Podcast appearances and mentions of John Medina

John Medina's short film, The Cure Complex, explores the epidemic of drug addiction in prison and the systemic failures that perpetuate Substance Use Disorder (SUD) in the prison system. "Recovery is an industry, and industries need customers. Rehabs don't succeed when people move on, they succeed when people stay," says Medina, whose own journey through addiction and incarceration motivated him to be an agent of change. His film highlights the importance of addressing the root causes of substance use — including trauma, poverty and isolation. Nationally, approximately 58% of the US prison population has active SUD. In California, where Medina's film is based, it's 65%. Yet, treatment behind bars is limited, inconsistent and often deadly. Only 15% of those assessed as needing help actually receive it. "True recovery isn't about quitting something, it's about building something,” says Medina. By investing in people, not just prescriptions, we can build more humane and effective pathways to healing addiction and staying clean, so that people can move onto meaningful and productive lives. Sadly, the current system, through ineffective, "evidence-based" practices, actually keeps people dependent on substances from which Big Pharma extracts enormous profit. Medina's raw and touching film uncovers how these profit-driven systems trap individuals in cycles of dependency through fear and control instead of empowering them to rebuild their lives. The film champions new and humane healing models that prioritize promoting self worth and purpose to manifest  healing and dignity. Medina is a proud Film Ambassador with Represent Justice, and The Cure Complex was selected to be one of five Represent Justice films streamed on Tubi to 100 million viewers. Watch The Cure Complex here!Have a Swan Dive to share? Text us!We are always looking for Swan Dive Stories to share so hit us up, send an e mail to Ron: Ron@artbikesjax.com or Stu: Stuart@stuartsheldon.com

Episode 399 reviews Phase 2 of Season 15 and introduces the Motivation Loop — the sequence of meaning, belief, attention, action, reward, and recovery that drives sustained effort. The episode explains common loop breakers (loss of meaning, negative thoughts, distracted attention, too much challenge, poor recovery, and no visible progress) and how to diagnose which link is failing. Practical takeaway: identify your gap, reconnect purpose, protect attention, celebrate small wins, and balance challenge with recovery to keep motivation alive. In This Episode 399, We Will Cover: ✅ The Motivation Loop — what it is, why it matters, and how it influences behavior, focus, effort, and achievement. ✅ What Keeps the Loop Alive — the role of meaning, belief, attention, action, reward, recovery, and growth. ✅ What Breaks the Loop — how loss of meaning, negative thoughts, distraction, lack of progress, poor recovery, and burnout weaken motivation. ✅ The Neuroscience of Motivation — why the brain repeats what it rewards and how dopamine reinforces behavior. ✅ The Difference Between Challenge and Burnout — finding the sweet spot where effort creates growth instead of exhaustion. ✅ My Personal Motivation Loop Story — how I watched my own loop begin to break in real time while pushing too hard with hiking and what I learned from it. ✅ How to Repair a Broken Loop — practical strategies to restore motivation before burnout takes hold. ✅ The Anterior Mid-Cingulate Cortex (AMCC) — the brain region associated with persistence, self-regulation, resilience, and doing hard things. ✅ Why Doing Hard Things Grows the Brain — how meaningful challenges strengthen the neural circuits responsible for sustained effort. ✅ Finding Your Gap — using our Brain's Operating System framework to identify where your system may be out of alignment. ✅ The Biggest Lessons from Phase 2: Neurochemistry & Motivation — insights from Bob Proctor, Dr. Caroline Leaf, Dr. John Medina, Dr. Anna Lembke, Dr. Chuck Hillman, and Friederike Fabritius. ✅ What's Next — a preview of Episodes 400 and 401 on Leadership and Trust, and our transition into Phase 3: Movement, Learning & Cognition. Key Question of the Episode "When motivation begins to disappear, have we lost our drive—or is there simply a broken link in the loop?" Aha Moment The goal isn't to push harder. The goal is to identify the broken link, repair it, and keep the loop alive. EP 399: The Motivation Loop: What Keeps It Going—and What Breaks It? Welcome back to the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast. This week, we're wrapping up Phase 2: Neurochemistry and Motivation. Over the past several months, we've explored some of the most important drivers of human behavior, attention, effort, learning, and performance. Through the work of Bob Proctor, Dr. Caroline Leaf, John Medina, Dr. Anna Lembke, Chuck Hillman, and Friederike Fabritius, we've been focused on one fundamental question: What drives sustained effort and forward movement? Today, I want to zoom out and connect everything we've learned into one simple framework: The Motivation Loop. More importantly, we'll look at: What keeps the loop going What causes it to break How we can strengthen it over time And why doing hard things may actually help grow parts of our brain responsible for persistence and self-regulation. The Brain's Operating System of Human Performance Before we dive into the Motivation Loop, let's remember what we've covered so far. One of the biggest insights from neuroscience is that high performance doesn't happen in one part of the brain. It happens through a sequence. Just like a computer has an operating system, our brains have an operating system for learning, achievement, and human performance. Over the past several months, we've been building that system one phase at a time. Phase 1: Regulation & Safety REGULATE The first question we asked was: "Is the nervous system safe enough to learn?" Before motivation... Before focus... Before performance... The brain must first feel regulated. Through guests like Bruce Perry, Kristen Holmes, Antonio Zadra, and Sui Wong, we learned that: Sleep matters Recovery matters Rhythm matters Our Stress levels matter A dysregulated brain struggles to learn. No regulation. No learning. Phase 2: Neurochemistry & Motivation ENGAGE Once the brain is regulated, we move to the next question: "What drives behavior, focus, and sustained effort?" This is the phase we've just completed. We explored: Dopamine Belief Thought patterns Attention Reward Burnout Energy And perhaps the biggest lesson from this phase was: The brain repeats what it rewards. This became the foundation of what I've called: The Motivation Loop: What Keeps the Loop Going? Looking at this graphic, notice the green side first. The healthy loop begins with: Meaning and Purpose When we know why something matters, effort becomes easier to sustain. This was Bob Proctor's message and the message that launched author Simon Sinek's entire career (Knowing Your Why). People can tolerate enormous challenges when the goal is meaningful. Example: Learning a New Skill Imagine someone deciding to learn a new language. At first: Progress is slow. Mistakes are frequent. The work feels uncomfortable. But they have a purpose. Maybe they want to connect on a deeper level with family. Maybe they want to travel. Maybe they want a new career opportunity. Purpose keeps them engaged long enough to continue with the hard work.   Belief Shapes Thought If I believe I can improve, my thoughts become more constructive. This was Dr. Caroline Leaf's work. Our thoughts influence our neurochemistry. Positive thoughts don't guarantee success. But they keep us moving toward it. Attention Drives Growth This was John Medina's contribution. Attention determines what the brain decides matters. The brain learns what we repeatedly focus on. What we attend to, we strengthen. Action Creates Progress Once attention is focused, behavior follows. We study. We practice. We train. We learn. Reward Reinforces Behavior This was Dr. Anna Lembke's work. The reward doesn't have to be huge. Sometimes it's simply noticing progress. The brain says: "That effort produced a result." And the loop continues. Example: Exercise A person begins walking 20 minutes every day. Week 1: No major changes. Week 2: Energy improves. Week 3: Sleep improves. Week 4: Resting heart rate begins dropping. The brain notices progress. The effort feels worthwhile. The loop strengthens. The behavior repeats. We have spent a lot of time on understanding how to keep the loop from breaking. How the Loop Breaks Now let's look at the red side. How the loop breaks. The loop rarely breaks all at once. Usually one link weakens first. Then the others follow. Loop Breaker #1: Loss of Meaning What Happened? A student studies only to pass a test. The test ends. The reason disappears. Motivation disappears. The loop breaks because there is no longer a compelling "why." What Could Have Prevented It? Reconnect to purpose. Instead of: "I have to study for this test." Shift to: "I'm building skills for the future version of myself." Bob Proctor taught us that goals are not just about achievement. They're about growth. Loop Repair Ask: "Why does this matter beyond today?" When meaning returns, motivation returns.   Loop Breaker #2: Negative Thought Patterns What Happened? Someone starts a health journey. After a difficult week they think: "I'm failing." "Nothing is changing." "I'll never get there." Their attention shifts toward evidence of failure. The loop weakens. What Could Have Prevented It? Focus on progress instead of perfection. Dr. Caroline Leaf would remind us that thoughts influence neurochemistry. A better question might be: "What is improving that I haven't noticed yet?" Loop Repair Look for small wins. Better sleep More energy More consistency Better habits Progress fuels dopamine. Dopamine fuels effort.   Loop Breaker #3: Distracted Attention What Happened? You sit down to work. A text arrives. Then email. Then social media. Then another interruption at your office door. Attention becomes fragmented. Learning slows. Progress slows. Reward disappears. What Could Have Prevented It? Protect your attention. John Medina taught us: Attention determines what the brain decides matters. Loop Repair Create: 30-minute focus blocks Phone-free work periods (with notifications turned off) One-task-at-a-time sessions The brain rewards completion. Not multitasking.   Loop Breaker #4: Too Much Challenge What Happened? This one surprises many people. Doing hard things strengthens the brain. But doing impossible things breaks the loop. A person starts: A new diet A new exercise plan A new business A new habit And tries to change everything at once. The challenge becomes overwhelming. What Could Have Prevented It? Start smaller. The AMCC grows when challenges are difficult but achievable. Loop Repair Ask: "What's the smallest difficult thing I can consistently repeat?" Not: "What's the hardest thing I can do today?"   Loop Breaker #5: Poor Recovery/Low Energy   What Happened? This is actually my hiking example that I've mentioned previously. Everything was working. My recovery improved. My WHOOP age improved 6.4 years younger than my actual age. My fitness improved- v02 max increased. Then I increased the challenge. Longer hikes. More strain. More effort. But not enough recovery time in between. I could actually see the reward disappearing in real time. The effort at the end of these longer hikes felt exhausting instead of energizing. I know that doing difficult things makes my brain stronger, but I was close to giving up on something I really enjoyed. What Could Have Prevented It? Recovery needed to increase alongside challenge. The mistake wasn't hiking, or making the hike more challenging. The mistake was believing: More is always better. Loop Repair Alternate: Hard days Easy days Increase recovery as strain increases. As Friederike Fabritius taught us: Performance isn't built through effort alone. It's built through effort and recovery. Once I put more attention on recovery before pushing again, the broken motivation loop repaired, and the end of those difficult hikes became energizing again (with the right amount of rest).   Loop Breaker #6: No Visible Progress What Happened? A salesperson makes: 50 calls 100 calls 150 calls No results. The brain begins asking: "Why bother?" The reward disappears. What Could Have Prevented It? Measure leading indicators instead of outcomes. Instead of focusing only on sales: Track: Calls completed Meetings booked Relationships built Skills improved Loop Repair Celebrate effort metrics. Not just outcome metrics. The brain needs evidence that effort matters. Also, if the strategy you are using is not yielding results, try a different one. Ask others who are having success, what they are doing, and how they are getting results. Once you can identify where your loop is breaking, fixing it requires doing something that you were not doing before.   The Big Lesson Every loop break in this phase points back to one question: What link failed? Was it: Meaning? Thoughts? Attention? Progress? Recovery? Challenge? Because the loop rarely breaks all at once. Usually one link weakens first. And the good news is: If you can identify the broken link, you can repair the loop. What About Doing Hard Things? One of the most fascinating concepts we explored this phase was the work surrounding the: Anterior Mid-Cingulate Cortex (AMCC) This area of the brain appears to play an important role in: Persistence Self-regulation Attention control Doing things we don't feel like doing Research suggests this area strengthens when we repeatedly choose meaningful challenges. Not impossible challenges. Not burnout. Not exhaustion. Meaningful challenges. Example Choosing: The workout you don't feel like doing. The difficult conversation you've been avoiding. The presentation that makes you nervous. The study session when you'd rather scroll your phone. Every time we choose effort over comfort, we may be strengthening the neural systems responsible for persistence and researchers also would say, the will to live. The Secret to Keeping the Loop Going After everything we've learned this phase, the answer is surprisingly simple: The loop stays alive when effort feels worthwhile. That means: ✅ Meaning ✅ Purpose ✅ Focus ✅ Progress ✅ Recovery ✅ Challenge But not too much challenge. Because challenge without recovery becomes burnout. And recovery without challenge becomes stagnation. The sweet spot lies in the middle. Instead of blaming ourselves, we can start diagnosing the system to build a stronger, more resilient version of ourselves. How to Use the "Find Your Gap" Framework Whenever you feel: Stuck Unmotivated Burned out Distracted Overwhelmed Plateaued Ask yourself: Which phase is broken? Because the problem is rarely "everything." Usually it's one phase creating a bottleneck for the others.   Phase 1 Gap: Regulation & Safety Ask: Am I sleeping well? Am I recovered? Is stress overwhelming me? Is my nervous system regulated? Signs This Is Your Gap Anxiety Exhaustion Brain fog Poor sleep Irritability Example A teacher can't focus. They assume they need more motivation. But they're sleeping 5 hours a night. The real gap isn't motivation. It's regulation. Solution Fix: Sleep Recovery Stress management First.   Phase 2 Gap: Neurochemistry & Motivation Ask: Do I still know why this matters? Am I seeing progress? Has the reward disappeared? Have I lost momentum? Signs This Is Your Gap Procrastination Lack of drive Loss of enthusiasm Feeling stuck Example This was your hiking example. You still had the ability. You still had the discipline. You simply stopped feeling rewarded by the effort. Solution Repair the Motivation Loop: Reconnect to purpose Reduce challenge temporarily Improve recovery Look for progress   Phase 3 Gap: Movement, Learning & Cognition Ask: Am I moving enough? Am I physically engaged? Am I learning new things? Is my brain being challenged? Signs This Is Your Gap Low energy Mental sluggishness Poor concentration Feeling mentally flat Example Someone spends 10 hours at a desk. Their motivation is fine. Their sleep is fine. But they're sedentary. Movement is the missing ingredient. Solution Move first. The research from Chuck Hillman and John Ratey suggests movement often improves: Attention Mood Learning Memory   Phase 4 Gap: Perception, Emotion & Social Intelligence Ask: Am I seeing this situation clearly? Am I understanding others? Do I feel connected? Signs This Is Your Gap Conflict Miscommunication Isolation Emotional reactivity Example A leader thinks: "Nobody supports my vision." But the real issue is communication. The gap isn't motivation. It's perception. Solution Improve: Listening Emotional awareness Perspective-taking Relationships   Phase 5 Gap: Integration, Insight & Meaning Ask: Does this align with who I want to become? Am I moving toward something meaningful? Do I have clarity? Signs This Is Your Gap Success without fulfillment Feeling lost Lack of direction Constantly chasing goals Example Someone has achieved everything they wanted professionally. But they still feel empty. The gap isn't performance. It's meaning. Solution Reconnect with: Values Purpose Identity Contribution to the World. The Most Powerful Question At the end of every week, ask: "Where is my gap?" Is it:

Episode 398 revisits neuroscientist Friederike Fabritius (from November 2022) to explain how three ingredients — fun (dopamine), fear (productive challenge), and focus — create the neurochemical conditions for sustained motivation and flow. You'll also learn why individual neurosignatures matter and how designing environments that match your brain, rather than forcing yourself to change, makes effort easier and motivation durable. Welcome back to Season 15 of the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast. I'm Andrea Samadi, and on this podcast, we bridge the science behind social and emotional learning, emotional intelligence, and practical neuroscience so we can create measurable improvements in well-being, achievement, productivity, and results. In This Episode 398, Closing the Motivation Loop, with Friederike Fabritius, We Will Cover: ✔ How FUN, FEAR, and FOCUS create the neurochemical conditions for sustainable motivation ✔ Why dopamine is more than a pleasure chemical—and how it fuels motivation, anticipation, effort, and reinforcement ✔ How FUN creates dopamine and keeps us engaged in meaningful work ✔ Why the right amount of FEAR (challenge) drives growth without causing burnout ✔ How FOCUS converts energy, attention, and motivation into measurable results ✔ The connection between FUN, FEAR, FOCUS, and the Motivation Loop ✔ Why different brains require different motivation strategies ✔ Understanding your unique "Neurosignature" and how it influences performance ✔ How dopamine interacts with other neurochemicals like testosterone, estrogen, serotonin, and oxytocin ✔ Why sustainable motivation begins with self-awareness ✔ The Stress vs. Performance Curve and finding your optimal challenge zone ✔ How under-challenge leads to boredom and over-challenge leads to burnout ✔ Why peak performance occurs when challenge matches your brain's needs ✔ How to design environments that support attention, motivation, and performance ✔ Why the strongest motivation loops are powered by alignment—not willpower ✔ Practical strategies to create the conditions where your brain naturally wants to engage and perform ✔ How self-awareness, energy management, and neurochemistry work together to sustain long-term success ✔ What keeps the Motivation Loop repeating—and what causes it to break ✔ How to close Phase 2: Neurochemistry & Motivation and prepare for Phase 3: Movement, Learning & Cognition

