilience and executive control over daily distractions. Unpack how to effectively apply neuroscience to amp up your mindfulness practice and make noticeable progress over time. Learn about the impressive benefits of incorporating PQ Reps into your routine, from the perspective of Positive Intelligence founder Shirzad Chamine. Enhance your understanding of concepts such as Lewin's field theory, the practice of setting concrete goals, and the neuroscience of inspiration. You will find out how to effectively use your mind to create your future by design instead of letting it happen by default. Whether you're seeking to deepen your existing mindfulness practice or exploring ways to kick-start one, this episode offers practical guidance backed by science. Remember, every giant leap begins with a small step. Start today with the PQ Reps and set yourself up for a more mindful 2024. In this 18-week Series, we will cover: ✔ Powerful tactics from this NEW award-winning book that illustrates how change and achievement are truly achievable both from internal ('inside out') and external ('outside in') perspectives. ✔Listeners will grasp the immense power of self-leadership and its transformative effect on personal growth and success. ✔Explore practical strategies for habit formation and the impact of a self-assessment system. ✔Gain insights from Grant's expert advice on maintaining a balance between strengths and weaknesses while chasing after your goals ✔Embark on an intellectual journey that has the power to elevate personal achievement and self-awareness to uncharted levels. EPISODE #325 Chapter 4 “The Neuroscience of Mindfulness” ✔ A review of our past episodes where we covered the topic of Mindfulness. ✔ Defining Mindfulness and where many people begin their practice. ✔ Putting Mindfulness into practice using PQ Reps, coined by Positive Intelligence Founder, Shirzad Chamine, to build our mental muscles over time. ✔ My challenge to you to keep working on Mindfulness for improved productivity in our personal and work lives. On today's episode #325 we continue with our 18-Week Self-Leadership Series based on Grant Bosnick’s “Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership: A Bite Size Approach Using Psychology and Neuroscience” that we first dove into with our interview on EP #321.[i]  During this interview, I told Grant that his book contained a thorough and deep overview of the Neuroscience of Self-Leadership, and I felt like each of the 18 chapters could be covered in 18 weeks, for all of us to gain a better understanding of the application of the science he picked out for each chapter. So I decided to cover EACH chapter here, with a map towards our progress over the next 18 weeks, and to set our season theme to the Neuroscience of Self-Leadership that will be our focus until June of this year. Today we will be looking at Chapter 4 of this book on “The Neuroscience of Mindfulness.” This is a topic that scored on the MEDIUM side of urgency for me, (ORANGE) on the Leadership Self-Assessment.[ii]  I hope that you have taken your self-assessment[iii], so you can follow along with your most urgent to least urgent areas of importance with your year. This area surprised me a bit, because I think Mindfulness is a huge part of my day. It’s something that I spend time doing every morning, or else it’s noticeable to me that I’ve missed it. Then I looked back over all the episodes we covered starting with some of our early episodes when I was just learning the ropes with interviewing guests. We started covering mindfulness on EP #25[iv] with Mick Neustadt, a mindfulness expert, to EP #28[v] with Dr. Dan Siegel, the well-known clinical professor at the UCLA School of Medicine, on his concept of Mindsight that he said was the basis for social and emotional intelligence.  Then on EP #60[vi], we covered Dr. Siegel’s’ Wheel of Awareness Meditation, and the insights I gained from practicing the 3 segments he has created over a two-month period, and then into Dr. Dawson Church’s Bliss Brain Meditations[vii] that still sits as our MOST watched YouTube interview[viii] from December 2020 on The Science Behind Using a Meditation Practice. It feels like yesterday, but it was 2 years ago that we met with psychologist Darshan Pindoria for EP 266 on “Bringing Mindfulness and Meditation to Our Daily Lives.” So what does Grant Bosnick say about mindfulness in his book “Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership?” He opens up chapter four by talking about the benefits of mindfulness to help us to gain more “executive control” over our daily distractions. I like how he asks “What is Mindfulness?” and lists the many definitions on the topic that talk about this practice as a “mental state achieved by concentrating in the present moment” to “creating a feeling of calm” to “a moment-to-moment awareness of one’s experience without judgement.” Then he did not miss the father of mindfulness, who we’ve quoted often on this podcast, especially after I took his Masterclass, Jon Kabat-Zinn who gently reminds us that mindfulness is “an awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally.” Bosnick shares that “it seems to be a mental state AND the practice of reaching that state” and he likens it to the Jedi’s Mind from the movie series Star Wars. He says “It’s like the force.” Now I think I saw Star Wars when I was a kid, and knew about “the force” but had to look up the meaning as it’s been a few years. Bosnick reminds us that in the original Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi told Luke Skywalker “Well, the force is what gives a Jedi his power. It is an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us: it binds the galaxy together.” (Ch 4, Bosnick). Now for someone who hasn’t watched Star Wars since childhood, this sounds a lot to me like content we cover on this podcast, specifically our Science of Getting Rich Series[ix] where we talk about the fact that “there is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates and fills the interspaces of the universe.” (Wallace D. Wattles, SGR, The Syllabus). Or, our interview with Dr. Konstantin Korotkov, from EP 307[x] where we learned about the energy field that surrounds our body. Bosnick reminds us that the movie warned us to “Remember, a Jedi’s strength flows from the Force. But beware: Anger, fear, aggression—the Dark Side, are there” so we learn to keep our emotions in check, by practicing mindfulness. PUTTING MINDFULNESS INTO PRACTICE: BUILDING OUR MENTAL RESILIENCE OVER TIME Bosnick tells us that “in order for us to be mindful, to focus and keep focus, we need to have “executive control” over our attention.” (Ch 4, Bosnick) and I’ll add that we will all be at different levels of being able to “block out” our distractions. I remember the first time I laid down, and tried to listen to a guided meditation in the early days of learning this practice, and is all I could hear was my kids running around, when they were little. There was no chance I was going to be able to focus back then, but I just kept trying. I can say that one day, I noticed, that I could be sitting somewhere busy, like an airport, and am now able to block all outside distractions in order to go within. Wearing certain headphones has definitely helped with this. But this didn’t come easily to me. I hear many people say “yeah, I gave up trying to meditate, it just doesn’t work for me.” Other than telling you to sit there and listen to whatever meditation program you connect with, and keep trying, I don’t have a strategy for HOW to build your mental muscles either, or how to build the resilience that comes over time, or how to take your meditation practice from the comfort of your home, where you begin, to your busy work day, when you need it the most. But Grant Bosnick does and he introduces us to New York Times Best Selling Author, Shirzad Chamine’s strategy[xi] that guarantees we will quiet our mind over time. Bringing in the science to Mindfulness, DID YOU KNOW there is a concept called PQ Reps, coined by Positive Intelligence Founder, Shirzad Chamine[xii] that builds our mental muscles over time? PQ Reps stand for “positive intelligence quotient repetitions” (Ch 4, Bosnick) “and they are small, laser-focused exercises that consciously and purposely deploy our attention to one specific sensation.” These exercises are a way to train your brain in the same way that you would if you were meditating, giving you all of the benefits we are talking about with this practice. Shirzad Chamine discovered PQ Reps when he was looking for a way to build mental resilience for people who struggled to begin a mediation practice. Through fMRI scans, he could see that by activating a certain part of the brain, the PQ Area, in 10 second intervals, by taking your index finger and rubbing it on your thumb, while focusing on the sensation of this feeling, they could see that this PQ area in the brain was slightly activated, while the survival part of the brain was slightly quieter.[xiii] HOW DO WE PRACTICE PQ REPS? By rubbing your finger and your thumb together, involving your any of your 5 senses for 10 seconds. I suggest involve the sensation of touch, and notice what it feels like to touch the top of one finger on the ridges of the other. By doing this, you are shifting your attention to your body and focusing on the sensation. It’s a lot like Dan Siegel’s Wheel of Awareness practice that has you focused on one body part at a time (from head to toe) and feeling the sensation of your thoughts as it goes from one body part to the next. Who knew I was practicing PQ Reps while doing Dan Siegel’s Wheel of Awareness Meditation and improving my mental fitness? It really does help to understand the science behind developing a mindfulness practice, so you can continue to strengthen yours. Shrizad Chamine recommends that if we want to use PQ Reps to build up this part of our brain, that we should do this practice for 12 minutes/day or 136 reps/day. To put this into perspective, Dan Siegel’s Full Wheel of Awareness practice[xiv], is 37 minutes in length. Visiting his website that I’ve linked in the show notes, you can see this one, as well as a shorter one, and a NEW one on the Plane of Possibility. REVIEW AND CONCLUSION To review and conclude this week’s episode #325 on “The Neuroscience of Mindfulness” we asked the question: DID YOU KNOW there is a concept called PQ Reps, coined by Positive Intelligence Founder, Shirzad Chamine[xv] who used fMRI scanners to discover that by doing these PQ Reps we can actually build our mental muscles by activating this PQ Region in the Brain?  For those who have a mindfulness practice in place, putting PQ Reps into practice helps to reaffirm the benefits that comes along with building your mental muscles, and for those who have found it difficult to begin a mindfulness practice, PQ Reps is a proven way to bridge the gap for you to begin. HOW DO WE PRACTICE PQ REPS? By rubbing our finger and thumb together, and involving any of our 5 senses for 10 seconds. I suggest that we feel the touch of our fingers on each other. By doing this, we are shifting our attention to our body and focusing on the sensation. It is this activity, that build us the PQ Area of our brain, while the survival part goes quieter. If you next listen to Dan Siegel’s Wheel of Awareness Meditation you will see how Dr. Siegel’s Mindfulness Practice is essentially teaching you to do PQ Reps involving every part of your body and feeling the sensations from your head to toe. Start small, practicing PQ Reps one day at a time, and eventually you will learn to focus your attention for longer periods of time, building your mental muscles and resilience in the process.   