Season 15, Episode 397 revisits research and real-world practice showing movement is more than fitness: it activates the brain, boosts attention, enhances learning, and sustains motivation. Dr. Chuck Hillman's studies reveal how even short bouts of exercise light up brain activity, while Paul Zientarski's Naperville program demonstrates how heart-rate monitoring and purposeful movement improve readiness, recovery, and academic performance. In EP 397: Movement, Motivation, and Brain Activation with Dr. Chuck Hillman and Paul Zientarski, we explore why movement may be one of the most powerful tools we have for improving brain function, learning, motivation, and performance. In this episode, we cover: ✅ Why most children are not meeting the recommended daily physical activity guidelines and what we can do to change that. ✅ How exposing children to a variety of activities helps them discover movement they enjoy—and are more likely to continue throughout their lives. ✅ Why there is no perfect exercise program, and why the best exercise is the one you'll consistently do. ✅ How enjoyment, reward, and dopamine reinforce healthy habits and keep the Motivation Loop repeating. ✅ What Naperville Central High School learned from heart rate monitoring and how recovery impacts performance. ✅ Why peak performance requires both effort and recovery. ✅ How exercise changes the brain, improving attention, learning, memory, and cognitive performance. ✅ The groundbreaking research behind Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain and how it changed the way educators think about learning. ✅ Why movement is not a break from learning—but one of the most effective ways to prepare the brain for learning. ✅ How movement fits into our Phase 2 Motivation Loop, helping transform motivation into action and sustaining long-term performance. The biggest takeaway? Movement isn't just exercise. It's activation. It's preparation. It's performance. When we move our bodies, we activate the brain systems responsible for attention, learning, motivation, and success. The episode highlights practical takeaways: expose children to varied enjoyable activities, prioritize consistency over intensity, use movement as cognitive preparation, and track recovery to protect motivation. Movement becomes a bridge between motivation and sustained performance—improving focus today and long-term brain health tomorrow. Welcome back to Season 15 of the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast. I'm Andrea Samadi, and on this podcast, we bridge the science behind social and emotional learning, emotional intelligence, and practical neuroscience so we can create measurable improvements in well-being, achievement, productivity, and results. Movement, Motivation, and Brain Activation with Dr. Chuck Hillman and Paul Zientarski This week, we continue our journey through Phase 2: Neurochemistry and Motivation, where we've been exploring one central question: What drives sustained effort and forward movement? So far, we've learned that motivation begins with belief and meaning from Bob Proctor[i], is shaped by our thought patterns with Dr. Caroline Leaf,[ii] strengthened through attention and reward with Dr. John Medina[iii], and powered by the brain's dopamine-based motivation system through Dr. Anna Lembke's[iv] work. But today, we arrive at a fascinating question: What happens when we actually move? Because motivation isn't just something that happens in the mind. The brain was designed to work in partnership with the body. And according to our review of today's two guests, one of the most powerful ways to activate attention, learning, memory, and motivation is through movement itself. This week we're revisiting insights from two pioneers whose work helped transform our understanding of movement and learning. First, Dr. Chuck Hillman, one of the world's leading researchers on exercise and brain function, whose groundbreaking research has shown how physical activity improves attention, executive function, learning, memory, and academic performance from EP 123[v] back in April 2021. Next, we will review Paul Zientarski, the former Physical Education Coordinator and football coach at Naperville Central High School, (In Illinois) whose work with the school's innovative Zero Hour PE Program helped put Naperville on the map for extraordinary academic achievement. Alongside his colleagues at Naperville, Paul demonstrated that exercise wasn't simply improving fitness—it was preparing students' brains to learn. Together, Dr. Hillman provides the science, while Paul Zientarski helps to demonstrate what that science looks like in the real world. Their combined work shows us that movement is far more than a physical activity. It is a powerful tool for activating the brain, enhancing learning, improving focus, and supporting the motivation needed for sustained performance. In other words, movement is the bridge between motivation and sustaining our performance. Let's dive in with Dr. Chuck Hillman and discover the science behind The Power of Movement and Brain Activation. CLIP 1: Getting Kids Moving for Life Summary In this clip, Dr. Chuck Hillman highlights a growing concern: the vast majority of children are not meeting the recommended physical activity guidelines. Current recommendations suggest that children should engage in at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity each day, including aerobic exercise and activities that strengthen bones and muscles. Dr. Hillman explains that the challenge isn't simply knowing the guidelines—it's finding ways to engage children in movement when many adults aren't meeting the recommendations themselves. This is why childhood is such an important time to expose young people to a wide variety of physical activities, helping them discover forms of movement they enjoy and can continue throughout their lives. Key Takeaways ✔ Most children are not getting enough physical activity. Many young people fall short of the recommended 60 minutes of daily movement needed for optimal physical and cognitive development. ✔ Movement supports both brain and body health. Exercise is not just about fitness—it supports attention, learning, memory, emotional regulation, and overall well-being. ✔ Children need exposure to different activities. Not every child will enjoy the same sport or activity. The goal is to help them discover movement they genuinely enjoy. ✔ Parents and adults model behavior. Children are more likely to be active when the adults around them value and participate in physical activity. ✔ Early habits can last a lifetime. The activities children enjoy today often become the healthy habits they carry into adulthood. Tips to Implement Expose Children to Variety

Host Andrea Samadi welcomes Dr. Anna Lembke to explain how pleasure and pain share the same neural circuitry and how dopamine governs motivation. The episode explores why overconsumption of easy rewards dulls motivation, creates withdrawal-like deficits, and shifts the brain toward pain. Through clear takeaways—delay borrowed rewards, try temporary abstinence, create friction for temptations, and practice purposeful effort—the episode shows how recalibrating the brain's reward system restores enjoyment in ordinary activities and builds sustainable motivation. Welcome back to Season 15 of the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast. I'm Andrea Samadi, and on this podcast, we bridge the science behind social and emotional learning, emotional intelligence, and practical neuroscience so we can create measurable improvements in well-being, achievement, productivity, and results. Season 15 Orientation This season, we're exploring what I call: The Brain's Operating System for Human Performance. Instead of looking at neuroscience, health, learning, motivation, and emotional intelligence as separate topics, (like we did for the past 14 seasons) we're exploring how these systems come online in sequence. Each phase builds on the one before it: ✔ Phase 1 — Regulation & Safety Is the nervous system safe enough to learn? ✔ Phase 2 — Neurochemistry & Motivation What drives behavior, focus, and sustained effort? ✔ Phase 3 — Movement, Learning & Cognition ✔ Phase 4 — Perception, Emotion & Social Intelligence ✔ Phase 5 — Integration, Insight & Meaning By the end of this year my hope is that we can step back and ask: Where am I out of alignment? Is it regulation? Is it my thinking? Is it my focus? Or Belief? Is it how I'm learning or connecting with others? Or do I need some work with integration, insight and meaning? Because once we can see our gap… We can begin to close it. “The goal is not more effort—it's better alignment.” “And when these systems are aligned… Effort feels easier Learning becomes faster And results become more consistent Because peak performance is not about doing more. It's about aligning the systems that drive our results. Recap Where We've Been In EP 392[i], we introduced the Motivation Loop and explored how the brain decides what is worth doing. In EP 393[ii], we looked at how our beliefs trigger neurochemistry that drives action, feedback, and repetition. In EP 394[iii] we looked at how our thought patterns impact our neurochemistry and results with Dr. Caroline Leaf. Then in EP 395[iv], reviewing Dr. John Medina's work on Theory of Mind, we explored something equally important: The brain pays attention to what it believes matters. Dr. Medina showed us that attention and reward are deeply connected. When the brain predicts something will be valuable, relevant, or meaningful, attention increases. And when attention and reward align: ✔ Learning improves ✔ Memory strengthens ✔ Motivation increases ✔ Behaviors become repeatable But that leaves us with an important question: What creates that sense of reward in the first place? What makes the brain continue pursuing something? What makes us stay motivated and what makes us lose interest? And why can effort sometimes feel rewarding—and other times feel exhausting? Today's Episode To answer those questions, we're turning to Dr. Anna Lembke, author of the book: Dopamine Nation who we first met September 2021 on EP 162.[v] Her work helps to explain the neurochemical engine underneath the Motivation Loop that we've been covering. While John Medina helped us understand how attention and reward influence learning, Dr. Lembke helps us understand: ✔ Why the brain seeks reward ✔ How dopamine drives motivation ✔ Why pleasure and pain operate on the same neural system ✔ And what happens when the balance gets disrupted Because the real goal isn't simply just feeling good. The goal is understanding how the brain learns to associate effort with reward. And when that happens, something powerful occurs: Effort itself becomes rewarding. That's where sustainable motivation begins. EP 393 — Motivation Loop ↓ EP 394 — Belief triggers neurochemistry ↓ EP 395 — Theory of Mind: Attention + Reward determine what matters ↓ EP 396 — Dopamine Nation: Why the brain seeks reward and how effort becomes rewarding It keeps the loop intact and shows listeners that Medina answered "What gets our attention?" while Lembke answers "Why does the brain keep pursuing it?". CLIP 1: The Neuroscience of Pleasure and Pain Based on Dr. Anna Lembke's Dopamine Nation CLIP SUMMARY Let's see what Dr. Anna Lembke has to say about the neuroscience of pleasure and pain. In this clip, Dr. Lembke explains one of the most important concepts in modern neuroscience: Pleasure and pain are processed in the same brain system and work like opposite sides of a balance. Whenever we experience something pleasurable—whether it's social media, sugar, shopping, gaming, alcohol, or even achievement—the brain's balance tips toward pleasure. But the brain is always seeking equilibrium. To restore balance, it responds by tipping the scale in the opposite direction, creating a corresponding feeling of discomfort, craving, dissatisfaction, or pain. The more often we seek quick pleasure, the harder the brain works to compensate. Over time, this can leave us in what Lembke calls a "dopamine deficit state" where we need more stimulation just to feel normal. The surprising solution? Activities that require effort and involve manageable discomfort—exercise, cold exposure, fasting, learning difficult skills, and meaningful human connection—can help restore balance and rebuild motivation. KEY TAKEAWAYS & HOW TO PUT THEM INTO ACTION 1. The Brain Is Always Seeking Balance IMAGE CREDIT: Dr. Anna Lembke Dopamine Nation. Dr. Lembke explains that pleasure and pain are not separate systems. They operate like opposite sides of a seesaw. When we repeatedly tip the brain toward pleasure, (you can see an image in the show notes with some examples like with eating chocolate, shopping or using social media) the brain compensates by tipping toward pain to restore balance. Brain Rule: Every pleasure has a neurobiological cost. Put This Into Action Ask yourself: Where am I getting large rewards with very little effort? Examples might include: ✔ Social media ✔ Sugar ✔ Constant news consumption ✔ Streaming ✔ Or Online shopping The goal isn't to eliminate pleasure. The goal is just with our awareness. Because what we measure, we can begin to manage. 2. Overconsumption Changes the Brain What feels exciting today becomes normal tomorrow. The brain adapts to repeated dopamine spikes through a process called neuroadaptation. Over time: ✔ Rewards feel weaker ✔ Cravings increase ✔ Motivation decreases ✔ More stimulation is needed to create the same feeling Put This Into Action Choose one highly stimulating habit and observe it for a week. Notice: ✔ How often you engage in it ✔ What triggers it ✔ How you feel afterward Simply collecting data can reveal patterns you didn't realize existed. 3. Not All Dopamine Is Created Equal: Borrowed vs. Earned Dopamine (we have covered this topic previously). Dr. Lembke's pleasure-pain balance helps explain an important distinction: Borrowed Dopamine Borrowed dopamine comes before effort. Examples include: ✔ Scrolling social media ✔ Energy drinks before a workout ✔ Sugar when stressed ✔ Online shopping ✔ Gaming ✔ Endless entertainment These rewards feel good immediately. But because they require little effort, they often weaken motivation over time. The brain begins expecting reward before work. Earned Dopamine Earned dopamine comes after effort. Examples include: ✔ Finishing a difficult workout ✔ Completing a challenging project ✔ Climbing to the summit of a hike ✔ Finishing a podcast episode (for me) ✔ Learning a new skill ✔ Solving a difficult problem These rewards feel different. The brain learns: Effort leads to reward. And over time: Effort itself becomes rewarding. This strengthens the Motivation Loop. Put This Into Action Ask yourself: Where am I borrowing dopamine? And where am I earning it? For the next week, look for opportunities to delay rewards until after effort. Examples: Instead of: Reward → Effort Try: Effort → Reward Instead of checking your phone before starting work... Complete one task first. Instead of rewarding yourself before your workout... Reward yourself after the workout. Instead of seeking immediate comfort... Lean into a small challenge. Each time you do this, you're teaching your brain: "Reward follows effort." And that's how motivation becomes sustainable. 4. Temporary Abstinence Reveals the Truth One of Dr. Lembke's most powerful strategies is taking a break from a highly rewarding behavior. When we step away from constant stimulation, the brain's reward system has an opportunity to recalibrate. Only then can we see whether a behavior is serving us—or controlling us. Put This Into Action Consider a short experiment. Choose one behavior that may be overstimulating your reward system and reduce or eliminate it temporarily. Notice: ✔ Energy ✔ Focus ✔ Motivation ✔ Mood ✔ Cravings The goal isn't punishment. The goal is information. 5. Lasting Change Requires Systems, Not Willpower Many people believe success comes from discipline alone. Dr. Lembke argues that creating the right environment is often more powerful. Instead of relying on willpower every day, create barriers that make unwanted behaviors harder to access. Put This Into Action Ask yourself: How can I create more friction between myself and temptation? Examples include: ✔ Turning off notifications ✔ Keeping unhealthy foods out of sight ✔ Scheduling device-free time Small environmental changes often produce large behavioral results. CLIP 2 How Chronic Overstimulation Creates a Dopamine Deficit State When The Motivation Loops Breaks In this clip, Dr. Anna Lembke explains why many people struggling with depression, anxiety, insomnia, low motivation, or emotional distress may actually be experiencing the consequences of chronic overstimulation. Her first recommendation is often surprisingly simple: Remove the "drug of choice" for a period of time. The "drug" isn't necessarily alcohol or drugs. It can be social media, gaming, shopping, sugar, constant entertainment, or any behavior that repeatedly floods the brain's reward pathways. Lembke explains that people often feel worse before they feel better because the brain has adapted to high levels of dopamine stimulation. When the stimulation is removed, the brain temporarily experiences withdrawal-like symptoms as it works to restore balance. Over time, however, the brain's pleasure-pain system recalibrates, allowing people to experience pleasure from ordinary, everyday rewards again. Her larger message is: We live in a society with unprecedented access to pleasure, and many of us have unintentionally shifted our pleasure-pain balance toward pain. The solution is not necessarily more pleasure. The solution is restoring balance. How Chronic Overstimulation Creates a Dopamine Deficit State KEY TAKEAWAYS & HOW TO PUT THEM INTO ACTION 1. Feeling Worse Can Be a Sign of Healing One of the biggest misconceptions about behavior change is that improvement should feel good immediately. The brain doesn't work that way. When a highly stimulating behavior is removed: ✔ Cravings increase ✔ Discomfort rises ✔ Mood may temporarily decline This is often the brain recalibrating rather than failing. Put This Into Action When reducing an overstimulating habit, don't judge success by how you feel in the first few days. Instead ask: "Could this discomfort be evidence that my brain is adjusting?" Sometimes the discomfort isn't a sign you're moving backward. It's a sign you're recovering. 2. The Brain Adapts to Excess Dopamine The brain is remarkably efficient. When exposed to constant stimulation, it reduces its sensitivity to reward. What once felt exciting becomes normal. What once felt normal may eventually feel boring. This is why people often need more stimulation to achieve the same feeling. Put This Into Action Identify your "drug of choice." Ask yourself: What do I consistently turn to when I'm stressed, bored, anxious, or uncomfortable? Examples: ✔ Social media ✔ Sugar ✔ Streaming ✔ Shopping ✔ Gaming ✔ Constant notifications Awareness creates choice. 3. Modern Life Makes Overstimulation Easy This is one of the central themes of Dopamine Nation. For most of human history, pleasure was scarce. Today: ✔ Entertainment is unlimited ✔ Food is always available ✔ Social media never stops ✔ Information is endless The challenge is no longer finding pleasure. The challenge is regulating access to it. Put This Into Action Look for places where you can create friction between yourself and temptation. Examples: ✔ Turn off notifications ✔ Keep unhealthy foods out of sight ✔ Schedule screen-free time ✔ Create boundaries around technology use Small barriers often create significant behavioral change. 4. Sustainable Motivation Lives Near Baseline The goal isn't to feel intensely excited all the time. The goal is to restore the ability to enjoy ordinary rewards. IMAGE CREDIT: Dr. Anna Lembke Dopamine Nation Put This Into Action Reconnect with activities that once felt naturally rewarding. Ask yourself: What activities did I enjoy before constant digital stimulation? Examples: ✔ Reading ✔ Walking ✔ Meaningful conversation ✔ Learning something new ✔ Creative work As the reward system recalibrates, many people discover these activities become enjoyable again (if the pleasure for them had disappeared). 5. Doing Hard Things Strengthens the Brain One of the most exciting findings in neuroscience involves the Anterior Mid-Cingulate Cortex (AMCC), sometimes called the "Do Hard Things" circuit. This region appears to strengthen when we voluntarily engage in difficult activities. Examples: ✔ Exercise ✔ Learning challenging skills ✔ Delayed gratification ✔ Difficult conversations ✔ Endurance challenges The brain learns: "I can handle discomfort." Put This Into Action Ask yourself each morning: What's one hard thing I can do today on purpose? Because we've learned that doing hard things is valuable. Every time you choose effort over comfort, you're strengthening the circuits that support resilience, persistence, and long-term motivation. REVIEW & CONCLUSION To review and conclude this week's EP 396, Clip 1 taught us that pleasure and pain share the same neural circuitry. Clip 2 teaches us what happens when that balance is disrupted. The lesson isn't that pleasure is bad. The lesson is that when pleasure becomes too easy and too abundant, the brain stops valuing effort. But when we reduce overstimulation, embrace manageable discomfort, and begin earning our dopamine instead of borrowing it, something remarkable happens: Motivation returns. Effort feels worthwhile. And the Motivation Loop begins working the way it was designed to work. As we close today's episode, let's return to our Phase 2 roadmap. If you're looking at this graphic, you'll notice that Dr. Anna Lembke sits right in the center. And that's intentional. Because everything we've covered so far in Phase 2 flows through this central motivation system. We began with Bob Proctor and the power of belief. Belief creates expectation. Expectation shapes what we think is possible. Then Dr. Caroline Leaf showed us how our thoughts influence our neurochemistry. The thoughts we repeatedly think shape the chemical signals that influence our behavior and performance. Last week, Dr. John Medina helped us understand attention and reward. The brain pays attention to what it believes matters. And what gets rewarded gets repeated. Today, Dr. Anna Lembke helped us understand the missing piece. She showed us that dopamine is not simply about pleasure. It's about motivation. It's about anticipation. It's about pursuit. And ultimately, it's about what the brain decides is worth the effort. When dopamine becomes disconnected from effort through constant stimulation and easy rewards, the Motivation Loop begins to break. But when reward becomes connected to effort, challenge, growth, and progress, the loop strengthens. And that's where sustainable motivation begins. THE "DO HARD THINGS" CONNECTION One final insight from today's episode. Dr. Lembke's work helps explain why doing hard things matters so much. Every time we choose effort over immediate gratification... Every time we choose growth over comfort... Every time we voluntarily do something difficult... We strengthen the brain circuits that support persistence, resilience, and long-term motivation. The brain begins learning: Effort is worth it. And eventually: Effort becomes rewarding. That's when motivation becomes self-sustaining. Not because the work gets easier. But because the brain learns that the effort itself has value. Dr. Anna Lembke isn't just another stop in the loop—she's the core motivation system that sits in the center of everything. But there's 2 more pieces still to cover in the Motivation Loop we haven't explored yet. We've learned that belief shapes expectation. Thoughts shape neurochemistry. Attention and reward determine what matters. And dopamine helps the brain decide what is worth pursuing. But once we're motivated... How do we turn that motivation into action? That's where we'll turn next. Next Week: Dr. Chuck Hillman Movement, Motivation, and Brain Activation We'll explore: ✔ How exercise activates the brain ✔ Why movement improves attention and learning ✔ The connection between physical activity and motivation ✔ How movement strengthens cognitive performance ✔ Why action often comes before motivation ✔ And how movement helps keep the Motivation Loop moving forward Because in Phase 2, we're not just asking: What makes effort feel worth it? We're also asking: What helps us take action once motivation is present? And Dr. Chuck Hillman's research shows that movement may be one of the most powerful ways to activate the brain for learning, performance, and sustained effort. Until next time, I'm Andrea Samadi, reminding you that when we understand how the brain works, we can align our thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and actions to create measurable improvements in well-being, achievement, productivity, and results. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next week. RESOURCES: Full Interview with Dr. Lembke from Sept 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pu82wZRZwo CLIP 1: The Neuroscience of Pleasure and Pain CLIP 2 How Chronic Overstimulation Creates a Dopamine Deficit State REFERENCES: [i] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE 392 https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/belief-first-the-neuroscience-of-motivation/   [ii]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE 393 https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/belief-first-the-neuroscience-of-motivation/   [iii]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE 394 https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/thoughts-as-biology-how-your-mind-shapes-neurochemistry/   [iv] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE 395 https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/theory-of-mind-the-missing-link-between-attention-reward-and-motivation/   [v]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE 162 https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/medical-director-of-addictive-medicine-at-stanford-university-dr-anna-lembke-on-dopamine-nation-finding-balance-in-the-age-of-indulgence/

Episode 395 explores how theory of mind — our ability to understand others' intentions — drives attention, emotional relevance, and reward, shaping motivation and behavior. Dr. John Medina explains why the brain pays attention to people and meaning, how reading narrative fiction can strengthen perspective-taking, and practical tips for teachers, leaders, and coaches to build motivation through understanding rather than pressure. This Episode 395, We Will Cover: ✔ What Theory of Mind actually is, and why it matters for communication, learning, and leadership ✔ Why the brain pays attention to: • people • meaning • emotion • intention • and relevance ✔ How Theory of Mind helps us move beyond simply reacting to behavior—and begin understanding the human experience behind behavior ✔ Why emotionally relevant information captures attention and strengthens memory ✔ How attention and reward work together inside the brain's Motivation Loop ✔ How dopamine helps reinforce behaviors the brain believes are worth repeating ✔ Why pressure and emotional stress can shut down motivation, focus, creativity, and learning ✔ Practical ways to strengthen Theory of Mind through: • observation • emotional awareness • communication • perspective-taking • and even reading high-quality narrative fiction ✔ Why understanding people more deeply may improve: • relationships • leadership • teaching • teamwork • learning • and overall human performance One of the biggest takeaways from this episode:

In this episode Andrea Samadi revisits her October 2022 interview with Dr. Caroline Leaf about how our thought patterns act as biological instructions that shape brain chemistry, behavior, and results. They explore the mind–brain distinction, the magnet analogy for pattern formation, and practical steps to interrupt negative thinking.   Listeners learn why repeated thoughts build neural pathways, how beliefs trigger neurochemistry in the motivation loop, and how consistent practices—like Dr. Leaf's 63-day NeuroCycle—can rewire thinking over time for better focus, motivation, and wellbeing. This Episode, We Will Cover: ✔ What it means when we say your thoughts are “biological instruction” ✔ How your thoughts influence brain chemistry, the nervous system, and behavior ✔ Why thinking, feeling, and choosing are always working together ✔ The connection between thought patterns and future results ✔  How repeated thoughts create neural pathways and habits ✔ The Motivation Loop — and where thought patterns fit in ✔ The “magnet analogy” — how your thoughts organize patterns in the brain ✔ How to identify and change toxic or limiting thought patterns ✔  Dr. Carolyn Leaf's 63-day Neurocycle process for rewiring thinking ✔ How your internal state influences your external results and environment ✔ Why you are both shaping and responding to your environment

Season 15, Episode 392 introduces phase two of the roadmap: neurochemistry and motivation. Andrea Samadi breaks down the motivation loop—expectation, thought patterns, attention and action, feedback, and repetition—and explains how belief and dopamine drive what we start, persist with, or stop. The episode highlights earned vs. borrowed dopamine, the role of the anterior mid-cingulate cortex in willpower, and offers practical steps to build sustainable motivation through small wins, effort-first rewards, and consistent practice. ✅ What You'll Learn in This Episode ✔️ How the Motivation Loop works—and why your brain is always running it ✔️ Why dopamine is about anticipation, not just pleasure ✔️ The difference between borrowed vs earned dopamine—and how it impacts your drive ✔️ How your beliefs and thought patterns shape your brain chemistry ✔️ Why doing hard things strengthens willpower (aMCC) and builds resilience ✔️ What causes motivation to increase… or break down ✔️ How your brain decides to repeat a behavior—or avoid it next time ✔️ Why effort first, reward after is the key to building lasting motivation ✔️ Simple ways to train your brain to stay motivated ✔️ How to align your brain for sustained performance and results Welcome back to Season 15 of the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast. I'm Andrea Samadi, and it's here that we bridge the science behind social and emotional learning, emotional intelligence, and practical neuroscience—so we can create measurable improvements in well-being, achievement, productivity, and results. If you're new here, welcome. We are currently reviewing past episodes as part of Season 15—organized as a roadmap of the brain's foundational systems. Instead of treating neuroscience, health, mindset, and performance as separate topics—like we've done in the past 14 seasons—we're now exploring how these systems come online in sequence. We started Phase 1, Regulation and Safety, with EP 384[i], with Dr. Baland Jalal, who taught us how learning begins (with curiosity, sleep, imagination and creativity), and reviewed anchor episodes with Dr. Bruce Perry[ii], looking into trauma, rhythm, and relational safety, Dr. Sui Wong[iii] on autonomic balance, and Rohan Dixit[iv], on HRV, real-time self-regulation and nervous system literacy. Now, we are moving to Phase 2, diving deeper into neurochemistry and motivation…then we'll cover movement, learning, and cognition… Then perception, emotion, social intelligence… and finally integration, insight, and meaning as we put all of the phases together. Season 15 Roadmap: Phase 1 — Regulation & Safety Phase 2 — Neurochemistry & Motivation Phase 3 — Movement, Learning & Cognition Phase 4 — Perception, Emotion & Social Intelligence Phase 5 — Integration, Insight & Meaning Because peak performance isn't built by doing more— it's built by aligning the systems underneath. And the truth is, most of us were never taught how these systems drive our behavior and results in the first place. So as I continue to explore and better understand these systems myself, I want to thank you for joining me on this journey… So that together, we learn how to align our brains— and use this understanding to unlock what's truly possible for us to achieve. Because I do believe that we're capable of achieving far more than we think is possible—with this understanding. PHASE 2 Today, we move into Phase 2 of our roadmap— Neurochemistry and Motivation. In Phase 1, we asked a foundational question:

Get the book, Digital Captives: Helping Schools Strike A Balance Between Humans And Hardware Visit the Schools Next website, www.schoolsnext.org Follow Gene on X @GTavernetti About The Guests Dr. Frank Rodriguez is entering his 32nd year working in and with schools, primarily in Southern California. He entered education in 1993 through a two year commitment to teach in a bilingual 5th grade classroom in Long Beach through Teach for America, and thirty years later is still finding it difficult to leave. He is the Managing Partner of Schools Next, as well as the President of RISE School Programs, RISE Educational Services and the RISE Educational Foundation. With his partner Dr. Gene Tavernetti, he co-developed the FAST framework, a direct instruction teaching model based on the pedagogy of Dr. Madeline Hunter which synthesized and incorporated the brain research of Dr. David Sousa, Eric Jensen and Dr. John Medina. Dr. Rodriguez was a teacher and administrator for twelve years before beginning a career in professional development and teacher and principal coaching. More recently he has overseen RISE School Programs which serves more than 3000 students in seven districts in northern Los Angeles County. Frank Professionally he is most proud of the RISE Educational Foundation, a non-profit that annually gives out college scholarships to high school seniors who were formerly in RISE programs as elementary school students, as well as to RISE employees who are completing their undergraduate degrees, and are largely first generation college students.   Dr. Gene Tavernetti's journey in education began in 1977, encompassing roles as a coach, teacher, counselor, and administrator. His career reached a turning point when he discovered his passion for one-on-one instructional coaching, realizing the profound impact he could make on educators and student learning. In 2006, Dr. Tavernetti co-founded Total Educational Systems Support (TESS), a pioneering organization dedicated to training and coaching thousands of educators. TESS, under Gene's leadership, focuses on teacher-directed instruction, emphasizing engagement strategies, language development, and higher-order thinking skills. As the author of two influential books, Teach FAST: Focused Adaptable Structure Instruction explores explicit instruction methods, while Maximizing the Impact of Coaching Cycles addresses common challenges faced by instructional coaches.  