With each lesson we cover in this review of Grant Bosnick’s Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership, I’m hoping to show us how we can gain the momentum needed to activate Lewin’s Field Theory, (remember from Chapter 2 on goals, EP 323[xvi] that place where we gain momentum and suddenly, life becomes easier. The resistances fades away, and our goals or whatever it is we are working on, are not far off in the distance, but they are within our reach. Then I’m hoping that we have a clear understanding of Chapter 3, EP 324[xvii] on The Neuroscience of Inspiration where we became clear with WHO or WHAT inspires us. This is when we know we can use our MINDS and understanding of our BRAIN, to turn MIND into MATTER, and create our own futures by design, rather than let them happen by default. I suggest using the MAP that Bosnick created to check off when you think you have integrated each skills into your daily life. In Chapter 2 on Goals, do you see how to gain the momentum needed for your success this year? In Chapter 3 on Inspiration, do you know WHO or WHAT inspires you, and are you using this knowledge for motivation? And now in Chapter 4 on Mindfulness, where are YOU in your mindfulness practice? Does this understanding of PQ Reps help you to build up the PQ area of your brain? Can you do a few reps in the day, until you build up to 12 minutes a day like recommended for this part of the brain to see the changes we all seek? I hope you have found this episode on Mindfulness helpful for sharpening your mindfulness practice, if you have one, or looking for alternative ways to build one, if you have found the process to be difficult. I can’t forget that I wondered how I could improve my own meditation practice early last year, so we dove deep into The Silva Method, covered in 4 PARTS, that we just reviewed on EP #322[xviii] as our most downloaded series in 2023. The point of this episode today is that we learn to improve Mindfulness in our day to day life, not just for more “executive control” but to think beyond this. Jose Silva reminds us that “Once we learn to use our minds to train it, it will do some astounding things for us, as you will soon see.” Remember that some of the leading experts in the world have used Mindfulness (from The Silva Method) for outstanding results.   ✔ A marketing company used it to create 18 new products. ✔ 14 Chicago White Socks players used it to boost their scores. ✔  Celebrities have used it and credit Jose Silva for improving their focus and creativity. ✔  Colleges and universities have used it to help students study less, but learn more. If you are not using your mind to its fullest potential, don’t worry, awareness is the first step. Start small today, and you’ll be miles ahead in 2024, than you’ve ever been! I’ll end with a quote to highlight the self-awareness we will build once we’ve implemented this lesson into our daily life, since our goal with this 18-week series is to help each of us to become more self-aware. “To know yourself, you must sacrifice the illusion that you already do.” — Vironika Tugaleva And I’ll see you next week for an interview, and the week after that with Chapter 5 on Flow. REVIEW Chapters 2, 3 EPISODE #323, Chapter 2, “Using Neuroscience to Level Up Your 2024 Goals” ✔ What is Kurt Lewin’s “Field Theory” and how can we use it to improve our performance towards our goals in 2024? ✔ 3 STEPS for Applying Field Theory into our Daily Life to Reach Heightened Levels of Achievement in 2024. EPISODE #324, Chapter 3, “The Neuroscience of Inspiration” ✔ Uncover WHO or WHAT inspires you. ✔ Learn what happens to our brain when we are inspired (by a person or a thing). ✔ Apply the Neuroscience of Inspiration to our life in 3 steps: WRITE, THINK and LEARN to Level Up Our Results in 2024. RESOURCES and OTHER EPSIODES ON MINDFULNESS Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #154 https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/author-and-film-producer-tom-cronin-on-the-portal-book-and-movie-how-meditation-can-save-the-world/   Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #170 https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/cognitive-neuroscience-researcher-john-harmon-on-our-brain-and-mind-under-pressure/ REFERENCES: [i]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #321 with Grant ‘Upbeat’ Bosnick  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/insights-from-grant-upbeat-bosnick/   [ii] Self-Assessment for Grant Bosnick’s book https://www.selfleadershipassessment.com/   [iii] Self-Assessment for Grant Bosnick’s book https://www.selfleadershipassessment.com/   [iv] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #25 https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/mindfulness-and-meditation-expert-mick-neustadt-on-how-meditation-and-mindfulness-changes-your-life-results-and-potential/   [v]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #28 with Dr. Dan Siegel   https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/clinical-professor-of-psychiatry-at-the-ucla-school-of-medicine-dr-daniel-siegel-on-mindsight-the-basis-for-social-and-emotional-intelligence/   [vi] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #60 https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/the-science-behind-a-meditation-practice-with-a-deep-dive-into-dr-dan-siegel-s-wheel-of-awareness/   [vii]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #98 with Dr. Dawson Church  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/dr-dawson-church-on-the-science-behind-using-meditation-rewiring-your-brain-for-happiness-resilience-and-joy/   [viii] Dr. Dawsom Church on “The Science Behind Using Meditation” https://youtu.be/bH8yVKHjFN4   [ix]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #314 PART 1 The Science of Getting Rich Book Review on Prosperity Consciousness  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/part-1-review-of-wallace-d-wattles-the-science-of-getting-rich-on-prosperity-consciousness/   [x] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #307 https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/dr-konstantinkorotkov-on-bridging-thespiritualworld-with-rigorousscientific-method-methodtappingintothe-powerof-our-thoughtsenergy-fieldsandlimitless/ [xi] Shirzad Chamine Quieting the Mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDOqPrfNaq0 [xii] Shirzad Chamine https://www.positiveintelligence.com/about/   [xiii] Shirzad Chamine Quieting the Mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDOqPrfNaq0   [xiv] https://drdansiegel.com/wheel-of-awareness/   [xv] Shirzad Chamine https://www.positiveintelligence.com/about/   [xvi]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #323  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/insights-from-season-11-of-the-neuroscience-meets-sel-podcast/   [xvii]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #324 on “The Neuroscience of Inspiration”   https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/a-self-leadership-series/   [xviii]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #322 with “Transforming Minds and Paving the Future: A Review of The Silva Method” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/transforming-minds-and-paving-the-future/      

Welcome back to Season 11 of the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning podcast! Today we are diving into episode 324, where we continue our transformative 18-week Self-Leadership series. We explore the riveting application of practical neuroscience and uncover how it influences our daily life, productivity, and overall well-being. In this episode, we delve into the third chapter of Grant 'Upbeat' Bosnick's book, focusing on the Neuroscience of Inspiration and Motivation – a topic that scored highest in my self-assessment. Grant emphasizes the importance of self-motivation and inspiration in propelling us towards our goals, and we explore how these elements chemically affect our brains. Discover the powerful role inspiring stories and images play in our lives, producing neurochemical oxytocin (facilitating feelings of trust) and dopamine (associated with motivation and reward). Learn how the individuals, places, or things that inspire us can connect, rewire our brains and form new ideas through the process of neuroplasticity. This episode aims to provide listeners with practical steps to integrate the neuroscience of inspiration into their lives. Identify the individuals and factors that inspire and motivate you, visualize the chemical reactions occurring in your brain during moments of inspiration, and finally, understand the implication of this knowledge on a deeper level. Join us as we continue our journey of self-discovery, blending neuroscience with everyday practices to reach unparalleled heights in productivity and performance, creating a future by design, not default. EPISODE #323, Chapter 2, “Using Neuroscience to Level Up Your 2024 Goals” ✔ What is Kurt Lewin’s “Field Theory” and how can we use it to improve our performance towards our goals in 2024? ✔ 3 STEPS for Applying Field Theory into our Daily Life to Reach Heightened Levels of Achievement in 2024. EPISODE #324, Chapter 3, “The Neuroscience of Inspiration” ✔ Uncover WHO or WHAT inspires you. ✔ Learn what happens to our brain when we are inspired (by a person or a thing). ✔ Apply the Neuroscience of Inspiration to our life in 3 steps: WRITE, THINK and LEARN to Level Up Our Results in 2024. On today's episode #324 we continue with our 18-Week Self-Leadership Series based on Grant ‘Upbeat’ Bosnick’s “Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership: A Bite Size Approach Using Psychology and Neuroscience” that we first dove into with our interview on EP #321.[i] During this interview, I told Grant that his book contained a thorough and deep overview of the Neuroscience of Self-Leadership, and I felt like each of the 18 chapters could be covered in 18 weeks, so I decided to set our season theme to the Neuroscience of Self-Leadership that will be our focus until June of this year. My goal with EACH of these next episodes, covered over the next 18 weeks, is that the application of the neuroscience within each lesson, will change us in some way, create new meaning, giving us NEW AHA Moments, open up NEW portals of creativity, that we can use to accelerate our results in 2024. Before we do this, I highly encourage you to take your own Leadership Self-Assessment so you can see which chapters of Grant’s book come out for you as GREEN or important to focus on now, which chapters are ORANGE and not as important, and which ones for you, came out as RED, and lower priority. As we go through these lessons, just keep an open mind to what it is that you might learn from these three areas. Take note of AHA Moments of learning- from each lesson. Did something jump out at you as important in an area that was of lower priority? (RED) Be sure to circle, or write out the NEW learnings from these lessons that you will put into action to improve your results this year. Remembering that it’s not just thinking in a certain way that will change our results, but we’ve also got to take action with what we learn. Whatever concepts we learn within each chapter, I hope that the science gives you something NEW to help you to THINK DIFFERENTLY this year, and move you to greater heights with more momentum like we learned from Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory last week. For today’s episode #324, we will be looking at Chapter 3, “The Neuroscience of Inspiration and Motivation” which came out as my highest scoring area on the Self-Assessment Quiz. Grant opens up Chapter 3 by saying “we cannot motivate others; we can only inspire them. Motivation comes from within. Inspiration can come from anywhere—within us, around us and through us.” (Ch 3, Grant Bosnick, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership). Next, he says that “inspiration is moving people, or being moved ourselves, to be excited about achieving something. It’s about seeing or doing things differently, or changing our thinking, feeling or who we are, now and for the future.” Ch 3, Grant Bosnick, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership). I’m looking at this chapter, as one of the positive forces that can help us to gain momentum towards our goals, thinking about Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory from our last EP 233.