In this episode, host Ross welcomes Memphis Orian and John Medina, the CEO and Chief Creative Officer of Coba Bathhouse, a unique wellness destination coming soon to Denver. They discuss the concept of a bath house, where guests can choose from various thermal amenities, including saunas, hot pools, and cold plunges. The hosts explore the business side of this innovative venture, which is gaining traction in the wellness industry. Memphis and John share their vision for creating a space where people can relax, unwind, and connect with others, and discuss the potential for this type of business to thrive in the US market.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode Andrea Samadi revisits Season 15's foundation with Dr. Bruce Perry to explore how safety, regulation, and patterned experience shape the brain's capacity to learn and create. We examine why potential must be activated through repetition, rhythm, and low-threat environments, and how trauma, stress, or dysregulation block learning. Takeaways include practical steps for educators, parents, and leaders: prioritize nervous-system safety before instruction, use micro-repetition to build skills, and employ storytelling to make scientific ideas stick. This episode anchors Phase 1 of the season: regulation, rhythm, repetition, and relational safety as the prerequisites for sustainable performance and lasting change. This week, Episode 385—based on our review of Episode 168 recorded in October 2021—we explore: ✔ 1. Genetic Potential vs. Developed Capacity We are born with extraordinary biological potential. But experience determines which neural systems become functional. The brain builds what it repeatedly uses. ✔ 2. The Brain Is Use-Dependent Language, emotional regulation, leadership skills, motor precision— all are wired through patterned, rhythmic repetition. ✔ 3. Trauma, Regulation & Learning A dysregulated nervous system cannot efficiently learn. Safety, rhythm, and relational connection come before strategy. ✔ 4. “What Happened to You?” vs. “What's Wrong with You?” Shifting from judgment to curiosity changes how we approach: Children Students Teams Ourselves ✔ 5. Early Experience Shapes Long-Term Expression Developmental inputs—especially patterned, early ones— determine which capacities are strengthened. ✔ 6. Repetition Builds Confidence Confidence is not a personality trait. It is neural circuitry built through structured repetition in safe environments. ✔ 7. Story Makes Science Stick From Dr. Perry's experience writing with Oprah: You can't tell everybody everything you know. Impact comes from: One core idea Wrapped in story Delivered with restraint ✔ 8. Information Overload Weakens Learning Depth > Volume Clarity > Density Retention > Impressive Data ✔ 9. Regulation Comes Before Motivation Before goals. Before performance. Before achievement. The nervous system must feel safe. ✔ 10. Season 15's Foundational Question Is the nervous system safe enough to learn? Welcome back to Season 15 of the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast. I'm Andrea Samadi, and here we bridge the science behind social and emotional learning, emotional intelligence, and practical neuroscience—so we can create measurable improvements in well-being, achievement, productivity, and results. When we launched this podcast seven years ago, it was driven by a question I had never been taught to ask— not in school, not in business, and not in life: If results matter—and they matter now more than ever—how exactly are we using our brain to make these results happen? Most of us were taught what to do. Very few of us were taught how to think under pressure, how to regulate emotion, how to sustain motivation, or even how to produce consistent results without burning out. That question led me into a deep exploration of the mind–brain–results connection—and how neuroscience applies to everyday decisions, conversations, and performance. That's why this podcast exists. Each week, we bring you leading experts to break down complex science and translate it into practical strategies you can apply immediately. If you've been with us through Season 14, you may have felt something shift. That season wasn't about collecting ideas. It was about integrating these ideas into our daily life, as we launched our review of past episodes. Across conversations on neuroscience, social and emotional learning, sleep, stress, exercise, nutrition, and mindset frameworks—we heard from voices like Bob Proctor, José Silva, Dr. Church, Dr. John Medina, and others—one thing became clear: These aren't separate tools that we are covering in each episode. They're parts of one operating system. When the brain, body, and emotions are aligned, performance stops feeling forced—and starts to feel sustainable. Season 14 showed us what alignment looks like in real life. We looked at goals and mental direction, rewiring the brain, future-ready learning and leadership, self-leadership, which ALL led us to inner alignment. And now we move into Season 15 that is about understanding how that alignment is built—so we can build it ourselves, using predictable, science-backed principles. Because alignment doesn't happen all at once. It happens by using a sequence. And when we understand the order of that sequence — we can replicate it. By repeating this sequence over and over again, until magically (or predictably) we notice our results have changed. So Season 15 we've organized as a review roadmap, where each episode explores one foundational brain system—and each phase builds on the one before it. Season 15 Roadmap: Phase 1 — Regulation & Safety Phase 2 — Neurochemistry & Motivation Phase 3 — Movement, Learning & Cognition Phase 4 — Perception, Emotion & Social Intelligence Phase 5 — Integration, Insight & Meaning PHASE 1: REGULATION & SAFETY Staples: Sleep + Stress Regulation Core Question: Is the nervous system safe enough to learn? Anchor Episodes Episode 384 — Baland Jalal How learning begins: curiosity, sleep, imagination, creativity Bruce Perry “What happened to you?” — trauma, rhythm, relational safety Sui Wong Autonomic balance, lifestyle medicine, brain resilience Rohan Dixit HRV, real-time self-regulation, nervous system literacy Last week we began with Phase One: Regulation and Safety as we revisited Dr. Baland Jalal's interview from June 2022. EP 384 — Dr. Baland Jalal[i] Dr. Baland Jalal This episode sits at the foundation of Season 15. Dr. Baland Jalal is a Harvard neuroscientist whose work explores how sleep, imagination, and curiosity shape the brain's capacity to learn and create. What stood out to me then — and even more now — is that learning doesn't begin with effort. It begins when the brain is rested, regulated, and free to explore possibility. This conversation reminds us that creativity isn't added later — it's built into the brain when conditions are right. It's here we remember that before learning can happen, before curiosity can emerge, before motivation or growth is possible— the brain must feel safe. And what better place to begin with safety and the brain, than with Dr. Bruce Perry, who we met October of 2021 on EP 168.[ii] EP 385 — Dr. Bruce Perry Dr. Bruce Perry (Episode 168 – October 2021) Dr. Bruce Perry, Senior Fellow of the Child Trauma Academy in Houston, Texas, and Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, joined the podcast to help us better understand how traumatic experiences shape the developing brain. At the time, I was deeply concerned about the generational impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In one of Dr. Perry's trainings, he referenced research conducted after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which showed that families exposed to prolonged stress experienced increased rates of substance abuse — not only in those directly affected, but in the next generation as well. As I began hearing reports of rising depression, anxiety, and substance use during the pandemic, I wondered: What could we do now to reduce the long-term neurological and emotional impact on our children, our schools, and future generations? Dr. Perry agreed to come on the show to share insights from his work and to discuss his book, co-authored with Oprah Winfrey: What Happened to You: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience and Healing.[iii] Dr. Bruce Perry challenges one of the most common questions we ask in education, leadership, and parenting. Instead of asking, “What's wrong with you?” he asks, “What happened to you?” In this conversation, we explored how early experiences shape the brain, how trauma disrupts regulation, and why healing begins with rhythm, safety, and connection. You can find a link to our full interview in the resource section in the show notes. This episode anchors Season 15 by reminding us: a dysregulated brain cannot learn — no matter how good the strategy. Let's go to our first clip with Dr. Bruce Perry, and look deeper at how we are all born with potential, but our experience builds the rest.

Andrea Samadi revisits a conversation with neuroscientist Dr. Baland Jalal about how curiosity launched his career and how transitional sleep states fuel creativity. The episode explores sleep paralysis research and the hypnagogic window—the moments before sleep and after waking when the brain makes unexpected connections. This week, Episode 384—based on our review of Episode 224, recorded in June 2022—we'll explore: ✔ Why learning, creativity, and curiosity depend on a regulated nervous system ✔ How sleep—especially REM—creates the conditions for insight and problem-solving ✔ What happens in the brain when focus shuts down and imagination turns on ✔ Why safety, rhythm, and rest are prerequisites for learning—not rewards after it ✔ How understanding sleep changes the way we approach performance, education, and growth Listeners learn practical tips for capturing insights at the edge of sleep, setting intentions before bed, and protecting morning silence to preserve creative flashes. The episode emphasizes that learning and creativity emerge best when the nervous system feels safe and regulated. This episode launches Season 15's Phase 1 focus on regulation and safety, framing sleep, rhythm, and emotional regulation as the essential foundation for motivation, learning, and sustained performance. Welcome back to Season 15 of the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast. I'm Andrea Samadi, and here we bridge the science behind social and emotional learning, emotional intelligence, and practical neuroscience—so you can create measurable improvements in well-being, achievement, productivity, and results. When we launched this podcast seven years ago, it was driven by a question I had never been taught to ask— not in school, not in business, and not in life: If results matter—and they matter now more than ever—how exactly are we using our brain to make these results happen? Most of us were taught what to do. Very few of us were taught how to think under pressure, how to regulate emotion, how to sustain motivation, or even how to produce consistent results without burning out. That question led me into a deep exploration of the mind–brain–results connection—and how neuroscience applies to everyday decisions, conversations, and performance. That's why this podcast exists. Each week, we bring you leading experts to break down complex science and translate it into practical strategies you can apply immediately. If you've been with us through Season 14, you may have felt something shift. That season wasn't about collecting ideas. It was about integrating these ideas into our daily life. Across conversations on neuroscience, social and emotional learning, sleep, stress, exercise, nutrition, and mindset frameworks—from voices like Bob Proctor, José Silva, Dr. Church, Dr. John Medina, and others—one thing became clear: These aren't separate tools. They're parts of one operating system. When the brain, body, and emotions are aligned, performance stops feeling forced—and starts to feel sustainable. Season 14 showed us what alignment looks like in real life. And now we move into Season 15 that is about understanding how that alignment is built—so we can build it ourselves, using predictable, science-backed principles. Because alignment doesn't happen all at once. It happens by using a sequence. By repeating this sequence over and over again, until magically (or predictably) we notice our results have changed. So this season, we're revisiting past conversations—not to repeat them—but to understand how they fit together, so we can replicate them ourselves. Because the brain doesn't develop skills in isolation. Learning doesn't happen in isolation. And neither does performance, resilience, or well-being. The brain operates as a set of interconnected systems. When one system is out of balance, everything else is affected. So Season 15 we've organized as a review roadmap, where each episode explores one foundational brain system—and each phase builds on the one before it. Season 15 Roadmap: Phase 1 — Regulation & Safety Phase 2 — Neurochemistry & Motivation Phase 3 — Movement, Learning & Cognition Phase 4 — Perception, Emotion & Social Intelligence Phase 5 — Integration, Insight & Meaning Today we begin with Phase One: Regulation and Safety. Because before learning can happen, before curiosity can emerge, before motivation or growth is possible— the brain must feel safe. That's where we are today as we embark on this journey together. I encourage us all to take notes, and apply what each phase is encouraging us to do. This is not just for you, the listener, I'm going right back myself, and revisiting each interview with a new lens. PHASE 1: REGULATION & SAFETY Staples: Sleep + Stress Regulation Core Question: Is the nervous system safe enough to learn? Anchor Episodes Episode 384 — Baland Jalal How learning begins: curiosity, sleep, imagination, creativity Bruce Perry “What happened to you?” — trauma, rhythm, relational safety Sui Wong Autonomic balance, lifestyle medicine, brain resilience Rohan Dixit HRV, real-time self-regulation, nervous system literacy EPISODE 384 — REVIEW OF EP 224 (JUNE 2022) Revisiting Our Interview with Baland Jalal Today's Episode 384 we go back to Episode 224[i], recorded in June 2022, featuring Danish neuroscientist Dr. Baland Jalal—a researcher, author, and one of the world's leading experts on sleep paralysis. Dr. Jalal is a neuroscientist affiliated with Harvard University's Department of Psychology and was previously a Visiting Researcher at Cambridge University Medical School, where he earned his PhD. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, NBC News, The Guardian, Forbes, Reuters, PBS (NOVA), and many others. He also writes for TIME Magazine, Scientific American, Big Think, and The Boston Globe. Since our original interview, I've watched Dr. Jalal's influence expand globally. Most recently, he appeared on Jordan B. Peterson's podcast[ii], discussing Dreams, Nightmares, and Neuroscience, and on Lewis Howes' School of Greatness[iii], where he explored Dreams, Lucid Dreaming, and the Neuroscience of Consciousness—an episode that truly stretched Lewis's thinking. What stood out to me most—then and now—was Dr. Jalal's transparency about learning. At the beginning of his interview with Lewis Howes, Dr. Jalal shared how a single experience—his desire to understand his own episodes of sleep paralysis more than 20 years ago—sparked a lifelong curiosity. That curiosity led him to his local library in Copenhagen and ultimately transformed his entire career path in ways he could never have imagined as a young man spending time on the streets. That honesty resonated deeply with me. Before Google, I remember sitting in a local library in Arizona around that same time, trying to understand the mysteries of the world—from the Great Pyramid of Giza to Stonehenge—reading everything I could get my hands on. Like Dr. Jalal, I was curious about many things I didn't understand, but my path didn't start with neuroscience or learning science, which came later for me. We all begin somewhere. Let's go to our first clip from Dr. Baland Jalal, where he shares how his love of learning truly began.

Neurobiologist Dr. John Medina is a developmental molecular biologist, and bestselling author of Brain Rules, where he translates cutting-edge neuroscience into practical insights about learning, memory, focus, and everyday life.

A.M. Edition for Jan. 13. President Trump is set to receive a briefing today on options for responding to anti-regime protests in Iran, but he's not waiting for that meeting to act. Journal reporter Gavin Bade explains the likely effect of fresh 25% U.S. tariffs on Tehran's trading partners. Plus, Minnesota sues the Trump administration over its immigration tactics. And Moody's Ratings' John Medina discusses the challenges and opportunities accompanying an expected $3 trillion in data-center spending over the next five years. Luke Vargas hosts.  Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this Season 14 review (Part 3) Andrea revisits key insights from Dr. Shane Creado on the critical link between sleep, concussions and performance. The episode explains how even mild or repeated head impacts and sleep deprivation damage the same brain regions that support learning, memory, decision-making and emotional regulation, and how one all‑nighter can reduce hippocampal learning capacity by around 40%. Practical takeaways include treating sleep as neurological recovery (7–9 hours), protecting the brain after head jolts, avoiding late alcohol and screens, and prioritizing consistent sleep routines to restore learning, resilience and long‑term brain health for athletes, students and professionals. Welcome back to SEASON 14 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, and seven years ago, launched this podcast with a question I had never truly asked myself before: (and that is) If productivity and results matter to us—and they do now more than ever—how exactly are we using our brain to make them happen? Most of us were never taught how to apply neuroscience to improve productivity, results, or well-being. About a decade ago, I became fascinated by the mind-brain-results connection—and how science can be applied to our everyday lives. That's why I've made it my mission to bring you the world's top experts—so together, we can explore the intersection of science and social-emotional learning. We'll break down complex ideas and turn them into practical strategies we can use every day for predictable, science-backed results. As we are nearing the end of Season 14 here, it has been about reflection as we have looked back and reviewed past interviews. Our goal has not been about nostalgia, or remembering these interviews, the goal has been about integrating what we have learned. Taking what we know, aligning it with how the brain actually functions, and applying it consistently enough to change outcomes. And if there's one thing this season has reinforced, it's this: Sustainable success isn't built on intensity or focus alone—it's built on alignment. As we move into what's next, (Season 15) the focus shifts from understanding this alignment to bringing this alignment into a tangible, physical form, or embodiment. Not more information—but better execution. After hundreds of conversations with neuroscientists, educators, peak performers, and thought leaders, one truth keeps resurfacing— lasting success is never about doing more. It's about alignment. Alignment between how the brain actually works, how emotions drive behavior, and how daily habits compound over time. Season 14 has been about stepping back—not to reminisce, but to integrate what we have learned into our current life. I knew the minute that I was sent a couple of video clips from our past episodes, that I had forgotten about, that while I thought I had implemented the ideas from our past guests, I had some work to go myself. For this reason, we spent Season 14 and will resume with Season 15 next January, reviewing past episodes, with the goal of noticing what we have now aligned, that's bringing us results in our daily life. Core Reflection When we started this podcast 7 years ago, the goal was simple: bridge neuroscience research with practical strategies people could actually use. What I didn't fully appreciate then—what only became clear through repetition, reflection, and real-life application—is that information alone doesn't create change. Understanding the brain doesn't matter if we ignore what to do with the information we release each week: improving our sleep reducing our stress practicing emotional regulation with consistency that actually changes who we are at the core: our identity Season 14 has been about connecting those dots. Listening again to conversations with voices like Dr. John Medina, Dawson Church, Bob Proctor, Dr. John Ratey, Friederike Fabritius, and so many others, one pattern became impossible to ignore: The brain thrives on simplicity, repetition, and finding emotional safety to implement these concepts—not intensity or a quick fix. We will take the time with each interview review to offer ways for all of us to implement the lessons learned, so that when we finish 2026, we will be able to look back, and see where our changes all began. This week, we move onto PART 3 of our review of EP 72[i] with Shane Creado, MD and his book Peak Sleep Performance for Athletes recorded back in July of 2020. ✔ In PART 1[ii], we covered: How strategic napping, morning brain habits, and even the Silva Method all work together to reset your brain, boost performance, and transform your health from the inside out. ✔ In PART 2[iii] we continued with our review, diving a bit deeper into sleep deprivation and its impact of performance (whether you are an athlete, or just someone looking to improve productivity). ✔ PART 3, we will go a bit deeper into the impacts of concussions and brain injuries on our sleep and performance. Let's go back to 2020 and revisit what Dr. Creado had to say about sleep in this last episode of this season.   VIDEO 1 – Click Here to Watch   In the first clip of this episode, with Dr. Creado, he dives into the connection with concussions and sleep. He says, “Most people who have had a concussion end up with sleep problems. It makes a lot of sense when you think about the brain and how it regulates sleep and wakeful cycles and then it gets jarred. But what people don't realize is that even a mild head injury can really damage your brain. Even if you're not officially diagnosed with a concussion, you don't have to lose consciousness to have a concussion. You don't even need to have any symptoms to have your brain injured in some way. And then the little injuries along the way add up over time. So the brain is as soft as butter and in a hard, bony skull. Anything that jars it, even whiplash can cause your brain to be injured. And it accumulates over time. What's interesting is that the same regions of the brain that are most damaged in head injuries are also damaged in sleep deprivation and also alcohol use. The frontal lobes, the temporal lobes and the parietal lobes at the top of the brain.”

Pernahkah Anda merasa aneh bahwa kita menggunakan otak setiap detik sepanjang hidup kita, tetapi kita tidak pernah benar-benar mendapatkan "buku manual" tentang cara mengoperasikannya? Di episode INIKOPER kali ini, kita akan membongkar rahasia di balik organ paling kompleks di kepala kita melalui bedah buku legendaris "Brain Rules" karya John Medina. Ini bukan sekadar teori sains yang membosankan, melainkan sebuah peta harta karun yang mengungkap bagaimana sebenarnya otak kita dirancang untuk bekerja—yang sering kali bertentangan 180 derajat dengan cara kita menjalani rutinitas di kantor maupun di sekolah saat ini. Bayangkan jika ternyata kunci untuk menjadi lebih cerdas dan kreatif bukanlah dengan duduk diam belajar, melainkan dengan berlari di atas treadmill. Atau bagaimana jika tidur siang ternyata bukan tanda kemalasan, melainkan strategi biologis mutlak untuk mendongkrak kinerja otak Anda di sore hari? Kita akan mengupas 12 prinsip mengejutkan yang didukung sains, mulai dari mengapa presentasi yang membosankan itu "haram" bagi memori jangka panjang kita, hingga fakta mencengangkan bahwa indra penglihatan ternyata mengalahkan semua indra lainnya dalam memproses informasi. Jadi, siapkan diri Anda untuk mengubah total cara pandang Anda terhadap kesehatan, produktivitas, dan pembelajaran. Jangan lewatkan episode ini, karena kita akan menemukan "cheat codes" kehidupan yang sebenarnya sudah tertanam dalam DNA kita sejak zaman purba. Pelajari cara mengoptimalkan otak Anda agar tidak sekadar bertahan hidup, tetapi benar-benar berkembang maksimal. Selamat datang di INIKOPER, dan mari kita selami dunia menakjubkan dari "Brain Rules"!

Dr John Medina w książce "Brain rules" pisze, że nasz mózg to organ zaprojektowany do przetrwania, nie do przetwarzania informacji. To niezwykle istotne spostrzeżenie w świecie przeładowanym informacjami. Jak radzić sobie z nadmiarem bodźców, które spływają do nas każdego dnia? W nowym odcinku Digitalks mówię szerzej o tym, jak ludzki mózg reaguje na zmiany technologiczne i radzę jak i w których obszarach wzmacniać własną inteligencję, gdy coraz więcej zadań przejmuje od nas AI. Zapraszamy do słuchania!

Depends who you ask. If it's Mikey C or Buck, well, the answers still vary. This week the boys break down 14 more titles returning to the CT, a new ep of EAST, and a couple real thinkers: 1. Is Chat GPT ruining surf culture? 2. Who has the right to protect a wave? It's a heady ep, one that might come up in your next (therapy) session. But in the end, it's only surfing. Don't think too hard.

Andrea Samadi revisits her 2019 conversation with neuroleadership pioneer Friederike Fabritius to explore practical neuroscience strategies for better productivity, well-being, and workplace happiness. On this episode, we'll learn: ✔ Why only 20% of people feel passionate about their jobs, and what we can do to change that. ✔ How to use neuroscience to reach peak performance or flow with your work. Neuroscientist and neuroleadership pioneer Friederike Fabritius shows us how three simple ingredients—FUN, FEAR, and FOCUS—can help us find flow and peak performance at work. We'll also explore why men and women often respond differently to stress, how to identify your unique neurosignature, and practical ways to design a workplace (and a life) that helps your brain thrive ✔ Learn the three key ingredients for flow—fun, fear (challenge), and focus—how the stress–performance curve affects apathy and burnout. ✔ Why tailoring roles to individual neurosignatures (dopamine, serotonin, testosterone, estrogen) can unlock peak performance. Welcome back to SEASON 14 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, and seven years ago, launched this podcast with a question I had never truly asked myself before: (and that is) If productivity and results matter to us—and they do now more than ever—how exactly are we using our brain to make them happen? Most of us were never taught how to apply neuroscience to improve productivity, results, or well-being. About a decade ago, I became fascinated by the mind-brain-results connection—and how science can be applied to our everyday lives. That's why I've made it my mission to bring you the world's top experts—so together, we can explore the intersection of science and social-emotional learning. We'll break down complex ideas and turn them into practical strategies we can use every day for predictable, science-backed results. For today's Episode 373, we continue our journey into our mind with the next interview review. Just a reminder-this review series began back with Episode 366[i], where in Part 3 we discovered an important lesson: if we don't like our results—or what we see on the outside—we need to shift our mindset and look within. True change always begins on the inside. We moved onto EP 369[ii] we learned how to Rewire our Brain with Dr. Dawson Church and his Bliss Brain Meditations, and then EP 370[iii] with John Medina's Brain Rules, where we reviewed how important this understanding of neuroscience is, especially connected to education, teaching and learning. Next we went deeper into our mind and brain with EP 371 and 72 where we with clinical professor of psychiatry from UCLA's School of Medicine, Dr. Daniel J Siegel and his Mindsight concept, which is the same idea as Theory of Mind, or seeing the mind in another. All of these episodes are helping us to further sharpen of minds and brains, and connect better with others,  for improved productivity and success in our work and personal lives. For today's EP 373, we go back to EP 27[iv], recorded October 2019, with pioneer in neuroleadership, neuroscientist, Friederike Fabritius[v], from Germany. On this episode, we covered her book, The Leading Brain: Neuroscience Hacks to Work Smarter, Better and Happier. Friederike returned again to the podcast, for EP 258[vi] recorded in November 2022 advancing our conversation with her next book, The Brain Friendly Workplace. Both of these interviews covered important tips that I think we should all take into consideration to be happier, and therefore, more productive at work. Going along with our theme-that if we don't like what's going on outside of ourselves, let's dive deeper into understanding how our brain and minds work. Which brings us back to FRIEDERIKE FABRITIUS, MS, is a neuroscientist and pioneer in the field of neuroleadership. She trained at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research and is an alumna of McKinsey & Company (helping organizations to create change).  Friederike delivers brain-based leadership programs to Fortune 500 executives and organizations around the globe to transform how they think, innovate, and navigate change. I'm always looking for productivity tips that we can all use, and it's clear that stress in our workplaces is at an all-time high, globally. We know that “2/3 of people report being stressed at work, to the point they can't sleep at night”[vii]  and in our first clip, Friederike reports that “only 20% of people feel passionate about their jobs” and that “40% of people never experience FLOW in their jobs.” I think there has to be another way to find balance here. VIDEO 1 Click Here to Watch Let's listen to Friederike's clip on: Why FUN, FEAR, and FOCUS Matter for Flow & Peak Performance  “Only 20% of people feel passionate about their jobs. That's insane. And 40% of people never experience FLOW in their jobs. And (she thinks)  it can be that simple. That everyone can be happy at their jobs. All you need are three simple things. (Friederike calls them ) FUN, FEAR, and FOCUS. And it has to do with a certain mix of neurochemicals in our brain. When we are having fun at work (not the after work party kind of fun) where you have fun after the work is done. I'm thinking of having fun related to the task at hand. And when we are having fun, our brains release a neurochemical called dopamine. Dopamine is a real brain booster. It makes you think faster. It helps you to do everything a bit speedier and better, and makes us more creative.”

In this episode review (Season 14, Ep. 372), Andrea revisits interviews with Dr. Dan Siegel to explore Mindsight—the focused attention that helps us see and reshape our own minds and connect with others. She breaks down how Mindsight underpins social and emotional intelligence and offers practical ways to develop it, including theory-of-mind practice, the Wheel of Awareness, and daily narrative reading. This week, in our review of EP 28 with Daniel J. Siegel, MD  and his book Mindsight, we learned: ✔ A deeper definition of Mindsight or seeing the mind in another Mindsight, a term coined by Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, is the ability to perceive the mind within ourselves and others. It goes beyond simply observing behavior; it's about sensing thoughts, feelings, intentions, and perspectives that aren't immediately visible. This skill allows us to look beneath the surface of words and actions, to “see” the mind behind them, which leads to deeper empathy, better relationships, and stronger social intelligence. ✔ What is Theory of Mind and how can this skill help us to connect and understand others better Theory of Mind (ToM) is closely related to Mindsight—it refers to our ability to attribute mental states (beliefs, desires, knowledge, intentions) to ourselves and to others. In simple terms, it's recognizing that other people have thoughts and feelings that may be different from our own. This skill is essential for meaningful communication, conflict resolution, and collaboration, because it helps us predict how someone might react, understand why they feel a certain way, and respond with compassion rather than judgment. ✔ What is Theory of Mind and how can this skill help us to connect and understand others better Theory of Mind (ToM) is closely related to Mindsight—it refers to our ability to attribute mental states (beliefs, desires, knowledge, intentions) to ourselves and to others. In simple terms, it's recognizing that other people have thoughts and feelings that may be different from our own. This skill is essential for meaningful communication, conflict resolution, and collaboration, because it helps us predict how someone might react, understand why they feel a certain way, and respond with compassion rather than judgment. ✔ Practical tips to improve our Mindsight or Theory of Mind abilities Pause and Reflect – Before reacting, ask yourself: What might this person be thinking or feeling right now? Name Emotions – Practice labeling your own emotions and noticing them in others (“I feel frustrated” → “They might be anxious”). Perspective-Taking Exercises – Put yourself in someone else's shoes: If I were in their position, what would I be experiencing? Read Fiction Regularly – Choose stories with complex characters and notice how your mind tracks their thoughts and motives. Practice Curiosity in Conversations – Instead of assuming, ask open-ended questions to better understand another's perspective. Mindfulness Training – Strengthen your awareness of your inner world, which improves your ability to tune into the inner world of others. The episode also emphasizes the importance of face-to-face relationships for learning and development, contrasts relational learning with screen-based approaches, and provides actionable tips educators and listeners can use to strengthen empathy, self-awareness, and relational skills. Welcome back to SEASON 14 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, and seven years ago, launched this podcast with a question I had never truly asked myself before: (and that is) If productivity and results matter to us—and they do now more than ever—how exactly are we using our brain to make them happen? Most of us were never taught how to apply neuroscience to improve productivity, results, or well-being. About a decade ago, I became fascinated by the mind-brain-results connection—and how science can be applied to our everyday lives. That's why I've made it my mission to bring you the world's top experts—so together, we can explore the intersection of science and social-emotional learning. We'll break down complex ideas and turn them into practical strategies we can use every day for predictable, science-backed results. Which brings up to today's episode #372, where we will take Dr. Dan Siegel's concept of Mindsight, to the next level. On our last EP 371 with Dan Siegel, PART 1 of our review of a very early interview EP 28[i], recorded in November 2019, we covered the importance of: Understanding and Applying Mindsight which is “the way we focus our attention on the internal world. It's how we bring consciousness to our own thoughts and feelings, and how we attune to the inner world of someone else. Mindsight gives us insight into ourselves, and empathy for others.” Mindsight is a concept Dr. Siegel felt to be critical for us to develop noting this skill to be “the basis for social and emotional development.” He notes, that it's a teachable set of skills that we can teach in school, and once mastered is a truly transformational tool.  In his book, Mindsight he explains this concept further: “Mindsight is a kind of focused attention that allows us to see the internal workings of our own minds. (and we've been talking about how important it is to go within, for true change in our lives to occur). It helps us to be aware of our mental processes without being swept away by them, (which) enables us to get ourselves off the autopilot of ingrained behaviors and habitual responses, and moves us beyond the reactive emotional loops we all have a tendency to get trapped in. It lets us “name and tame” the emotions we are experiencing, rather than being overwhelmed by them. Consider the difference between saying “I am sad” and “I feel sad.” Similar as those two statements may seem, there is actually a profound difference between them. “I am sad” is a kind of self-definition, and a very limiting one. “I feel sad” suggests the ability to recognize and acknowledge a feeling, without being consumed by it. The focusing skills that are part of mindsight make it possible to see what is inside, to accept it, and in the accepting to let it go, and, finally, to transform it into a NEW reality. You can also think of mindsight as a very special lens that gives us the capacity to perceive the mind with greater clarity than ever before. This lens is something that virtually everyone can develop, and once we have it we can dive deeply into the mental sea inside, exploring our own inner lives and those of others. A uniquely human ability, mindsight allows us to examine closely, in detail and in depth, the processes by which we think, feel, and behave. And it allows us to reshape and redirect our inner experiences so that we have more freedom of choice in our everyday actions, (giving us) more power to create the future, to become the author of our own story. Another way to put it is that mindsight is the basic skill that underlies everything we mean when we speak of having social and emotional intelligence.” (Dr. Daniel J Siegel, Mindsight, Location 105, Kindle Edition). VIDEO 1 Click Here to Watch

In this episode Andrea revisits her 2019 conversation with Dr. Daniel J. Siegel to explore Mindsight — his science-based approach to understanding the mind, integrating the brain, and cultivating empathy. Dr. Siegel explains the difference between mind and brain, the benefits of the Wheel of Awareness meditation, and how Mindsight can change brain structure and improve health. Watch full interview here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7pnea2Vbzc Practical tips include daily Mindsight practice, naming emotions to build self-awareness, and simple emotional check-ins to make learning and relationships more meaningful. This week, in our review of EP 28 with Daniel J. Siegel, MD  and his book Mindsight, we learned: ✔ The Difference Between the Mind and the Brain. ✔  The Benefits of The Wheel of Awareness Meditation. ✔ How to Understand and Apply Mindsight that gives us insight into ourselves, and empathy for others. ✔ How Mindsight can change brain structure and improve health. ✔ In order to make teaching and learning more meaningful, what we are teaching must have an element of emotion. Welcome back to SEASON 14 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, and seven years ago, launched this podcast with a question I had never truly asked myself before: (and that is) If productivity and results matter to us—and they do now more than ever—how exactly are we using our brain to make them happen? Most of us were never taught how to apply neuroscience to improve productivity, results, or well-being. About a decade ago, I became fascinated by the mind-brain-results connection—and how science can be applied to our everyday lives. That's why I've made it my mission to bring you the world's top experts—so together, we can explore the intersection of science and social-emotional learning. We'll break down complex ideas and turn them into practical strategies we can use every day for predictable, science-backed results. Episode 371: For today's Episode 371, we continue our journey into the mind with the next interview review. Just a reminder-this review series began back with Episode 366[i], where in Part 3 we discovered an important lesson: if we don't like our results—or what we see on the outside—we need to shift our mindset and look within. True change always begins on the inside.   EP 369[ii] we learned how to Rewire our Brain with Dr. Dawson Church and his Bliss Brain Meditations, and then last week, EP 370[iii] with John Medina's Brain Rules, we reviewed how important this understanding of neuroscience is, especially connected to education, teaching and learning. Which brings us to today's review, EP 371, where we revisit a very early episode with clinical professor of psychiatry from UCLA's School of Medicine, Dr. Daniel J Siegel. He's from EP 28[iv], that was recorded back in November of 2019. As we take this journey deeper into the mind, Dr. Dan Siegel offers the perfect place to begin, with his ability to bridge cutting-edge neuroscience and practical wisdom. Dr. Dan Siegel, is well known for his books, trainings and courses that bridge cutting edge neuroscience with mindfulness and therapy. A reminder of his background-he's a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and executive director of the Mindsight Institute[v] where you can find his courses, workshops, books and tools to help anyone understand and apply what can sometimes be complicated scientific concepts and make them easy to understand and applicable to our daily lives. At the end of the interview, I let Dr. Siegel know that I had been practicing his Wheel of Awareness Meditation, and ended up reviewing what I learned on EP 60[vi] where we explored the Science Behind a Meditation Practice. You can watch the whole interview by clicking on the link in the resource section in the show notes, and learn all about Dr. Siegel's work that encompasses schools, with resiliency, brain science and helping our next generation to understand how to apply these important strategies whether it's in our classrooms, or workplaces of the future. Today we will continue to explore within, sharpen our mindset, and learn about what Dr. Siegel calls Mindsight. VIDEO 1 Click Here to Watch In Clip 1, Dr. Siegel unpacks the concept of Mindsight and helps clarify the difference between the mind and the brain, when I asked him to explain this distinction. I knew this wasn't an easy question—as I had already listened to him answer it many times over the years, and still wasn't sure I fully grasped it. In fact, I even tried to tackle it myself back in Episode 23[vii], Understanding Your Brain and Mind for Increased Results. But revisiting this topic now, I can see this concept requires a much deeper reflection. So, I asked Dr. Siegel if we could look at his definition of the mind—one he has been studying for years and that many in his scientific and educational circles agree on. He describes the mind as “an embodied and relational process—since it's in the body and it's in our relationships with one another—that regulates the flow of energy and information.” I wanted to hear him expand on this again, especially around why relationships are so critical for our health, our well-being, and for creating what he calls an integrated brain—which he equates with a healthy brain. His answer helped me to understand the importance of implementing Mindsight into our daily life. He said: “The word mind doesn't actually have a formal definition—not in education, psychotherapy, or even in fields like psychology that study it directly. But if we look closely, the mind includes your subjective experience—that inner feeling of being alive. It also includes consciousness—the ability to know that you're having that subjective experience. And beyond that, there's information processing—which doesn't always require consciousness and is essentially what school focuses on: learning to process information. When you understand the mind as a self-organizing process—a complex system that regulates its own becoming—you begin to see the power of teaching about the mind itself. This is what we call Mindsight. And if we could bring this understanding into education, the outcomes for students would be profoundly different.” Key Tip 1 with Dr. Dan Siegel Understanding and Applying Mindsight which is “the way we focus our attention on the internal world. It's how we bring consciousness to our own thoughts and feelings, and then next,  how we attune to the inner world of someone else. Mindsight gives us insight into ourselves, and empathy for others.”