[ii] Using motivation (that comes from within) and inspiration to drive us towards our goals, I’m hoping this chapter will help us to uncover some new ideas that we can use to push us forward, and help us to gain that feeling of momentum as we are in pursuit of our goals. Grant asks us to think about what inspires you? People or things? I find inspiration in both and use ideas from other people to help me to write these episodes, while also can gain inspiration from nature, or being near beautiful places, and buildings. Who inspires you? What inspires you? Next, think about why this person or thing inspires you. Does it give you more hope for the future, or help you to see things differently? What else comes to your mind when you think about people or places that inspire you? The Neuroscience of Inspiration DID YOU KNOW “that inspiring stories and images produce oxytocin in our brain? Oxytocin is the neurochemical that facilitates feelings of trust. Inspiration also produces dopamine in our brains (Ashby et al., 1999, Depue and Collings, 1999) which is a neurochemical associated with motivation and reward.” Ch 3, Grant Bosnick, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership). Think about this for a minute. Those people who inspire us, we will tend to trust more, because of the neurochemical oxytocin that was released into our brain. We covered the Neuroscience of Trust on EP #206[iii] right before our interview with Greg Link, who wrote a book on this topic with Stephen M.R. Covey (the son of the late Dr. Stephen R. Covey) called Smart Trust: The Defining Skill That Transforms Managers into Leaders.[iv] Dr. Stephen Covey would say that “Trust in the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people. But it takes time and patience.” We also learned that trust “frees up the brain for other activities like creativity, planning and decision-making”[v] which to me shows on a brain level why “the act of extending trust is an act of leadership.” (Stephen M.R. Covey). Then we can look at inspiration that produces dopamine in our brain, and is associated with motivation and reward, so people and places that inspire us, can also motivate us, magnifying the trust we feel, and lead us forward. AHA Moment of Learning! Does the Neuroscience of Inspiration give you a whole new outlook on certain people and places in your life? Does it help you to understand yourself on a deeper level? Maybe you wondered “what about this person or place motivates me?” or “Why do I feel trust towards one person, and not another?” I do believe that trust is a feeling that can be felt, since everything going on inside is expressed on the outside. You can see and feel these vibrations and frequencies that we covered in depth with David Wong[vi], and frequencies don’t lie. I agree with Dr. Stephen Covey that this trust we feel through inspiration is “a performance multiplier which takes your trajectory upwards, for every action you engage in, from strategy to execution.” I think it’s interesting to see how the chemicals in our brain draw us towards certain people or places, connected to whatever it is that inspires us. Wait there’s more! Grant goes on to explain that “the concept of neuroplasticity underpins inspiration” and that “Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to form new connections and reorganize itself as a result. Through inspiration, our brain is literally restructuring itself as we connect ideas together to form new ideas. The process of inspiration carves our new pathways inside the brain.” Ch 3, Grant Bosnick, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership). Our brains are literally being changed by people or places that inspire us. They are not only motivating us, but these people and things (like places, or artwork, or nature) rewire our brain, helping us to form new ideas.  If you ask me, this is a key piece of information for us to understand if we want to be more innovative and creative this year, and take our results to new heights. Grant’s book, and chapter 3, dives deeper into motivation and inspiration, and crosses into later chapters of the book, but for now, we will end here, as we take The Neuroscience of Inspiration, and see how we can apply it in our own life, to help us to overcome negative challenges, and create the momentum needed to reach heightened levels of performance towards our goals this year. PUTTING THE NEUROSCIENCE OF INSPIRATION INTO PRACTICE: WRITE: Write a list of: Who inspires you, and why? Do you feel trust with this person that could be a performance multiplier? Think about this. Why, or why not? What inspires you, and why? Do you feel motivation from places that we know can rewire our brain and make new neural connections? THINK: Think of your brain being bombarded by oxytocin (the neurochemical that facilitates the feelings of trust) and then dopamine (the neurochemical associated with motivation and reward) and then the NEW neural pathways that are being rewired into your brain with whatever it is that you are drawing inspiration from. LEARN: What does this mean to you? Does it help you to make sense of your world in a new way?  Does this connection to science help to motivate you in a NEW way, perhaps pushing you past some of the obstacles that once held you back? Does this NEW understanding energize you in some way, or give you more self-awareness towards your goals? My goal with these bite-sized chapters connecting Neuroscience and Self-Leadership to our daily practice, is that we begin to see how simple it is to connect an understanding of how our brain works, to our best practices, that we tap into daily, taking us to new heights. Applying the Neuroscience of Inspiration to my life, I can clearly see what’s most important to me, why I’m drawn to certain people or places, and how important it is for me to keep learning, and applying what we uncover together on these episodes. REVIEW AND CONCLUSION To review and conclude this week’s episode #324 on “The Neuroscience of Inspiration” we asked the question: DID YOU KNOW: “that inspiring stories and images produce oxytocin in our brain? Oxytocin is the neurochemical that facilitates feelings of trust. Inspiration also produces dopamine in our brains which is a neurochemical associated with motivation and reward.” Ch 3, Grant Bosnick, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership). Next, we put The Neuroscience of Inspiration into action in our daily life with 3 steps: STEP 1 WRITE: A list of who or what inspires you, and why. STEP 2 THINK: Of what is happening to your brain when it’s being inspired (by a person or thing). It’s being bombarded by oxytocin, which is why you will feel trust, and dopamine is released which will motivate you in a new way. STEP 3 LEARN: What does the Neuroscience of Inspiration mean to you? How can you use this understanding to help you to gain momentum towards your 2024 goals, and push you towards higher levels of achievement? Once we have our list of who or what inspires us, and we can imagine the neural pathways in our brain making NEW connections, we just keep learning, growing and moving forward, with NEW momentum, in the direction of our goals. With each lesson we cover, I’m hoping to show us how we can gain the momentum needed to activate Lewin’s Field Theory, and suddenly, life becomes easy. The resistances fade away, and our goals or whatever it is we are working on, are not far off in the distance, but they are within our reach. This is when we know we can use our MINDS and understanding of our BRAIN, to turn MIND into MATTER, and create our own futures by design, rather than let them happen by default. I’ll end with a quote to highlight the self-awareness we will build once we’ve implemented this lesson into our daily life, since our goal with this 18-week series is to help each of us to become more self-aware. “The first and best victory is to conquer self” – Plato I hope the Neuroscience of Inspiration has helped you in some way, to move closer to whatever it is you are working on this year. I’ll see you next week with Chapter 4 on Mindfulness.     REFERENCES: [i]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #321 with Grant ‘Upbeat’ Bosnick  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/insights-from-grant-upbeat-bosnick/   [ii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #323 https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/insights-from-season-11-of-the-neuroscience-meets-sel-podcast/   [iii]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #207 Brain Fact Friday on The Neuroscience of Trust  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/brain-fact-friday-on-the-neuroscience-of-trust/   [iv] Smart Trust: The Defining Skill That Transforms Managers into Leaders by Stephen M.R. Covey and Greg Link Published September 3, 2013 https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Trust-Defining-Transforms-Managers/dp/1451652178   [v] The Neuroscience of Trust https://headheartbrain.com/brain-savvy-hr/the-neuroscience-oftrust/#:~:text=High%20levels%20of%20trust%20are,amygdala%20and%20trust%20decreases%20activation.   [vi]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #312 with David Wong on Mastering Your Frequency  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/the-frequency-expert-david-wong-on-master-your-frequency-and-take-control-of-your-personal-professional-life-and-health/  

Welcome back to Season 11 of the "Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning" podcast. Our host, Andrea Samadi, an author and an educator, introduces a compelling 18-week series devoted to self-leadership, drawing on insights from Grant Bosnick's book on the subject. The series, framed through the lens of neuroscience and psychology, aims to empower listeners onto individual pathways of self-discovery. By building stronger and more resilient versions of oneself, we anticipate a transformation in well-being, achievement, productivity, and success. We lay the foundation of this self-discovery journey by looking within – nurturing self-awareness. It is a revisiting of ancient wisdom, as we echo Aristotle's words, "Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom." In conversation with Grant Bosnick, we ponder upon multiple facets of neuroscience and self-leadership. We hope this series evokes new revelations about our neural circuits, catalyzed by the application of neuroscience embedded in each lesson. Being self-aware, acknowledging and overcoming obstacles, and utilizing the forces that propel us, can transform our performance towards our goals in 2024. To fully grasp these concepts and apply them meaningfully, we highly recommend taking your own leadership self-assessment. Equipped with a nuanced understanding of personal strengths and areas of improvement, we hope to inspire a fresh, empowered approach to thinking and leading in 2024. Concluding with a powerful sentiment from Peter Drucker, "Being a self-leader is to serve as chief, captain, president, or CEO of one's own life"—we welcome you to join us in this journey of self-discovery and self-leadership, underpinned by the magnificent world of neuroscience. On today's episode #323 we will begin our Self-Leadership Series based on Grant ‘Upbeat’ Bosnick’s “Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership: A Bite Size Approach Using Psychology and Neuroscience” that we first dove into with our interview on EP #321.[i] During this interview, I told Grant that his book contained a thorough and deep overview of the Neuroscience of Self-Leadership, that I felt like each of the 18 chapters could be covered in 18 weeks, so I decided to set our season theme to the Neuroscience of Self-Leadership that will be our focus until June of this year. This series will help each of us on our pathways of self-discovery….to get to know ourselves on a deeper level as we build stronger more resilient versions of ourselves in 2024. Since we know that “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom” Aristotle This is where our podcast began back on episode #2[ii] on Self-Awareness: Know Thyself where we covered 6 Steps for Becoming More Self-Aware back in July of 2019. Remember: Mastering others is strength; mastering oneself is true power” - Lao Tsu While speaking with Grant Bosnick on our recent interview, I let him know that I took his Self-Assessment to leadership that I’ve linked in the resource section below, and that when I was given my results, I scored very low on some areas where I think I might have answered the questions thinking “I’ve got this” (in my head) until I actually read his book, and realized there was much more to some of these areas than I thought. So, for the next 18 weeks, we are going to work through the science in Grant’s book, and see if we can together, apply the research he’s uncovered in his timeless self-leadership principles, to learn something NEW with ourselves, building stronger, more improved 2.0 versions of ourselves with whatever it is we are working on this year. I’m hoping that the science reveals something NEW that you might not have thought of in the past, like we mentioned on PART 4[iii] of our Review of The Silva Method, Dr. Andrew Huberman’s research taught us that “when we see something that’s truly creative, it reveals something to us about the natural world and about how our brains work. It must reveal something that surprises us” for it to be truly creative. Dr. Huberman explains that “something pops out at us…we see something, feel, or experience something...this reveals something about our brain/our auditory system, creating NEW meaning for us.” AND “when we see, hear, feel or experience something that’s truly creative, the way our neural circuits function is changed. When our neural circuits are changed simply by what comes into our eyes, ears, or the way we experience our feelings, there’s a release of chemicals like dopamine that make us feel surprised, delighted or excited in anticipation that we will see it again.” (Dr. Huberman) This is my goal with EACH of these next episodes, covered over the next 18 weeks, with the goal that the application of the neuroscience in each lesson, will change us in some way, create new meaning, giving us NEW AHA Moments, that we can use to accelerate our results in 2024. Before we do this, I highly encourage you to take your own Leadership Self-Assessment so you can see which chapters of Grant’s book come out for you as GREEN or important to focus on now, which chapters are ORANGE and not as important, and which ones for you, came out as RED, and low priority. Whatever concepts we learn with each chapter, I hope that the science gives you something NEW to help you to THINK DIFFERENTLY in 2024, and move you to greater heights this year. I’m currently in the middle of studying Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich book, with Paul Martinelli who I’ve be studying this book every year with since 2019, and he is reminding us on a daily basis that in order to change our results, we must learn to think differently. We opened up our review of our 6 PART Series on Think and Grow Rich back in 2022[iv] with a quote from author Grant Cardone that said:  “In order to get to the next level of whatever you’re doing, you must think and act in a wildly different way than you previously have been. You cannot get to the next phase of a project without a grander mind-set, more acceleration, and extra horsepower.” Grant Cardone, author of the 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure[v] This reminds me of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, the World’s #1 Leadership Thinker, who wrote the foreword to Grant’s book, of his best-selling book, What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There.[vi]  I hope this 18-week series will help us to all THINK and ACT differently in 2024, so we can all break through to new heights this year. In this 18-week Series, we will cover: ✔ Powerful tactics from this NEW award-winning book that illustrates how change and achievement are truly achievable both from internal ('inside out') and external ('outside in') perspectives. ✔Listeners will grasp the immense power of self-leadership and its transformative effect on personal growth and success. ✔Explore practical strategies for habit formation and the impact of a self-assessment system. ✔Gain insights from Grant's expert advice on maintaining a balance between strengths and weaknesses while chasing after your goals ✔Embark on an intellectual journey that has the power to elevate personal achievement and self-awareness to uncharted levels. For today’s episode #323, we will be looking at Chapter 2, “Using Neuroscience to Level Up Your 2024 Goals” ✔ What is Kurt Lewin’s “Field Theory” and how can we use it to improve our performance towards our goals in 2024? ✔ 3 STEPS for Applying Field Theory into our Daily Life to Reach Heightened Levels of Achievement in 2024. DID YOU KNOW: there is a force that drives us towards our goals? On page 20 of Grant’s book, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership, he mentions that “according to Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory[vii], a goal is embedded not only in the individual but also exists within the field around the individual. Between us and the target, there is a “drive force” or “drive field” and as we get closer to the target (or the perception of being closer), the strength of the force increases.” When I read this part of the book, I almost fell off my chair. I’m always looking for ways to connect science to age-old principles, and Grant explained something we’ve been looking at the past year.  We know that our energy field matters whether by the thoughts we are thinking, or the actions that we are taking. We covered this in depth with Dr. Konstantin Korotkov’s EP 307[viii] where we bridged the spiritual world with rigorous scientific method. So how can we improve our performance towards a goal, using German-born American social psychologist, Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory[ix] that Grant Boswick wrote about in his chapter on Goals? IMAGE: Hand drawn from Kurt Lewin’s Force Field Change Explanation[x] I’ve got 3 STEPS to do this, that go along with an image I hand drew in the show notes. STEP 1 RECOGNIZE THE NEGATIVE FORCES THAT PUSH US AWAY FROM OUR GOALS: Know that whenever we are moving towards a goal, there will be a force that pushes us down from our current state of attaining our goal, (a negative force) and there’s also a force that helps us to change (a positive force). Identify the forces that are pushing you down as you move towards your desired end result. In our schools: it could be limited time to study for a test. In our sports environments: it could be our competition, or whoever is at the top of the league. Finally, in our workplaces: it could be a competitor charging lower pricing, and taking all the business in your area. STEP 2 RECOGNIZE THE POSITIVE FORCES THAT PUSH US TOWARDS OUR GOALS: Recognize that just as there is a negative force pushing us down, there are also positive forces that pushes us up, and can assist us to change. It’s this force pushing us up that Grant talks about in his chapter on goals. He says that “the closer we get to our target (or perception of being closer to the target) the strength of the force increases.” (Page 20, Grant Bosnick, Tailored Approaches to Leadership). STEP 3 FIND THE MOMENTUM THAT TAKES YOU TO A NEW LEVEL OF PERFORMANCE:   It’s here in the diagram where I drew a RED arrow, showing a person moving from their current state, leveling up to a new, heightened level of performance, when there are MORE positive forces pushing us up, than negative pushing us down. BEFORE we can get to our new heightened level of performance, we must overcome the forces against whatever it is we are moving towards, (like by overcoming our competition) and create as many positive forces to help us to move towards our NEW end result. Create a plan for how you will overcome your resistances, while building up positive forces for change (like through study, identifying ways you can improve your mental and physical health so you can use these forces to push up against the negatives, or from understanding your “why” so this internal force drives you when times are difficult.                                                                                           PUT KURT LEWIN’S FIELD THEORY INTO ACTION INTO YOUR LIFE: So how can we use Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory to improve our level of performance towards our goals in 2024? We can create our own, built in weapons that will reduce our known resistances (negative forces) and create new habits that will strengthen the positive forces. Grant had us thinking about this “driving force” as we move towards our goals in Chapter 2 of his book. But right now, we are starting a new year, and many of us will be feeling the resistances that comes along with a New Year. What can we do to get to the point where Grant mentions this “powerful feeling” or excitement as our goals can be seen and felt on the horizon? How can we level ourselves up to the RED arrow I drew in the diagram? If we want to DRIVE change in our organization, (in our schools, sports environments, or workplaces) then our driving force for change will need to be stronger than the resistance to change.   