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike Spivey hosts Trey Cox, co-chair of Gibson Dunn's global litigation practice group, on his legal career (4:18, 31:27), law school selection (9:20), hiring philosophies (16:42), and advice for aspiring law students and lawyers.Trey and Mike both recommend the book Brain Rules by John Medina, which you can learn more about here.You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on ⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠. You can read a full transcript of this episode (with timestamps) here.

Episode 370 reviews Dr. John Medina's insights from Brain Rules and explores how neuroscience and social-emotional learning combine to improve teaching, learning, and well-being. Key takeaways: teachers need basic neuroscience to support learning; the emotional stability of the home strongly shapes a child's resilience and confidence; and children build resilience when adults co-regulate and model healthy emotion management during high-emotion moments. This short review highlights practical steps for educators, parents, and leaders to apply brain-based strategies and SEL to boost student outcomes and lifelong skills. EP 370 covers a review of Dr. John Medina's Brain Rules, from EP 42 (February 2020)  We learned: ✔ If education is about the brain, then teachers need to understand how the brain learns best. ✔ A child's resilience and confidence are deeply tied to the emotional climate of the home. ✔  Children build resilience not in calm moments, but in how parents (or caregivers) respond when emotions run high. Welcome back to SEASON 14 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, and seven years ago, launched this podcast with a question I had never truly asked myself before: (and that is) If productivity and results matter to us—and they do now more than ever—how exactly are we using our brain to make them happen? Most of us were never taught how to apply neuroscience to improve productivity, results, or well-being. About a decade ago, I became fascinated by the mind-brain-results connection—and how science can be applied to our everyday lives. That's why I've made it my mission to bring you the world's top experts—so together, we can explore the intersection of science and social-emotional learning. We'll break down complex ideas and turn them into practical strategies we can use every day for predictable, science-backed results. Episode 370: Brain Rules and the Future of Learning For today's Episode 370[i], we continue our journey into the mind with our next interview review—Dr. John Medina, author of the well-known book Brain Rules. We first featured Dr. Medina in EP 42, when we explored “Implementing Brain Rules in Schools and Workplaces of the Future.” To remind you where we began with our interview review series: We opened with EP 366[ii], diving into speaker Bob Proctor's timeless principles. Bob was the very first person—over 25 years ago—who challenged me with the question, “What do you really want to do with your life?” At the time, I didn't have a clear answer. It's taken well over 25 years now for this clarity to evolve. Eventually, I realized what mattered most to me: and that was bringing social and emotional learning (SEL) skills into schools. I had already seen how these skills—once called “soft skills”—transformed the lives of 12 teenagers I worked with in the motivational speaking industry in the late 1990s. Later, I watched as SEL spread into schools across states and countries, until the research became undeniable. A 2011 meta-analysis of 213 studies confirmed what I had seen firsthand a decade before this study was released: students who participated in SEL programs showed an 11-percentile-point increase in academic performance[iii] compared to control groups. That's a significant improvement, demonstrating just how powerful SEL can be. Long before this research, I simply knew these skills could shape the future of the next generation. This podcast itself was built around the six core SEL competencies—each explored in its own dedicated episode that you can find in our resource section in the show notes. Then came the next step: adding the lens of neuroscience. I realized that everything we were studying in SEL connected back to how the brain works. My deep dive into what I called “Neuroscience 101” began when an educator handed me a stack of books that opened my eyes to the importance of brain science in education. From those early hand-drawn sketches grew the framework that still guides this podcast today—bridging SEL and neuroscience to make learning both practical and powerful.   Which brings us to today's review: Episode 370, where we revisit Dr. John Medina. At the heart of this conversation is the very question that launched my journey years ago: What happens when we connect social and emotional learning with neuroscience? How can understanding the brain not only improve results and productivity, but also better equip our next generation of students in the classroom? It was John Medina's Brain Rules that first landed on my bookshelf back in 2009. And to be honest—it just sat there for a while. I wasn't ready yet. As Dr. Medina himself has said, this kind of learning can't be forced. You need a strong why to really dive into the mind–brain connection. For me, that why came later, when I realized how deeply understanding the brain could impact learning, teaching, and even life itself. If you're following along with this podcast, I imagine you've had a similar moment—when the connection between the brain and practical neuroscience suddenly made sense and became something worth pursuing. I'm always curious about what that moment looks like for others—what it is that makes this topic click. For me, it became clear during my very first presentation on this subject in November 2017, at a conference for the York Region School District in Toronto. The topic I was in charge of presenting was Stress, Learning, and the Brain, and the room was so full it was standing room only. This was after just three years of studying the topic myself, and when I first opened up David Souza's How the Brain Learns Series, I honestly thought this topic was over my head, and too difficult for me to understand, let alone having me teach it to others. But once there is a strong why, the way will be shown. And that day, when I saw how many people showed up to learn the topic, I knew this was the field I wanted to dedicate the rest of my life to—continuing to learn, and helping others understand and apply to their lives. VIDEO 1 Click Here to Watch Now that you know where this mind-brain connection began for me, I hope you can gain clarity with why it's so important to you. Important enough that you are tuning into this podcast to learn more. Wouldn't you know it—understanding this WHY with the brain-mind connection to thrive at home, work and school and with sport is exactly what Dr. John Medina said to me during our interview back in February 2020. If you click the link in the show notes, you can watch VIDEO 1, where he explains: “I believe that the cognitive neurosciences should be at the table of education training. Before you get a Bachelor Degree in Education, you have to have a fair degree of neuroscience. And it's a very specific slice—it's the kind of neuroscience that says: this is what we know about how the brain learns. Because teachers are in charge of that. It blows me away sometimes—I look at the Colleges of Education: if you're in the Geology Department, you study rocks. If you go to Medical School, you study humans. You could argue that the world of education is all about studying the brain. Where are the courses that say—‘This is how memory works. This is how we get someone to pay attention. This is what visual processing looks like.'” Dr. Medina is 100% right. When I went through teacher training at The University of Toronto, courses like this weren't offered. Fast forward to today, and my daily work now focuses on supporting educators with the Science of Reading—a body of research that, much like SEL, took decades to gain traction but is finally reshaping classrooms and teacher training, impacting how we teach our next generation of students to read. Of course, this knowledge can't just be forced on us. It's not easy material—it requires effort to learn. But if you're listening to this podcast each week, it's because you're curious. You're willing to dig into concepts that, until recently, were reserved for medical students. That's how Dr. Douglas Fisher gained his insights into how the brain learns best. As he told me in EP 161[iv], How Learning Works: Translating the Science of Learning into Strategies for Maximum Learning in Your Classroom, he actually sat in classes with medical students to develop a deeper understanding of brain-based learning—knowledge we were never given in traditional teacher training. Key Point from Video Clip 1 from John Medina

Pernahkah Anda merasa sulit fokus, mudah lupa, atau terjebak dalam kebiasaan yang tidak produktif? Otak kita adalah organ yang luar biasa kompleks, namun seringkali kita tidak memahami cara kerjanya yang optimal. Di episode terbaru INIKOPER, kami akan membawa Anda menyelami "Brain Rules" karya John Medina, seorang ahli biologi molekuler yang telah mengungkap 12 prinsip ilmiah untuk mengoptimalkan kinerja otak Anda di tempat kerja, di rumah, dan di sekolah. Bersiaplah untuk mengubah cara Anda berpikir tentang belajar, mengingat, dan berkembang! Bayangkan jika Anda bisa meningkatkan daya ingat hanya dengan berolahraga , atau memahami mengapamultitasking justru merusak produktivitas Anda. Kami akan membahas bagaimana tidur yang berkualitas adalah kunci untuk berpikir jernih , dan mengapa melibatkan lebih banyak indra saat belajar dapat meningkatkan retensi informasi secara dramatis. Ini bukan sekadar teori, melainkan panduan praktis yang didukung oleh penelitian ilmiah yang ketat.       Jangan lewatkan episode ini untuk membuka potensi penuh otak Anda! INIKOPER akan membongkar mitos-mitos tentang otak dan memberikan strategi yang terbukti secara ilmiah untuk meningkatkan kinerja kognitif Anda. Dengarkan sekarang dan mulailah perjalanan Anda menuju pikiran yang lebih tajam, lebih bahagia, dan lebih produktif!

Today's wisdom comes from Brain Rules by Dr. John Medina.   If you're loving Heroic Wisdom Daily, be sure to subscribe to the emails at heroic.us/wisdom-daily.   And… Imagine unlocking access to the distilled wisdom form 700+ of the greatest books ever written.   That's what Heroic Premium offers: Unlimited access to every Philosopher's Note. Daily inspiration and actionable tools to optimize your energy, work, and love. Personalized coaching features to help you stay consistent and focused   Upgrade to Heroic Premium →   Know someone who'd love this? Share Heroic Wisdom Daily with them, and let's grow together in 2025!   Share Heroic Wisdom Daily →

I've been super excited for this episode of the podcast for a while! This week, I speak with John Medina, author of one of my favorite books on the brain—Brain Rules! John and I talk about brain science generally and also dive into some specific aspects that are particularly important to the work of any data communicator: the importance of capturing and maintaining audience attention during presentations, emotional engagement as a way to counteract boredom and stress, and how stories can be a powerful tool for enhancing audience connection and retention. You'll learn how the brain prioritizes meaning over details, driven by survival instincts, and how storytelling effectively taps into these instincts by involving emotional elements.Keywords: data, data visualization, BrainRules, AudienceAttention, PresentationSkills, 10MinuteRule, EmotionalEngagement, StorytellingPower, NarrativeConnection, SurvivalInstincts, MikeGonzagaResearch, EpisodicMemory, DataVisualization, ScientificPresentations, RecallImprovement, SkepticismInScience, TheoryOfMind, MultitaskingMyth, LearningEfficiency, TechnologyDistractions, VisualMemory, AugmentedRealityEducation, VirtualRealityEducation, MentalHealthAwareness, ClimateChangeImpact, EconomicStress, PsychiatricDisorders, StressManagementSubscribe to the PolicyViz Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.Become a patron of the PolicyViz Podcast for as little as a buck a monthCheck out John's amazing book, Brain Rules, and visit the Brain Rules website for more great resources!Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, Substack, Twitter, Website, YouTubeEmail: jon@policyviz.com

John continues his conversation with Dr. Amber Selking about the power of changing your mindset, how it can rewire your brain and help you think in more positive ways. Dr. Selking also discusses her book, Winning the Mental Game. In Part 1, Dr. Selking shared her journey from being a college athlete to finding her calling in helping people improve their mindsets and leadership. She also discussed how the brain works and the importance of managing our thoughts to improve performance and wellbeing. Listen to this episode to learn more: [00:00] - Recap of Part 1 [01:32] - Being a professional speaker and Dr. Selking's diverse client base [03:19] - The science of gratitude and how it rewires our brains [04:37] - Dr. Selking's plans on writing a book about organizational high performance [07:00] - John's upcoming book, The F6 Secrets of Relationships [10:18] - Building Championship Mindsets podcast [12:00] - Best way to reach out to Dr. Selking [12:43] - Children's books written by Dr. Selking [15:12] - How Dr. Selking builds and maintains her significant relationships [17:35] - Finding ways to connect with her spouse amid a busy schedule [20:55] - Encouragement for men to put effort into dating [22:53] - Impact of Dr. Selking's faith in her business [24:42] - Dr. Selking's definition of success [25:21] - Traits of a great leader [27:21] - How Dr. Selking invests in her personal growth [32:03] - Book recommendations [34:30] - Wrap-up NOTABLE QUOTES: “You can literally rewire your brain … when you start thinking about what you're grateful for, it starts to rewire your brain.” “Winning is important, and we can do that in ways that are aligned with who we've been created to be in the world.” “Success is showing up as the person you intend to be and accomplishing what you intend to accomplish at the moment.” “Clear vision, clear results. Fuzzy vision, fuzzy results.” “Your excellence will permit you to stand before kings.” “The most important thing in a relationship is selection … I'm grateful we both waited for each other and found each other.” BOOKS MENTIONED: The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How by Daniel Coyle (https://a.co/d/bPBstVK) Alive at Work: The Neuroscience of Helping Your People Love What They Do by Daniel M. Cable (https://a.co/d/69lO6YK) Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect by Matthew D. Lieberman (https://a.co/d/7a9lrpk) In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day: How to Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars by Mark Batterson (https://a.co/d/hrPzTwq) Wide Awake: The Future Is Waiting Within You by Erwin Raphael McManus (https://a.co/d/3hKY0Dn) The Last Arrow: Save Nothing for the Next Life by Erwin Raphael McManus (https://a.co/d/8n8LHES) Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina (https://a.co/d/1G2Sl1c) USEFUL RESOURCES: https://selkingperformance.com/  https://www.linkedin.com/in/amberlattner/  https://www.instagram.com/drselking/  https://x.com/ChampMindsets  https://x.com/DrSelking  https://www.facebook.com/selkingperformancegroup/  https://www.facebook.com/alattner  "Winning the Mental Game: The Playbook for Building Championship Mindsets" (https://a.co/d/7dpSpIA) "A Dream Come True: The Buzz on Greatness (Zip the Bee Book 1)" (https://a.co/d/eoKIwQw) "Winner's Circle (Zip the Bee Book 2)" (https://a.co/d/ep26gs1)  CONNECT WITH JOHN Website - https://thejohnhulen.com  Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/johnhulen  Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/johnhulen  Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/johnhulen   LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnhulen     YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLX_NchE8lisC4NL2GciIWA  EPISODE CREDITS Intro and Outro music provided by Jeff Scheetz - https://jeffscheetz.com/ 

We forecast growing demand for cloud services, the adoption of new AI products and cryptocurrencies will see investment in new data center capacity exceed $2 trillion globally over the next five years. But real customer demand and continued technological improvements could limit the amount of data center capacity that is actually needed over the longer term. In this episode, John Medina explains what risks this uncertainty poses to investors in the corporate credit, leveraged loan, bank, CMBS, ABS, private credit and project finance markets.Speaker: John Medina, Senior Vice President at Moody's RatingsHost: Colin Ellis, MD-Global Credit Strategist at Moody's RatingsRelated Research:Data Centers – Global: Rapid capacity growth to serve surging computing demand poses long-term risks 

Matt Ragland focuses on the intersection of productivity and the creator economy. He started an online community for creative Dads called Digital Dads. Matt was the 5th employee at ConvertKit, ran Creator Success at Podia, and has built an audience of over 100,000 fans across his newsletter, YouTube channel, and social media channels. He lives in Nashville with his wife of 17 years and 3 (almost 4) kids. In our conversation today we discussed: Matt's childhood as the son of a pastor The importance of community - and building community for fathers Homeschooling Outward expressions of love Taking your kids on adventures Helping your kids have a vision greater than themselves Pursuing self-employment as a means to better balance work, health and family — Where to find Matt Ragland - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattragland/ - Twitter / X: https://twitter.com/mattragland - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MattRagland/videos   Where to find Adam Fishman - Newsletter: https://startupdadpod.substack.com/ - Newsletter: https://www.fishmanafnewsletter.com - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamjfishman/ - Twitter / X: https://twitter.com/fishmanaf - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/startupdadpod/ — In this episode, we cover: [00:30] Intro [1:52] Welcome [2:15] Matt's professional background [8:06] Matt's childhood and parents [13:10] His partner and kids [16:34] Homeschooling [21:46] Outward expressions of love [25:34] The importance of community and Digital Dads [32:05] Taking kids on adventures [37:05] Most surprising thing as a dad [39:50] Demonstrating good habits [47:21] Vision greater than yourself [52:07] What don't you and your wife align on? [55:33] Mistakes made as a father [59:50] Where to follow along with Matt's journey [1:00:57] Rapid fire [1:09:18] Thank you — Show references: Matt's Website - https://mattragland.com/ Buffer - https://buffer.com/ Backcountry - https://www.backcountry.com/ APPSumo - https://appsumo.com/ ConvertKit - https://convertkit.com/ Nashville, TN - https://www.visitmusiccity.com/ Podia  - https://www.podia.com/ Jiu jitsu - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jujutsu Nose Frida - https://frida.com/ Nintendo switch - https://www.nintendo.com/us/switch/ Lululemon (joggers or ABC pants) - https://shop.lululemon.com/ 10,000 (shirts) - https://www.tenthousand.cc/ Smart wool (socks) - https://www.smartwool.com/ Duer (jeans) - https://shopduer.com/ Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five by John Medina - https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Rules-Baby-Updated-Expanded/dp/0983263388 Outdoor Kids in an Inside World: Getting Your Family Out of the House and Radically Engaged with Nature by Steven Rinella - https://www.amazon.com/Outdoor-Kids-Inside-World-Radically/dp/0593129660 Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans by Michaeleen Doucleff - https://www.amazon.com/Hunt-Gather-Parent-Ancient-Cultures/dp/198214968X The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children by Alison Gopnik - https://www.amazon.com/Gardener-Carpenter-Development-Relationship-Children/dp/1250132258 Inside Out - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2096673/ — Production support for Startup Dad is provided by Tommy Harron at http://www.armaziproductions.com/ Episode art designed by Matt Sutherland at https://www.mspnw.com/  

Chapter 1 What's Brain Rules Book by John Medina"Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School" is a book written by John Medina, a molecular biologist and researcher. In this book, Medina explores how our brains function and offers practical advice on how to optimize our work, home, and school environments to better support our brain's natural processes. The book covers various topics including memory, attention, sleep, stress, multitasking, and more. Each chapter presents a different "rule" based on scientific research and provides examples and strategies for applying these principles in daily life. Overall, the book aims to help readers understand how their brains work and how to leverage this knowledge to enhance their personal and professional lives.Chapter 2 Is Brain Rules Book A Good BookOpinions on books can vary, so it is ultimately up to the individual to determine if they find "Brain Rules" by John Medina to be a good book or not. However, "Brain Rules" is generally well-regarded by both readers and experts in the field. The book explores twelve principles for understanding how the brain works and provides practical insights on how to apply this knowledge in various aspects of life, such as education, work, and everyday activities. Many readers appreciate the combination of scientific research and real-world examples that Medina presents, finding it both informative and engaging. Ultimately, whether or not you consider it a good book will depend on your interests and what you are looking to gain from reading it.Chapter 3 Brain Rules Book by John Medina Summary"Brain Rules" is a book written by John Medina that explores the fascinating relationship between our brains and how we learn and function in the world. Medina, a molecular biologist, uses his scientific background to dissect various aspects of the brain and presents his findings in an engaging and accessible manner.The book is divided into twelve chapters, with each chapter focusing on a different "brain rule" that Medina believes is crucial for optimizing our cognitive performance. These rules are based on scientific research from various fields such as neuroscience, psychology, and genetics. Some of the key brain rules explored in the book include:1. Exercise: Medina explains how physical activity can significantly enhance brain function, memory, and creativity.2. Sleep: He emphasizes the importance of getting sufficient sleep to support cognitive processes such as memory consolidation and problem-solving.3. Stress: Medina discusses the negative impact of chronic stress on brain health and provides strategies for managing stress effectively.4. Attention: He examines how divided attention and multitasking can hinder learning and productivity, and suggests methods for improving focus.5. Memory: Medina delves into the complexities of memory formation and retrieval, offering techniques for enhancing memory and learning retention.6. Sensory integration: He explores the influence of sensory input (visual, auditory, etc.) on learning and suggests strategies for optimizing sensory integration.7. Vision: Medina argues that the human brain is primarily a visual organ and explains how visual information is processed and retained more effectively.8. Gender: He examines the neurological and societal factors that contribute to gender differences in cognition and behavior.9. Development: Medina analyzes the impact of various environmental factors, such as nutrition and early experiences, on the development of the brain.10. Exploration: He...

“A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild: but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind. Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing flowers and fruits which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful and pure thoughts. By pursuing this process, a man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life.” (James Allen, As a Man Thinketh, 1902).[i] On today's episode #315 and PART 2 of our REVIEW of Wallace D. Wattles The Science of Getting Rich, we will cover: ✔ REVIEW PART 1: Prosperity Thinking vs Poverty Thinking. ✔ Why are our thoughts so important for our results? ✔ Why are Chapters 4/14/7 important chapters for unlocking the "secrets" for wealth and abundance? ✔ Why must we THINK and ACT in a Certain Way to achieve certain results in our life? ✔ A look at 2 types of thinking with famous examples.  ✔ 3 STEPS for changing our Money Mindset. Which brings us to chapter 4 of Wallace D. Wattles' The Science of Getting Rich, published in 1910. “A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.” Mahatma Ghandi (an Indian lawyer who inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world). Bringing us to PART 2 of our Deep Dive into Wallace D. Wattles' The Science of Getting Rich. Welcome back to The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we connect the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning (that's finally being taught in our schools today) and emotional intelligence training (used in our modern workplaces) 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 uncover the most current research that would back up how the brain. On today's episode #315 we launch into a Deep Dive of Wallace D. Wattles The Science of Getting Rich starting with Chapters 4/14/7.  If you look at the image in the show notes, you will see a TABBED and very well-read Science of Getting Rich book. This was the book I sent to Paranormal Researcher, Ryan O'Neill from Scotland, UK over 10 years ago, instructing him to read this book, starting with Chapters 4/14/7[ii] for 90 days. He sent me this image of his book, all these years later, well-read and marked up, and his results (that we cover on our interview with Ryan on EP #203[iii]) are a byproduct of him doing things in this certain way, beginning with Chapter 4, The First Principle in the Science of Getting Rich that we will cover today. Next, we'll move onto chapter 14 on The Impression of Increase that is by far my favorite chapter in this book.  I love watching this principle in action in others, and then learning to practice this myself has been something that I think has given me some depth with my character over the years. We'll move back to Chapter 7 on Gratitude, that ties all these chapters together, before reviewing the other chapters of this book, and coming up with some action steps for implementing these timeless principles in our own lives. If you want a guide, I'll link a YouTube audio version of these SPECIAL chapters 4/14/7) in the show notes for you and if you look in the comment section, someone knew the power of these chapters in this order revealing their awareness when they wrote “thanks for the combination to the safe.” It's these three chapters that Bob Proctor would have EVERYONE study, in this order, and we would even form mastermind groups AFTER each seminar had concluded to ensure we read the book this way.   I'm still in contact with the two others I was assigned to meet with (back in 1999) and we would meet once a week, for 90 days, and read the chapters in this order. Chapters 4, 14 and 7. This practice bound us together for life. Whoever commented that this was “the combination to the safe” got it right. With deep understanding, we read these chapters, word for word, together, once a week, and then discussed how we were implementing the ideas into our life, or not. I remember I was in my late 20s, and I would read this book before the sun had come up, with the others in my group, (over the telephone) and this practice didn't just set me up for that year, but it set me up to Think and Act in this Certain Way, for the rest of my life. When I cover a book on the podcast, taking a Deep Dive like this, I'm doing so because I watched the contents of these book we cover change my own results, and hundreds of others around me, over the years. If you look at the Table of Contents FIRST. There are 17 simple and short chapters in this book that are all about breaking through the mental barriers of success, and that moving from the competitive mind, to the creative mind is integral to our success. How do we do this? We spent the whole Introduction (PART 1) explaining that we must first learn the principles for ourselves, and THEN we extend our hand out to help others. This is the whole idea of this book. It's a simple formula for success, that begins when we “think and act in this certain way.” What is that certain way? This is what we will be diving into with our study of each chapter. Chapter 4: The First Principle in the Science of Getting Rich. Remember this book is all about the syllabus, and how important our thinking is (because there is this thinking stuff from which all things are made…that's everywhere and a thought in this substance produces the thing that is imaged by the thought.” This chapter is about the importance of how we think. If we are going to “think and act” in a certain way, at the most fundamental level, it matters how and what we think about.    This chapter opens up with line 1 saying “thought is the only power that can produce tangible riches from the formless substance.”  We opened up this episode with James Allen's take on this, where he said by thinking in this certain way, we become “the master-gardener of our soul, the director of our life.” Therefore, THE FIRST PRINCIPLE in The Science of Getting Rich is that we must “think” in this certain way. What is this certain way, you ask? I've been thinking about this since I first heard this idea in 1999. I wanted to say “oh yeah, I think in this certain way” and let the high paying positions come to me! But this isn't how it happened for me. It seemed like this principle took me the longest time to actually implement. Knowing and Doing…are poles apart. Here's some clear examples: Person 1:  Drives by a car dealership (I'm going to use this example because it was the first example I heard in 1999). This person looks at the cars on the lot and thinks “oh wow, I love that red car and I'd love to buy it” and they drive off, and start thinking of how they are going to save up to buy this red car they've just seen. They might create a plan, and come back and visit the lot, and sit in the car, and maybe even test drive the car. Got it? We see how PERSON 1 thinks. Person 2: Drives by the car dealership and stops, takes out a notepad, and writes down some numbers. What's he writing you ask? He's taking note of how many cars fit on that specific lot, because he's thinking “how can I buy this lot?” He writes down 50 cars, and he's thinking about other ideas like, is there another lot nearby that I could buy if I eventually outgrow this lot? They write down some other things like “how much money can I also make from advertising” since there is a sign out front, and then they write down a number guessing at the cost of the land. WHAT TYPE OF THINKER ARE YOU? Can you see two distinct ways to think? How would YOU think if you drove past a car dealership today?  Are you PERSON 1 or PERSON 2? I know without a shadow of a doubt that I'm PERSON 1 and to get the details for PERSON 2, I had to ask someone who thinks in this way. Let me put some faces to two different types of thinkers who we've mentioned before on this podcast. DID YOU KNOW THAT: Walt Disney (who is kind of like Person 2 in our car dealership example) took his good friend Art Linkletter[iv] (a Canadian born radio and television personality) who surely had vision but his vision was different than Art's). Walt took Art to an open field near Orange County, California and pointed to the land and then told Linkletter of his vision for building a park for children. I talked about this with Dr. John Medina all the way back on EP #42[v] and I asked Dr. Medina about this and oddly enough, Dr. Medina said that he has a large poster of Walt Disney hanging up in his office. It was from a time when there was only one theme park (Disneyland which came first in Anaheim, CA in 1955). Disney World near Orlando hadn't been built yet (it opened in 1971) and it was a photo of a big swamp with Cinderella's Castle in the background. You see Walt Disney with an entrepreneurial grin, and the caption on the poster says “It's kinda fun, to do the impossible.” How Do You Change Your Way of Thinking? Isn't this the point of why we all listen to podcasts in the first place? We are looking for new ideas or ways of thinking. Something to give us a different result, when we do something in a different way. This is how we change our PARADIGMS and it takes time. This doesn't happen overnight. We also were not taught “how to think in this certain way” in school. We have to learn to live from “inside” our minds first, and I can tell you that I've been working on this way of thinking for over 25 years, and the more I learn, the more I realize I know so very little. It's a lifetime process, and involves dedication, time, effort and hard work. This is one of the main reasons why I host this podcast. Each week, as I release something that you the listener downloads, it also helps me and those close to me, since I'm getting a refresher as I'm writing each episode, and thinking of ways that we can ALL put what we are learning into practice. This is also why I chose the 6 Social and Emotional Learning Competencies to focus on for this podcast.  It appears that Self-Awareness is the key to making any change in our lives. We've got to first of all “know thyself” before we can “change thyself.” SELF-AWARENESS and THE 7 LEVELS OF AWARENESS We covered this concept in depth in Sept. 2022 when we first started our review of our past episodes with the goal of building a stronger 2.0 version of ourselves. On EP #247 we dove deep into our interview with Greg Link, who intentionally created a legacy by reading a book a week.  Since “95% of the decisions we make take place in the subconscious mind” (Deane Alban) it's crucial for our future results that we keep tending to the “garden of our mind” with continual study. This practice will keep us moving up the 7 Level of Awareness. We all begin at the same level, but it's our ability to “think” that moves us up these 7 Levels, away from following what everyone else is doing (STEP 2), to aspiration (STEP 3) where we “think” we are doing something (we aspire to  BE/DO or HAVE more in our lives) but we must keep moving forward for REAL change to occur. At STEP 4 we step out and take action on idea (we actually DO something), which brings us to STEP 5 since we will need to apply DISCIPLINE to stay in the game. Over time, STEP 6 we gain experience, that eventually leads us to STEP 7 Mastery. Going through these 7 Levels of Awareness requires that we THINK and ACT in a certain way, which is what Chapter 4 of The Science of Getting Rich is all about. If you look at the graphic of these 7 Levels of Awareness, it was in Chapter 4 that Bob Proctor would cover these. At the very top of this worksheet is the quote “to look on the appearance of poverty will produce corresponding forms in your own mind.” (Wallace D. Wattles). THINKING TRUTH REGARDLESS OF APPEARANCES So to THINK and ACT in a CERTAIN way, requires that we “THINK truth regardless of appearances.” (page 58, Ch 4, Science of Getting Rich) Wallace Wattles tells us in this chapter. I could talk about this concept for weeks, because I have honestly been thinking about this since 1999. We all have the ability to “think” we have already concluded, but some people “think” differently, or in a certain way, leading them to different results. I told you that I was not always someone who had prosperity thinking. How could I when I was raised to be careful with money, since it was scarce, and had to stretch far. Thinking there is enough (or even abundance) was a complete stretch for me, but over time, and many years, my paradigms about money have changed. HOW DO WE CHANGE OUR PROGRAMMING FROM POVERTY CONSCIOUSNESS TO PROSPERITY? The key is in this chapter. We need to be able to “think truth” (that there is an abundance of what we need) “regardless of appearances” (or what we can see with our eyes). I remember reading this passage thousands of times in our study, in those early days, because this one took us all, a very long time to grasp. My bank account is empty but you mean I should think there's money in it? There's no food in the fridge but you mean I should think food will come? They come when you learn to THINK AND ACT in this certain way. This isn't easy. I know and I remember. I remember when I first moved to the US (and I'm fully aware that we are not supposed to dwell on difficult times according to this book, but I will need to mention where I came from for you, the listener to understand). I came with an empty bank account, but a vision for what I would be doing. Of course the vision for what I wanted to do would take time, and we ALL start out in the same place which is LEVEL 1 on the 7 LEVELS of AWARENESS. I remember running out of gas as my car was going up a hill, and I had to pray the car would start again as the road evened out so I could get to a gas station and fill up the car. I also remember that I had $20 in my bank account to spend on gas, so the idea of “thinking truth” that there was enough money to cover what I need was a far stretch. But I did it, because I had no other option. I thought “truth regardless of appearance” and slowly, over time learned to THINK AND ACT in this certain way. In those early days I worked as a nanny at local resorts in Arizona, and I remember walking around beautiful resorts would help my ability to “think” in this certain way. You can't just “think” and not take action, so I worked hard, and looking back now, I had plenty of food in my fridge (always-it helped to shop at Costco where I could buy certain things in bulk), and was able to pay ALL of my bills. I used to line up the largest ones first in order on my desk, and when I had earned enough money to pay them, I moved onto the smaller, easier ones. Eventually life became easier, as I worked Chapter 13, Getting into the Right Business, but I did it all one step at a time, and followed these principles, believing that if I were to THINK AND ACT in this certain way (which we know is prosperity thinking, that there would always be enough) and this required me to “think truth regardless of appearances” since I didn't have money in my bank account at that time, but I'm sure we can all remember lean times like I'm talking about. We all experience them. I just want to show you how I turned it all around in my life, and it was a process, that occurred with time, but maybe if you are where I was right now, it might help you to think and act in a different way, to shorten the amount of time that you are here. The focus of this entire book is to expand our awareness, and open up the keyhole (or kick in the door) to reveal new possibilities on the other side. PUTTING CHAPTER 4 INTO ACTION: So how do we change our thinking and learn to “think truth (that there's abundance) regardless of appearances (when there is not)? I can only say that this chapter takes time. There is no way that anyone would have been able to convince me that my empty bank account would one day have plenty of money in it, (when I was down to my last $16 that would fill up my car with gas to get me home), or that I would have been able to see that paying my monthly bills (from working as a nanny) would be possible until I found a better way. I wouldn't have believed it unless I had actually lived it. Now, it's important for me to share this knowledge, so that others can do the same. I learned from being a parent that this skill must be taught, and there is a fine line here as we do not want to raise our children to be pretentious, immodest or assuming in life. We want our children to be outward focused, humble, modest and polite. It took me years to change my mindset (from poverty consciousness-that there is not enough to cover what I need to prosperity (that I have enough) expanding my level of awareness in this process. So How Do We Change Our Money Mindset? The late Doug Wead, presidential advisor, said it best when he said “We are not limited by money, but rather by the poverty of our own dreams.” Open up our minds to abundant thinking versus poverty. Here's how I took the FIRST Principle in The Science of Getting Rich, and began to teach this to my own children. The first time I heard one of my girls talking about money in terms of “what if we don't have enough” I knew it was time to put some focus on the timeless principles in this book. Here's what I would suggest to expand anyone's level of awareness around money. STEP 1: Know money looks and feels like. When you can't see or feel money, like when I only had $20 left in my bank account, it's hard to imagine there being an abundance of it. This is something I notice happens EVERY TIME I play Monopoly. This game is really about prosperity thinking and putting it in action. No one wants to play this game with me because I win this game every time. We must learn to Think and Act in a Certain way in REAL life, as well as in board games. It's really the same idea.  This again takes time and practice. None of these steps are going to quickly change your money mindset. Play Monopoly like you would play “your life” and watch what happens. You'll have more money than you know what to do with, and then you can share your wealth with others. In the beginning of the game, we all start out with the same amount of money, but the decisions we make throughout the game will determine who is able to earn more, and eventually wins the game, as they create an abundance. At the beginning of a Monopoly game, I've trained myself “to think truth regardless of appearances” I can “see” a vision of all the property I will buy (Park Place and Boardwalk will win the game for you) by earning you the rent from everyone who lands on the spaces you will buy and own. This concept became much more interesting when money became available in cryptocurrency, showing us that money can exist outside of physical bills or coins. We can NOW pay for things electronically, quickly sending money to people and vendors via systems like Zell, or PayPal. What we “think” of money in 2023 is much different than 50 years ago, but the concept is the same. It's an exchange for service rendered, and once you know what it looks like (whether it's physical bills, or a number in an account) it's much easier to be able to see it in your possession. STEP 2: Know how to earn money.  I love the quote “never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn” by Miguel de Cervantes.  When times were difficult in my 20s, I figured out how to earn the money I needed to live the life I wanted, from cleaning houses and working as a nanny. Using this experience, I now instill the idea of “working” for money with our children by giving them money for things they can do to help around the house, or with their skills and talents. If they can help me to solve a computer issue, or something technology based (where their level of thinking far surpasses mine) I will pay them for their knowledge. This teaches our next generation that when you take the time to study and learn something new, you can earn money for your knowledge. This job in the real world is called Being a Consultant, and can earn someone money in addition to whatever job they choose to spend their days doing. This is where the concept of earning income from multiple sources comes in, that we will cover in more depth in Chapter 6 How Riches Come to You. This concept that money circulates helps anyone to see how they can work for it, and rightfully have it. STEP 3: Know how to THINK TRUTH regardless of APPEARANCES. Remember that “every man has the natural and inherent power to think what he wants to think, but it requires far more effort to do so than it does to think the thoughts which are suggested by appearances.” I don't know WHEN this principle switched in my head, and I began living it, but I do remember it being “laborious” and it required “the expenditure of more power than any other work” (Wattles, Chapter 4) than I've ever had to perform. To think according to appearances is easy.  My bank account has $20 left, my fridge is empty, or I have no sales in my pipeline. It's easy to look at these things and think this is the way it's going to be. OR, we can implement this first timeless principle and create something else (first of all on the screen of your mind) and then second with action that you will take. Stop for a minute and look around. The clothes you are wearing were created in someone's mind FIRST, before they created the pattern and manufactured them. The car you are driving came first into the mind of Henry Ford, or if you are driving a Tesla, the mind of Elon Musk. Once you've learned to do this, you can relate to Walt Disney's entrepreneurial grin, as you begin to turn the impossible, into reality. REVIEW AND CONCLUSION To review and conclude PART 2 of our Deep Dive of Wallace D. Wattles' The Science of Getting Rich, we covered Chapter 4, and the first principle of learning to think and act in a certain way, and that's with prosperity thinking versus poverty thinking. Since “thought is the only power that can produce tangible riches from the formless substance” it matters what we think about. We looked at the importance of being able to Think Truth, regardless of appearance, even if this is the hardest work in the world. I gave the example of being able to think beyond what money I had in my bank account, and this concept can also be practiced with our health. Not at all to say we “think ” ourselves to health, but if we can learn to think and see ourselves as healthy, it's the first step towards using our mind (instead of the outside world) to create and shape our results. As we covered in PART 1 of our review, the message within the pages of The Science of Getting Rich is NOT to obtain money for ourselves, but to spend “money in meaningful ways—especially when it's used to benefit others” (Chapter 1 Neurowisdom, Waldman and Manning) and this is known to increase our satisfaction in life. As we are going through these chapters, my goal is to show us not how we can be good little go-getters, but how we use these principles to help ourselves first, and then, how to use them to benefit others. This is the true meaning behind The Science of Getting Rich and we will go deeper into taking the focus off ourselves on our next episode with Chapter 14, The Impression of Increase. Until then, I hope that you review how to change your money mindset, to improve your thinking first, and then help others you interact with. STEP 1: Know money looks and feels like. It's a different world in 2023 now that we have BitCoin and Cryptocurrency, but for this step, I like to grab a stack of bills (real or fake) and just know what it “feels like” to hold what I would consider to be “a lot” of money. The more I have practiced this concept, the easier it is for me to expand my thinking of what's a lot of money to me. In my late 20s, when I was running out of gas, $20 was a lot of money. With experience, my number has changed, but this is the key, to always be opening up the doorway and expanding where our thinking currently sits. Whatever you think is “a lot of money” see how it feels to put that amount in your wallet. Carry it around for a while. Before you know it, your amount will change, and you'll have expanded your thinking around money.  I saw an incredible example of this on Instagram with Grant Cardone who was teaching his children this concept with a game where he blind-folded his kids who were fishing for hundred dollar bills in a money-mindset game. I know that whatever money was “raised” with this game went to charity, but I know it also would have changed the money mindset of those kids. They will never look at a $100 bill the same way after seeing many of them on the table. There was plenty of them, and enough for all of them to gather them up, and give back to others. IMAGE CREDIT: Grant Cardone on Instagram  STEP 2: Know how to earn money. We will cover this one in more depth throughout this book study, but once we can see that money is an exchange for services rendered, we can open up to what services we can provide to help other people, that they would pay for. I remember paying a young high school kid (who was 17 at the time) how to code my first website. It was faster for me to work with him after school than it would have been for me to learn how to do this on my own, and this young man earned plenty of money with his knowledge and talents. STEP 3: Know how to THINK TRUTH regardless of APPEARANCES.  This is the hardest part of implementing this chapter, especially if you are where I was when my car ran out of gas. I had to go home, go to sleep and think “tomorrow is a new day” and that tomorrow I had the ability to create something new, something that only existed on the screen of my mind. And when tomorrow came, I always found work that I could do, that filled my bank account back up, (one check at a time) and kept me going. I remember at this specific time I was working as a nanny at a local resort in Arizona, and this was the BEST place for me to work on improving my money consciousness. I would walk around the resort, and see abundance everywhere. I would think “one day, I will have my own family and I'll bring them to a resort like this, and I'll relax in the lawn chairs and think of ways I can give back to others once I've done it myself.” This didn't happen right away. I had to master how to THINK TRUTH regardless of APPEARANCES first, and then had to get to work on what we will cover next week, The Impression of Increase. The Science of Getting Rich is a process. It is scientific and mathematical. It matters what we THINK about. With that thought, I'll close out PART 2 of our Deep Dive of Chapter 4 of The Science of Getting Rich, and will see you next week, with Chapter 14 on The Impression of Increase.   REFERENCES:   [i] As a Man Thinketh, by James Allen, 1902 https://www.amazon.com/As-Man-Thinketh-James-Allen/dp/1503055361   [ii] The Science of Getting Rich Chapters 4/14/7 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPBdjiFBrJg   [iii]Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast EPISODE #203 with Paranormal Researcher Ryan O'Neill https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/case-study-with-paranormal-researcher-ryan-o-neill-on-making-your-vision-a-reality/   [iv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Linkletter   [v] Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast EPISODE #42 with Dr. John Medina https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/dr-john-medina-on-implementing-brain-rules-in-the-schools-and-workplaces-of-the-future/  