IMAGE CREDIT: Force Field Examples[xi] TO APPLY KURT LEWIN’S FORCE FIELD THEORY: Write out the negative forces that impact your work on a daily basis. Write out the positive forces you have in place. Are there MORE positive driving forces than negative? Where can YOU or YOUR organization improve? REVIEW AND CONCLUSION To review and conclude this week’s episode #323 on “Using Neuroscience to Level Up Your 2024 Goals” we asked the question “DID YOU KNOW: there is a force that drives us towards our goals?” With this understanding we also looked at the forces that drive us away from our goals. We broke down Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory into 3 steps. STEP 1 RECOGNIZE THE NEGATIVE FORCES THAT PUSH US AWAY FROM OUR GOALS Like our competition or whatever it is that’s causing us grief on a daily basis as we are working on our goals. Use the diagram in the show notes to list out what forces hold you back from your goals on a daily basis, so you can see them clearly. STEP 2 RECOGNIZE THE POSITIVE FORCES THAT PUSH US TOWARDS OUR GOALS Like knowing our “why” that Simon Sinek[xii] is famous for teaching, that will help us through difficult times, and then think about the weapons we will build into our day to improve our mental and physical health, giving us more capacity towards our goals. We created our TOP 5 Health Staples[xiii] to move us to heightened levels of performance on a Bonus Episode in 2022, and I’m always looking to improve these. While speaking with Dr. Gregory Kelly, I added a 6th Health Staple for Stress Reduction, and am always looking at what else I can add to build a stronger, more resilient version of myself. STEP 3 FIND THE MOMENTUM THAT TAKES YOU TO A NEW LEVEL OF PERFORMANCE:   Once we are clear on the forces that are pushing against us, we can create our own WEAPONS to combat these resistances, helping us to gain that momentum that Grant Bosnick mentioned in his 2nd chapter on Goals. Grant asks us in Chapter 2 to “think about a big goal that you had from the past. When you first started it, how much pull did you feel towards it? Then, as you got closer to achieving it, how much pull did you feel toward it? We can use this pull of “drive force” to propel us as we get (or perceive ourselves getting) closer to our goals. It’s a powerful feeling” Grant tells us. I hope that by breaking down Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory, it helped to reveal something NEW for all of us that can help all of us to find that RED arrow of heightened achievement, that once we have arrived there, it will be easier for us to keep the momentum going with our 2024 goals. I’ll end with a quote to highlight the self-awareness we will build with this lesson. “Being a self-leader is to serve as chief, captain, president, or CEO of one’s own life” – Peter Drucker an Austrian American consultant and educator. See you next week for Chapter 3 on Inspiration and Motivation. RESOURCES: Self-Assessment http://www.selfleadershipassessment.com CONTACT [email protected] Website: https://grantbosnick.com/ LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/grantbosnick/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GrantBosnick Learn more about The Tailored Approach to Leadership Book https://grantbosnick.com/books/ Signature Keynotes and Solutions https://grantbosnick.com/signature-solutions/ FOLLOW ANDREA SAMADI:  YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/AndreaSamadi   Website https://www.achieveit360.com/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samadi/  Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/Achieveit360com   Neuroscience Meets SEL Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/2975814899101697   Twitter: https://twitter.com/andreasamadi   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreasamadi/    REFERENCES: [i]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #323 with Grant ‘Upbeat’ Bosnick  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/insights-from-grant-upbeat-bosnick/   [ii]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #2 Self-Awareness: Know Thyself https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/self-awareness-know-thyself/   [iii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast PART 4 of Apply the Silva Method for Improved Intuition, Creativity and Focus https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/the-neuroscience-behind-the-silva-method-improving-creativity-and-innovation-in-our-schools-sports-and-modern-workplaces/     [iv] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast PART 1 of our Think and Grow Rich Book Study https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/think-and-grow-rich-book-review-part-1-how-to-make-2022-your-best-year-ever/   [v] Grant Cardone, The 10XRule https://www.amazon.com/10X-Rule-Difference-Between-Success/dp/0470627603   [vi] Marshall Goldsmith https://marshallgoldsmith.com/book-page-what-got-you-here/   [vii]  German American Psychologist Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory “Field theory and experiment in social psychology” American Journal of Sociology, 44 (6), 858-96, May 1939   [viii] https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/dr-konstantinkorotkov-on-bridging-thespiritualworld-with-rigorousscientific-method-methodtappingintothe-powerof-our-thoughtsenergy-fieldsandlimitless/   [ix] Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HERRi8SktJo   [x] IBID   [xi] https://www.edrawsoft.com/force-field-analysis-examples.html   [xii] Simon Sinek https://simonsinek.com/books/start-with-why/   [xiii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast BONUS EPISODE on “The Top 5 Health Staples” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/bonus-episode-a-deep-dive-into-the-top-5-health-staples-and-review-of-seasons-1-4/    

In this masterly episode of the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning podcast, host Andrea Samadi offers an enlightening retrospective view of the year 2023's most impactful episodes, focusing primarily on the critically-acclaimed four-part series about The Silva Method. Dive into the archives with Andrea as she revisits this profound exploration of the mind, emphasizing the power of a winning attitude, visualization, and the transformative potential of the Silva Method. The episode is a treasure trove of wisdom, insights, and powerful takeaways, offering listeners a unique blend of personal anecdotes, philosophy, and neuroscience, revolving around the theme of harnessing the mind for unparalleled progress. Tune in and join Andrea on this enriching journey as she uncovers the timeless principles that define success and looks forward to exciting developments on the horizon. Learn the secret techniques of diving into various states of human brain - beta, alpha, theta, delta. The discussion digs deeper into the art of mental screening, visualization and dynamic meditation. Listen on as the Silva Method unfold its potential in transforming everyday lives, envisioning a promising future, and maximizing one's innate creativity. This episode also shares the effective use of Dr. Joe Dispenza's meditations for chakra-opening and energy field-expansion through the studies of Dr. Konstantin Korotkov in conflating spirituality and scientific practices. More importantly, listeners are encouraged to appreciate the power of dreams and REM sleep in unlocking the subconscious and boosting creativity and intuition for problem-solving. Regardless of whether you are a first-time listener just joining us in 2024, or a dedicated follower since the podcast's inception, this episode promises an invigorating learning experience, highlighting the role of the Silva Method in personal growth, and its potential for turning life's stumbling blocks into stepping stones for a brighter future. “Before you look at your future, reflect on your past.” (Sam Ade, author of the book Wisdom Untold[i]). (From top 10 2023)   On today's episode #322 REVIEW of the TOP 4 Episodes from 2023” we will cover: ✔ PART 1: PRACTICING THE 3 STEPS TO ACCESSING THE ALPHA STATE, USING YOUR MENTAL SCREEN FOR HEIGHTENED VISUALIZATION AND MAKING USE OF WHAT YOU SEE. ✔ PART 2: PRACTICE THE 3-SCENES TECHNIQUE WITH A PROBLEM YOU WANT TO SOLVE ✔ PART 3: TAKE THE DREAM WORLD SERIOUSLY AND SLEEP LONG ENOUGH TO LEARN FROM YOUR DREAMS. ✔ PART 4: USE YOUR IMAGINATION TO TAP INTO YOUR CREATIVE MIND. Welcome back to SEASON 11 of The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we connect the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning and emotional intelligence training for improved well-being, achievement, productivity and results—using what I saw as the missing link (since we weren’t taught this when we were growing up in school), the application of practical neuroscience. I’m Andrea Samadi, an author, and an educator with a passion for learning and launched this podcast 5 years ago with the goal of bringing ALL the leading experts together (in one place) to help us to APPLY this research in our daily lives. On today's episode #322 we will be taking a close look at the Top episodes of last year as we reflect on our past year. While we are now in the middle of Q1 of 2024, I still think it’s important to “study the past, to define the future” like Confucius said. While thinking about this episode, my good friend and paranormal researcher Ryan O’Neill who we met on EP 203[i] tagged an image he created for me on Facebook, from 11 years ago, and reminded me of this concept when he said “it’s good to look back to see how far you travel.”[ii] Ryan’s post helped me to stop, reflect on the past 11 years, and see that progress forward happens one step at a time. Imagine yourself at the top of a spiral staircase, looking down, and you’ll see how far you’ve come. Or like Steve Jobs said in his famous speech, it’s much easier to connect the dots looking backwards. The graphic Ryan O’Neill created 11 years ago talks about the importance of “always maintaining a winning attitude” and I can say it’s not always easy to do this, when times are difficult, (thinking of the stairs we must climb, the barriers or obstacles to break through on the way). We might trip, and it feels like we are going backwards, but maintaining a winning attitude along the way is one of those timeless principles that I know has shaped where I’ve ended up. IMAGE: The beautiful Bramante Staircase[iii] from the Vatican Museum. What about you, the listener? Take a look at the image in the show notes of the beautiful Bramante Staircase from the Vatican Museum. Imagine yourself at the top, and then reflect back on the past 10 or 11 years of your life, (like looking down a spiral staircase) and think about what do you notice. What timeless principles have kept you on track over the years? Looking backwards, what do you see? This episode is definitely written with you, the listener in mind. Looking back at the past year and the episodes that you were drawn to the most, at the end of 2023, I was initially surprised to see all 4-PARTS of The Silva Method hitting the top of the list. I wanted to Dive Deeper into The Silva Method to see how I could improve my own meditation practice, and I had no idea how impactful this episode series would be. It was actually a video series created by Spotify of my Year in Review that caught my eye. It told me that: PART 1 of The Silva Method was our most downloaded episode ever. I could see that with over 6,000 downloads. Spotify shared this episode was streamed 999% more than our average episode telling me that the topic of improving intuition, creativity and focus is of high interest to the world. That 95 % of our listeners discovered our podcast in 2023. Thank you for tuning in. And 46% of our listeners started listening to us with PART 1 of The Silva Method. Now I’m so glad that I took the time to study and learn The Silva Method alongside our new listeners. For this recap of our TOP episodes from 2023, I decided to review the Top 4 episodes from our Deep Dive into The Silva Method, since they were downloaded significantly more than others, and I’ve got to say that they are thorough, they require deep thought and effort for the results we are all seeking to be revealed. And only with the application of these episodes, we will learn to “use our mind in a special manner to do astounding things for us, as we’ll soon see.” (Jose Silva). What we are talking about in this 4 PART SERIES is The Creative Process. The series was designed to walk us through the steps to take, to turn MIND into MATTER. I’m studying this concept deeply right now, this month with Paul Martinelli with his Think and Grow Rich book study, but this is essentially what this 4 PART series was about. We’ve all heard of MIND OVER MATTER, but this is not the same. We are not using force here to coerce others to do anything, or to use our will power to urge other people (or ourselves) to do something we want to occur. We are using our MIND (working from the inside-out, rather than using anything or anyone from the outside-in), allowing our MIND to work by DESIGN not DEFAULT. We are teaching ourselves to see the possibility that exists in the world, around us, and show us ALL that we can CREATE whatever it is that we want, using these timeless principles. Before I go on, just look around you right now, and take inventory of what you see. I’m sitting at my desk, in my home office, writing this episode, and I see a few pens, a highlighter, some fancy water to help me to focus while writing, my Rodecaster Pro microphone and audio equipment to the right of my desk. Now look at what you see, and take inventory of where you are right now. Now think, every single thing that you see, was created twice, as it was someone’s dream to create the things we see and use in our everyday world. Someone dreamed up the fancy water I’m drinking, or the yellow highlighter, or the high-tech mic that I record these episodes with. My message here is “Don’t ever wonder if your idea will work, (there’s a market for everything in this world) and think of the opportunity that surrounds you, every day, and with the development of our MIND, we can say for certain that FAILURE is impossible.” We’ll cover this closer at the end, but what I’m saying here is not that things will go smoothly for you, with whatever it is that YOU want to create, and that by studying this 4-part series, you’ll be able to make all your dreams come true.  This we know isn’t how the story goes. There will be ups and downs, twists and turns, and times you will feel defeated. But Napoleon Hill would say this is “temporary defeat” which is not at all a failure. Before seeing the results from Spotify about this 4-PART Series, and even before I decided to cover The Silva Method, I had no idea just how deep the book and program would go, and mentioned that we’ll review the online course at a later time, but for now, this review will give us all plenty of new ideas for how to improve our visualization/mental screen method to help skyrocket our short term and long term goals for 2024, and solidify the fact that failure is impossible. I’d love to hear from you what you have thought of this 4-part series, where we tied in the most current brain research to Jose Silva’s work, reminding me that “once we learn to use our minds to train it, it will do some astounding things for us, as you will soon see.”[iv] On today’s episode #322, we’ll review the 4 parts of The Silva Method and see what else we can add to the strategies learned, keeping in mind that I’m learning and implementing these ideas alongside you, wherever you are listening in the world.  Before we look at The Silva Method, there’s something important to think about first, to orient this study in our current year.  It’s now the beginning of February, and you’ve probably already got 2024 planned out already, but before we leap into the actions we are taking in this New Year, if you haven’t reflected on the wins you’ve attained in the past year, this is probably the most important step of closing out an old year, and moving into a new one, and it’s never too late for this reflection. I learned this year-end ritual from Jim Bunch[v], who has been walking me through this year-end wrap up for the past 9 years at least, preparing those who tune in all over the world to his method, for a fresh mind moving into the New Year. We did cover his process of creating energy from your 9 environments on EPISODE #103[vi] that launched our year back in 2021, with “The Neuroscience of Leadership: 3 Ways to Reset, Recharge and Refuel Your Brain.”  On this episode recorded 3 years ago, we reviewed the process of self-reflection, to evaluate the areas of your life (your 9 environments) to notice where energy might be leaking, that you could direct somewhere else in the New Year. This self-reflection activity is a good way to close out an old year, and move into a new one, as it allows you to put some thought into your WINS, and what worked well for you in the past year. He has a printable download that goes with this activity, and what’s interesting, is that without looking at your calendar, just by going off the top of your head, see if you can write out some of your wins. Without some deep reflection, you will notice that it’s EASY to see the things that went wrong last year (the losses) but to see the WINS, it takes serious thought, because of our built-in negativity bias, that Dr. Rick Hanson tells us to remember--“our brain is like Velcro for negative experiences (we are attracted to the negative experiences) but our positive experiences, slide off like Teflon.” We must be intentional about reflecting on the positives that we incurred, and integrate these wins into our identity, before moving into a New Year. Let the losses roll off us. This practice will guarantee that you are building a stronger, better, more resilient, and improved version of you, each year.   Now for the TOP 4/10 most listened to episodes of 2023-as voted by you, the listener! #1 The Silva Method- Part 1[vii]  This episode opened up with a quote that we went back to often in the year.  “Once we learn to use our mind to train it, it will do some astounding things for us, as you will soon see.” Jose Silva (August 11, 1914-February 7, 1999) author of The Silva Mind Control Method. This episode launched a series taking us on a deep dive into the benefits of developing a meditation practice.  This was before we dove deep into Joe Dispenza’s meditations, and a good place to begin to look closer into the depths of our mind.  The goal of this series initially, was to help all of us to reduce stress with this deep mind practice, but also to see if we can learn something new, and refine our practice for those who work in our schools to improve learning, in our sports environments for improved focus and concentration towards a specific goal, and in the corporate workplace for ideas to improve creativity and focus. We began this series reviewing Jose Silva and Philip Miele’s The Silva Mind Control Method[i] that’s based on the Revolutionary Program by the Founder of the World’s Most Famous Mind Control Course. On PART 1 of this book review covered:  ✔ CH 1- Using More of Our Mind in Special Ways: An Introduction to the Silva Mind Control Method ✔ What this program has done for others (in business, the sports world, or just regular people looking to improve their life in some way).  ✔ Ch 2- We met Jose Silva ✔ Ch 3- We looked at How to Meditate: A review of the brain states (BETA,ALPHA,THETA,DELTA). ✔ How to quickly access the ALPHA STATE to improve creativity, and intuition. ✔ Using A Mental Screen in Your Mind for Heightened Visualization (how to access this screen) and finally  ✔ How to Help Ourselves and Others With this Practice How Do We Use the Silva Method to Access the Alpha State Where All the Magic Begins? STEP 1: HOW TO ACCESS THE ALPHA STATE: YOU CAN ACCES THE ALPHA STATE WHEN YOU FIRST WAKE UP, BEFORE BED, and ANY OTHER TIME YOU HAVE 15 MINUTES TO RELAX YOUR MIND. The Alpha State is the easiest state to access as we will already be in this state the first 5 minutes after we wake up. Jose Silva suggests the 40 Day Technique to guarantee you are at the Alpha Level where you begin by counting backwards from 100 to 1 for 10 mornings, then you can count from 50-1 for the next 10 mornings, then from 20-1 for 10 mornings, and then 10-1 until you get to 5 to 1.  PUT THIS INTO PRACTICE: Begin using the 100-1 countdown at night, in the morning, or whenever you plan to access the alpha level to begin to improve your current practice. In my first few days of practicing this method before sleep, and the first couple of nights, I fell asleep before I could get to 1. Keep trying. After 10 days, you can progress to the next step, until you are able to access the alpha state from counting from 5-1. Eventually you can access this state quickly, and even while walking around as Dr. Dispenza teaches us.  STEP 2: ONCE YOU REACH THE ALPHA STATE, THEN WHAT? Next, you will learn to use a Mental Screen for Heightened Visualization Once you have accessed the Alpha State, Silva reminds us:  “right from the beginning, from the very moment you reach your meditative level (what he calls accessing the Alpha State), you must learn to practice visualization.  The better you learn to visualize, the more powerful will be your experience with Mind Control.” There’s an important part to this visualization process that I have to add here.  I actually started writing this review over the Christmas holiday break, and I’m always looking around for what I can “see” that will add to what I’m writing and then I saw it. In the lobby of a hotel I was staying in, I saw a sand timer sitting on the counter reminding me of this exact concept from a lesson that Brian Proctor shared with us on EP 292[viii]. I thought it was really weird to see a sand timer sitting in the middle of a hotel lobby, but when you pay attention to what you are seeing, there are messages everywhere. Here’s what I saw with the sand timer that ties into this lesson. Let go of the past, (the sand that’s sitting in the bottom of the timer) it’s gone. Next, don’t worry about the future, it hasn’t happened yet, but what’s important is for us to do every day, is to stay focused on the present moment, just like what we learned from Dr. Joe Dispenza. How do we learn to drop into the present moment?  THE SILVA METHOD: With the Silva Method. And we may all be at different stages of our journey here, and we’ll have all learned from many different teachers. But for this review, will we be putting Jose Silva’s Meditation INTO PRACTICE: When you close your eyes, what do you see? Raise your eyes up a bit (about 20% upwards above the horizon of what you see). Is it black on your mental screen, or can you use your mind to “see” things? Begin with simple things like an orange or an apple. This takes time and practice. This mental screen will help you in many ways as we move through different lessons, and is important, but don’t be tied to what you think you should see. We are all at different stages of learning. I started seeing things on the screen of my mind starting in my late 20s, and things would flash sometimes when I was relaxed. I never did have control over what I was seeing. It just happened, and I would either know what I was seeing, or be wondering “what on the earth is that” and with time, effort and practice, I have gained more control over what I’m able to visualize, or “see” on this mental screen, so I can put it to better use. Looking back at this step now, a year after putting it into practice, I noticed if I want to “see” something on the screen of my mind, it helped to say what I wanted to see in thought, and then patiently wait. When I’m relaxed, without trying to force anything, I could then “see” the world on this mental screen.   This is an extraordinary practice to experience. You can be in one part of the world, and running through the mountains in another, all on your mental screen. What you see and feel in your mind can be used to enhance whatever you are working on when you open your eyes, in the “real” world. Isn’t this astounding? STEP 3: Now Utilize This Power With time and practice, it will be this screen that you will learn to use, to help yourself and others. You begin with creating simple things, until you are ready to solve small problems in your daily life, from work, to health, and improve learning/creativity. This is the power of putting The Silva Method into practice and it just takes a bit of patience.  PUTTING PART 1 INTO PRACTICE: Just begin here with playing around with what you can create on the screen of your mind in the Alpha State. If you do nothing else, other than these 3 steps, you will experience what William Wordsworth called “a happy stillness of mind.” (Page 27, The Silva Method). Think of this as a journey within your mind. Each day you will be getting better and better, mentally stronger, and remember the quote we opened this episode with? “Once we learn to use our mind to train it, it will do some astounding things for us, you will soon see.” (Jose Silva) TO REVIEW PART 1 of THE SILVA METHOD: We covered: ✔ CH 1- Using More of Our Mind in Special Ways: An Introduction to the Silva Mind Control Method ✔ What this program has done for others. ✔ Ch 2- Meet Jose Silva and learned about his passion for helping others to improve their ability to learn. ✔ Ch 3- How to Meditate: A review of the brain states (BETA,ALPHA,THETA,DELTA). ✔ How to quickly access the ALPHA STATE to improve creativity, and intuition  using the countdown Method. ✔ Using A Mental Screen in Your Mind for Heightened Visualization ✔ It Will Be This Screen That We Will Use to Help Yourself and Others in Future Chapters. #2 The Silva Method-Part 2[ix] TO REVIEW PART 2 OF THE SILVA METHOD:  We covered: ✔ Ch 4- Dynamic Meditation ✔ The 4 Laws that must be in place BEFORE you visualize something. ✔ We Solved a Problem with 3 STEPS (Problem, Action, Solution) with ideas to use this method for schools, sports or the workplace. ✔ Ch 5- Improving Memory ✔ The 3 Finger Technique If you want to review all of these topics, I’ll link each of these episodes in the show notes.  Chapter 3 on Dynamic Meditation involves “training your mind for organized, dynamic activities” that Jose Silva thinks is what our mind was designed for.  He says “once you have reached the meditative level, to simply stay there and wait for something to happen is not enough. It is beautiful and calming and it does contribute to your good health, but these are modest accomplishments compared with what is possible.” This is where The Silva program gets exciting as we step past passive meditation techniques, to use it dynamically to solve problems. Now we’ll see why it’s so important to perfect what we see on the Screen of our Mind, and why daily practice of these skills is crucial. Let’s use our mind for something that’s useful for us—something of value. It all begins with our imagination, on this screen of our mind, but Silva says there are 4 important laws we must follow next. The Silva Program says that --Whatever it is that you want, you must: Law 1: You must desire that the event take place. (just like Napoloeon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich book. His chapter 2 dove deep into the concept of Desire. Law 2: You must believe the event can take place. We have covered the topic of belief so often on this podcast. When someone has the belief in what they are moving towards, this belief goes deep into their identity, and changes the person so much, that we could look at a photograph of that same person without the belief, and see a completely NEW and changed person, once the belief has been instilled deep within them. Law 3: You must expect the event to take place. Expectation hooks you up to your source, and with action, faith develops as you draw yourself closer to whatever it is you are working on.   Law 4: You cannot create a problem. How Do We Use the Silva Method to Solve a Problem We Are Facing? STEP 1: PICK A PROBLEM YOU WANT TO SOLVE Follow the steps that will get you into the Alpha Brain State, (counting backwards from 100-1) and then lift your eyes upwards, and with your mind, create a mental screen where you will re-create the problem you want to solve. Relive the problem by seeing it and feeling it. For Schools: A problem could be a poor grade on a test, resulting in a low overall grade. For Sports: The problem could be a losing streak, or poor performance leading to a loss. For the Workplace: The problem could be a lack of sales in your organization, or poor performance somewhere. Pick the problem you want to solve, and visualize it on the screen of your mind. STEP 2: TAKE SOME SORT OF ACTION IN THE PRESENT MOMENT Next, in you mind, you will gently push the problem scene off to the right which Silva explains in his book will represent the PAST. The past is now over, so push the problem aside. Just like the sand timer example in the hour glass from our episode with Brian Proctor. The past is now gone. We are now focused on the PRESENT moment. To the left of the problem, (that represents the PRESENT MOMENT), create a NEW mental screen with the SOLUTION. Whatever you imagine will require ACTION showing you solving the problem. Most of us don’t spend time thinking about the present moment or the future. We can easily get bogged down in what happened in the past. This is what I love about Silva’s Method. The past is over, moved off to the side and we now focus ONLY on the present (taking action to solve the problem) and the FUTURE, which will highlight the changed outcome. For Schools: A solution could involve a student studying with more focus. For Sports: A solution could involve practicing a skill that is known for needed improvement. For the Workplace: A solution could involve presenting your product to a group of people who see its value, and decide they will purchase a large order. STEP 3: THE SOLUTION Finally, the action you have taken pays off, and you will envision the solution on the screen of your mind. Everything here is positive, and all of the feelings associated with the problem have been resolved. You celebrate the WIN here in as much detail as you can. What does this win feel like? Who’s there watching you? What do you hear? What do you see? Involve all of your senses. For Schools: Picture the student celebrating when they see their efforts were rewarded with an A+ grade. This A+ will lead to many more, eventually allowing the student to receive an honor roll award at the end of the year. For Sports: You’ll picture your team celebrating when the practice pays off with a WIN that eventually leads to a trophy or award at the end of the season. For the Workplace: You’ll picture your team celebrating when they receive the large order that came from the hard work from the recent presentation. The team celebrates by hosting a lunch where all those involved are recognized for their efforts. It’s here that you can look back to the past, like through the rear-view mirror we have in our car, and it should look different to you now that you’ve created a NEW future. You might still be able to “see” and remember things from those days when you had a problem to solve, but now, looking back, my hopes are that the vision of the future changes whatever it was that you didn’t like in the past.  The past is over. Now we are living in the present moment, building a new future. These are some examples of using The Silva Method to train our brain towards our desired outcome. Does it always work? No, Silva says, but with time and practice, we’ll start to see improvements that we might chalk up to be coincidences. He suggests stopping this practice altogether, and the coincidences will also stop. Start back up again, and they will reappear. You’ll see…just practice this, and let me know what YOU see. With practice, the results you will see will be more and more astounding. This entire exercise, with practice, can be done with just 15 minute blocks of time, once you’ve got the hang of it. #3 The Silva Method- Part 3[x] In Part 3 we covered: ✔ Ch 3- How to Meditate: A review of the brain states (BETA, ALPHA, THETA, DELTA).   ✔ How to quickly access the ALPHA STATE to improve creativity, and intuition.   ✔ Using A Mental Screen in Your Mind for Heightened Visualization   ✔ How to Help Yourself and Others Using a Mental Screen in Our Mind   Before writing this episode, I wondered how exactly could our mind be trained... Was daily meditation not enough? If it was, how do I even know if I’m meditating the right way? What was I missing from my current practice? What can we learn from the years of research behind Jose Silva’s popular program that could help all of us to refine our current meditation practice? A year later, Dr. Joe Dispenza’s meditations helped me to understand why meditation helps to train our mind, especially with the concept that it opens up our chakras, and expands our energy field, allowing us to have more capacity. Our interview #307[xi] Dr. Konstantin Korotkov on “Bridging the Spiritual World with Rigorous Scientific Method” gave us the science behind this practice. The quote I chose for PART 3 makes more sense to me today, with a year of practice behind me.   A genius is a man who has discovered how to increase the intensity of thought to a point when he can freely communicate with sources of knowledge not available through the ordinary rate of thought.” –Napoleon Hill, author of the Best Selling Classic Book, Think and Grow Rich. This ability is available to all of us. Practice each of these parts of the Silva Method and take your time.  In PART 3, we were reminded that Jose Silva took the dream world very seriously, and he was interested in using dreams to solve problems. His programs teach us to first of all remember your dreams and suggests writing them down as soon as we wake up. MAKE SURE YOU ARE SLEEPING LONG ENOUGH TO ACCESS YOUR REM SLEEP: Author Stephanie Gailing reported in her Complete Book of Dreams[xii] that “since dreams that arrive in the early morning are thought to be more vivid and complex” to be sure you are sleeping long enough that you don’t miss out on this last REM stage of sleep. How would you know WHEN your REM sleep is? You can use a sleep tracker to measure this. You can see an example below where my sleep was logged with the wearable tracker called Whoop, showing my REM sleep as 53% than my 30-day average. Whoop reminded me that “REM sleep is key to processing new memories, learnings and motor skills.” When I saw this, I immediately wrote down the dream that I had (that I could remember) to see what I could learn from this dream. We’ve covered dreams on this podcast with EPISODE #224[xiii] with Harvard Neuroscientist Dr. Baland Jalal on “Sleep Paralysis, Lucid Dreaming and Premonitions” or EPISODE #104[xiv] with Antonio Zadra and his book “When Brains Dream” and I even took a stab at explaining “Why Our Dreams Are So Weird, Highly Emotional and Often Forgotten” on EPISODE #226[xv] as I’ve personally been interested in deciphering the messages that come through in our dream state. To find answers in your dreams, first of all, have the intention that you will remember them. Then pay to attention to: -who was in my dream? -what did they say? -what can I learn from this? Like Jose Silva, I take the dream world seriously and find tremendous value from consolidating new learnings and then being open to discovering valuable insights that could possibly help me, or others close to me.  TO PUT PART 3 INTO ACTION: WRITE DOWN YOUR DREAMS as soon as you wake up TAKE THE DREAM WORLD SERIOUSLY MAKE SURE YOU ARE SLEEPING LONG ENOUGH TO ACCESS ALL OF YOUR REM SLEEP HAVE CONFIDENCE THAT YOU WILL REMEMBER YOUR DREAMS WRITE DOWN ANY INSIGHTS FROM YOUR DREAMS THAT COULD HELP YOU OR OTHERS CLOSE TO YOU. #4 The Silva Method- Part 4[xvi] For PART 4 we covered: ✔ Ch 8-Your Words Have Power ✔ Ch 9-The Power of Imagination ✔ Ch 10-Using Your Mind to Improve Your Health ✔  We will connect the most current neuroscience research to Jose Silva’s program, using Dr. Andrew Huberman's podcast on "The Science of Creativity" ✔  The 3 Parts to Your Creative Brain (Central Executive Network, Default Mode Network, Salience Network). ✔ 2 Types of Thinking Involved with Creativity (Divergent and Convergent) ✔ Putting Creativity to Practice with an example from our schools, sports and modern workplace environments.  with some clear examples and next steps for all of us to APPLY the Silva Method for improved Intuition, Creativity and Focus…right in time for a New Year. This part opened up with the importance of the power of our imagination. This is really what Jose Silva is encouraging us to do with his Method. Open up our creative minds, through the use of our imagination, and CREATE. We talked about it in the beginning of this review, that we ALL have the ability to create something new and that temporary defeat is not the same things as failure. If you are working on something, and it’s been a difficult treck from your starting point, to where you’d like to go, take a look back over the past 10 years, from where you are standing now (like you are at the top of a spiral staircase) and see how far you have come. What you do with the Silva Method is up to you. You can practice and refine each part until you’re ready for more, and then look up The Silva Ultramind Program. This is when you’ll now be taking these concepts and bending your mind in ways I never could have imagined on my own. It’s here that I highly suggest looking into Mind Valley[xvii], where Vishen Lakhiani recreated Joe Silva’s program with The Silva Ultramind system. NOTE- I’m not affiliated with MindValley in any way. I’ve just taken this course to keep learning and applying The Silva Method.   You can look through the 30-day curriculum and see how this system was designed to help the learner to “develop their mind …” I don’t think reviewing this course on this podcast in words could ever do it justice. You’ve just got to experience it for yourself and notice what you learn from the meditations tied to each of the lessons. If you got to PART 4 of this program, and nothing creative is jumping out at you yet, keep going. This is what I learned from Ultramind Program: Day 1-5 the program helps you to develop and use the mental screen in your mind. I love the activity on Day 5, “projection into your home” because it taught me to become familiar with my own home, a place I see every day, in a whole new way, helping me to open my eyes to the beauty not just in front of me every day, but in the rest of the world. Days 10-15 the program helps us to perfect the “3 scenes technique” and create whatever it is that our heart desires. We learn about psychometry, clairvoyance, clairaudience, and clairsentience. That’s all it I’m going to say about this program other than how it’s something that has to be experienced. REVIEW AND CONCLUSION: To review and conclude EP 322 and our review of the 4 PARTS of the Silva Method, I’ve got to say that the goal of this 4 PART review of Jose Silva’s Program, was to encourage all of us to see if we could learn something new, to take our results to new heights in 2024. Before I began this review, I had no idea just how deep the book and program would go, or how much our listeners would be drawn to these lessons. If you are one of the 46% of our new listeners who found our podcast from PART 1 of The Silva Method, I want to welcome you, and thank you for tuning in this year. Our past listeners will know that we cover topics to help us to take our results to new heights tying the most current neuroscience research to improve productivity and results in our schools, sports environments and modern workplaces, and The Silva Method is about self-mastery, self-awareness and learning to look within for answers. I’d love to know what you have learning from implementing The Silva Method in your life. Send me a message and let me know. THEN PRACTICE: And keep refining each part. PART 1: PRACTICING THE 3 STEPS TO ACCESSING THE ALPHA STATE, USING YOUR MENTAL SCREEN FOR HEIGHTENED VISUALIZATION AND MAKING USE OF WHAT YOU SEE. PART 2: PRACTICE THE 3-SCENES TECHNIQUE WITH A PROBLEM YOU WANT TO SOLVE PART 3: TAKE THE DREAM WORLD SERIOUSLY AND SLEEP LONG ENOUGH TO LEARN FROM YOUR DREAMS. PART 4: USE YOUR IMAGINATION TO TAP INTO YOUR CREATIVE MIND. Remember that if you do nothing else than practice the 3 steps in PART 1, you will be experiencing what William Wordsworth called “a happy stillness of mind.” (Page 27, The Silva Method). If you want to go beyond PART 4, look up MindValley’s Ultramind Course. And with that, I’ll close out this episode, and encourage all of us to keep learning, growing and practicing what we are learning. Like the quote we used for PART 4 of this review from Dr. Andrew Huberman, “The ability to be creative resides in everybody.” Keep working on looking how you can “reveal something new to the world, something entertaining, thrilling or useful) that changes the way we access the world—acting as portals into the world and ourselves.”  If you get stuck here, just look around you, at all the creative ideas you can see.   If you are still stuck, think about this. The oldest person alive today is 116 year old. Go back 116 years ago, and this is not far off from when The Wright Brothers discovered the ability to fly an airplane. (1903). Think of all the inventions made over the past 100 years, and then imagine someday, that something that YOU create, could possibly be sitting on my desk, used by the world like the fancy water I’m drinking, or the Rodecaster Pro microphone.   What will you create with The Silva Method?   If you are stuck in temporary defeat, find something that inspires you to get unstuck, and keep moving. I find inspiration and motivation in people who move quickly past difficult times and challenges, as well as in things. Look up some of the oldest Cathedrals in Europe and imagine the creativity behind these buildings. Then keep going.   Let me know what you create…and I’ll see you next week. FOLLOW ANDREA SAMADI:  YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/AndreaSamadi   Website https://www.achieveit360.com/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samadi/  Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/Achieveit360com   Neuroscience Meets SEL Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/2975814899101697   Twitter: https://twitter.com/andreasamadi   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreasamadi/    RESOURCES:   MEDITATION  1: How to Enter the Alpha Level of Mind, Step by Step Process, The Silva Method https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpMJWT6EsNs MEDITATION 2: Jose Silva Method Alpha Exercises by Sommer Leigh Published on YouTube June 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SY0kajVITA MEDITATION 3: 20 Minute Silva Centering Exercise with Vishen Lakhiani https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_4GDXWBPCk   Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #261 PART 1 of Apply the Silva Method for Improved Intuition, Creativity and Focus. https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/a-deep-dive-with-andrea-samadi-into-applying-the-silva-method-for-improved-intuition-creativity-and-focus-part-1/   Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #262 PART 2 of Apply the Silva Method for Improved Intuition, Creativity and Focus.  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/a-deep-dive-with-andrea-samadi-into-applying-the-silva-method-for-improved-intuition-creativity-and-focus-part-2/   Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #263 PART 3 of Apply the Silva Method for Improved Intuition, Creativity and Focus https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/a-deep-dive-with-andrea-samadi-into-applying-the-silva-method-speed-learning-and-creative-sleep-part-3/ Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast PART 4 of Apply the Silva Method for Improved Intuition, Creativity and Focus https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/the-neuroscience-behind-the-silva-method-improving-creativity-and-innovation-in-our-schools-sports-and-modern-workplaces/     REFERENCES:   [i] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE#203 with Ryan O’Neill  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/case-study-with-paranormal-researcher-ryan-o-neill-on-making-your-vision-a-reality/   [ii] Ryan O’Neill Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SuccessCoachRyan/posts/pfbid013GKasSayhQPi28Qui7rhUZiyFnvVdhHJgApfrHjANM6CXzFbkYCTYa12Z6PmTsXl?comment_id=697035065922357&reply_comment_id=7281858451877023&notif_id=1706773747021477&notif_t=comment_mention&ref=notif   [iii] https://www.cnn.com/style/article/spiral-staircases/index.html   [iv] Email Andrea [email protected]   [v] https://jimbunch.com/   [vi] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE#103 The Neuroscience of Leadership: 3 Ways to Reset, Recharge and Refuel Your Brain for Our Best Year Ever  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/the-neuroscience-of-leadership-3-ways-to-reset-recharge-and-refuel-your-brain-for-your-best-year-ever/   [vii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #261 PART 1 of Apply the Silva Method for Improved Intuition, Creativity and Focus. https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/a-deep-dive-with-andrea-samadi-into-applying-the-silva-method-for-improved-intuition-creativity-and-focus-part-1/   [viii]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #292 with Brian Proctor on “My Father Knew the Secret”  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/brain-proctor-on-my-father-knew-the-secretgrowing-up-with-bob-proctor/   [ix]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #262 PART 2 of Apply the Silva Method for Improved Intuition, Creativity and Focus.  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/a-deep-dive-with-andrea-samadi-into-applying-the-silva-method-for-improved-intuition-creativity-and-focus-part-2/   [x] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #263 PART 3 of Apply the Silva Method for Improved Intuition, Creativity and Focus https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/a-deep-dive-with-andrea-samadi-into-applying-the-silva-method-speed-learning-and-creative-sleep-part-3/   [xi] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #307 with Dr. Konstantin Korotkov on “Bridging the Spiritual World with Rigorous Scientific Method” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/dr-konstantinkorotkov-on-bridging-thespiritualworld-with-rigorousscientific-method-methodtappingintothe-powerof-our-thoughtsenergy-fieldsandlimitless/   [xii] Stephanie Gailing Complete Book of Dreams Published October 20, 2020  https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Book-Dreams-Illustrated-Encyclopedia/dp/1577152131   [xiii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #224 with Harvard Neuroscientist Dr. Baland Jalal who Explains “Sleep Paralysis, Lucid Dreaming and Premonitions: Expanding Our Awareness into the Mysteries of Our Brain During Sleep” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/harvard-neuroscientist-drbaland-jalalexplainssleepparalysislucid-dreaming-andpremonitionsexpandingour-awareness-into-the-mysteries-ofourbrainduring-sl/   [xiv] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #104 with Antonio Zadra on “When Brains Dream” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/sleep-scientist-antonio-zadra-on-when-brains-dream-exploring-the-science-and-mystery-of-sleep/   [xv] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE#226 “Using Neuroscience to Explain Why Our Dreams Are So Weird, Highly Emotional and Often Forgotten”  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/brain-fact-friday-using-neuroscience-to-explain-why-our-dreams-are-so-weird-highly-emotional-and-often-forgotten/   [xvi]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast PART 4 of Apply the Silva Method for Improved Intuition, Creativity and Focus https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/the-neuroscience-behind-the-silva-method-improving-creativity-and-innovation-in-our-schools-sports-and-modern-workplaces/   [xvii] www.mindvalley.com