Simply put, when it comes to PCB design software, design automation is the automation of specific tasks throughout your PCB design process. There are many functions or processes within PCB design that can be automated. But as much as benefits, there are typical roadblocks that you'll see when moving toward design automation, such as having less control of the design and PCB designers being unfamiliar with the automated functions available within their PCB design tool.  I'm your host, Steph Chavez. This is officially the first episode of Season Three of the Printed Circuit Podcast. For the first episode of this season, we'll focus on Design Automation. And here to join me in this discussion is John Medina, owner of High-Speed Design Services.  In this episode, you will learn about the necessity of automation in the design process, especially for repetitive tasks. You will also hear more about how automation aids in planning and executing complex tasks, such as high pin count BGA (Ball Grid Array) breakout and routing. In addition, the conversation also highlights the importance of planning and visualization in PCB design, which automation tools greatly facilitate. What You'll Learn in this Episode: Design automation tools for PCB and package engineering (07:11) Automation in PCB design, balancing quality and speed (16:29) The importance of embracing automation and staying aware of new techniques and best practices (19:47) The importance of understanding materials and fabrication in PCB design(25:36) Connect with John Medina: LinkedIn Connect with Steph Chavez: LinkedIn

In today's episode, I go to "the land down under" to speak with author Melanie Notaras. She wrote the children's book "The Art Show that Came to Life" and it stars Your School! Find out all about this custom made book can help your local school put the "FUN" in FUNdraising! Melanie and I also share some tips about how to encourage kids to read, especially during the summer break. And stay tuned, because coming up in a few days, I'll have a two part episode where I'll talk about how to encourage kids in their writing! Make sure to subscribe so you can have all the tips and information for those future authors. Get ready to read and write this summer! Find out more here: https://www.myschooladventure.com/ Books Mentioned:The Hundred Secret Sense by Amy TanThe Midnight Library by Matt Haig Brain Rules by John Medina?Vampire Weekend by Mike ChenTimestamps:01:30 What are you reading/what books have inspired you07:54 Her Journey to Publication25:00 The Importance of Reading27:23 Tips for encouraging Kids to read____________There are 4 ways you can help support the channel!-Like and subscribe!-I'm now a bookshop.org affiliate - check out my shop and find your next great read! https://bookshop.org/shop/bookshelfodyssey  -Buy me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/bookshelfpod  - My Amazon Wishlist: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2PTGNQWISVZE/ref=nav_wishlist_lists_3 _____________Find Me Online: Podcast: https://bookshelfodyssey.buzzsprout.com/  Voxer: @artbookshelfodyssey  Discord: https://discord.gg/8MFceV2NFe    Facebook Group Page: @thebookshelfodyssey Twitter: @odyssey_podcastInstagram: @bookshelfodysseypodcast____________ There are 4 ways you can help support the channel! -Like and subscribe!-I'm now a bookshop.org affiliate - check out my shop and find your next great read! https://bookshop.org/shop/bookshelfodyssey -Buy me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/bookshelfpod - My Amazon Wishlist: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2PTGNQWISVZE/ref=nav_wishlist_lists_3 _____________ Find Me Online: Podcast: https://bookshelfodyssey.buzzsprout.com/ Voxer: @artbookshelfodyssey Discord: https://discord.gg/8MFceV2NFe Facebook Group Page: @thebookshelfodyssey Twitter: @odyssey_podcastInstagram: @bookshelfodysseypodcast

A quote from Enders Game. “There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy show you where you are weak. Only the enemy shows you where he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. – Mazer Rackham” It's similar to The Art of War. Think about what it means and how we can apply it in our modern lives. Dr. John Medina had to say: Wow. Interesting quote. Did you ever read "The Art of War"? Sun Tzu, written about the time the ancient Israelites were getting their butts kicked by the Assyrians. Favorite line:“If you know the enemy and you know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles." Interesting to contrast this with you Rackham quote. If you juxtapose those two philosophical quotes, you get the secret to success. The Wall Street Journal. The conservative paper of record, just caved on immigration. AI Wants to be regulated!!! Why? And how will that go? Hmm I wonder if the laws will be written by lobbyists from the biggest tech companies? Listening to the audio on Podcast Service? See the Video at: - BobRivers.com - https://bobrivers.com/bob-and-zip-show-20230517 or- YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKpvncV-Ju8- YouTube Channel - https://YouTube.com/@BobRiversShow --> ( Please 'Like' and 'Subscribe' for Livestream notifications

Episode Summary What might a trauma-informed space look and feel like? I interview Lorne, an architect who spent his career building schools and education spaces. During the episode, we discuss the reasons for and importance of trauma-informed design (TID), the free TID workbook Lorne's team created, and how museum professionals might use it to guide designs of trauma-informed spaces and experiences.     Download the free TID workbook, or connect with Lorne's team Lorne and team invites those who use the free workbook to be in touch with feedback and perhaps guidance on how a museum-focused workbook might be created. Download their FREE trauma-informed workbook: https://www.bassettiarch.com/tidworkbook Email Lorne's team to collaborate or with feedback: media@bassettiarch.com Bassetti Architects website: https://www.bassettiarch.com/ Bassetti Architects TID page: https://www.bassettiarch.com/values/tid Bassetti Architects LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/1567541     Links to books discussed in episode  The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk Original study on ACES, Adverse Childhood Experiences Brain Rules, John Medina     Link to Stef's episode sketch Sometimes my brain processes design concepts, ideas or strategies as visualizations.  Here's what came up for me during this episode: Episode Viz     Connect with us: Have questions or topics you'd like us to explore on the podcast? Or a recommendation of an expert to interview? Please drop us a line at info@digin-ux.com with your idea! Need help with a user-centered project, evaluation or experience design?  Head over to digin-ux.com for info on user-centered strategies for your mission-driven institution,  Or connect with us at info@digin-ux.com  about your project or other cool collaboration you've got in mind!

Special Guest: Brain Scientist, Author of "Brain Rules", Dr John Medina @brainrulesbook How does your Noggin' really work? And how can you use that knowledge to enjoy a happier more productive life? Meet Dr. John Medina. Long time Bob Rivers Show guest and dear friend. And a genuine behind the comedy scenes improv workshop conversation with Comedian Andrew Rivers @andrewjrivers If your Billionaire friends treat you nicely, what's wrong with that? Listening to the audio on Podcast Service? See the Video at: - BobRivers.com - https://bobrivers.com/bob-and-zip-show-20230407 or- YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZRP50s1dtM - YouTube Channel - https://YouTube.com/@BobRiversShow --> ( Please 'Like' and 'Subscribe' for Livestream notifications

Hi! Meet Your Brain Have you ever looked at how someone made a decision and wondered, “What were they thinking?” For me, it's not just even watching other people. Sometimes I reflect on how I felt about something or a decision and wonder, “Huh… I wonder what was going on there?” Chantel Prat is one of today's most important researchers and voices in the field of neuroscience. And she's the author of a fascinating and entertaining new book entitled The Neuroscience of You: How Every Brain Is Different and How to Understand Yours. It's not just a book about the brain. It's a book that introduces you to your brain. If you've ever wondered how the brain works but instantly found your eyes rolling back because the material was too boring, you'll want to get a copy of this book. Chantel is as funny as she is brilliant--I'm looking forward to sharing today's discussion with you. Learn more about Chantel and her book at ChantelPrat.com/. For more insights related to this episode, check out: Episode 188 for my conversation with Dr. John Medina about his Brain Rulesbooks   Do You Have a High School or College Age Student in Your Family? If so, check out our e-learning program entitled Getting Stuff Done: Project Management for Students. It provides practical skills to reduce the stress of their school work and help jumpstart their career. Learn more and get access at https://i-leadonline.com/GettingStuffDone. Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast! Talent Triangle: Power Skills   The following music was used for this episode: Music: Crime Time by Frank Schroeter Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9136-crime-time License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Artist on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/frank.schroeter.52 Music: Everybody Up by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9244-everybody-up License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Artist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de Young Frankenstein Abby Normal available on YouTube at YouTube.com/watch?v=C9Pw0xX4DXI

"The old corporate paradigm of extreme hours, little sleep, endless meetings, and nonstop travel is dead. No one wants to go back to that. It's bad for performance and for everyone's mental and physical health. The future of business is hybrid and requires a flexible new paradigm that helps everyone reach peak performance: the brain-friendly workplace." (Friederike Fabritius) Watch this interview on YouTube here https://youtu.be/Mmv9PmuioFs On this episode we will learn:  ✔ How to create a workplace of the future. A Brain-Friendly Workplace. ✔ How an understanding our brain-type, can help us to be happier and more productive in the workplace. ✔ What is causing the "Neuro-Gap" and why is it important to have different brain-types represented at the higher levels of corporations or organizations. ✔ How can someone with ambition and persistence, move forward into a management position? What should they be prepared to show if their brain-type isn't often represented in these higher level positions? ✔ What is lateral or creative thinking, versus linear thinking, and why are both important in the workplace? ✔ Where do those "flashes of insight" come from, that creative people can see? Can science prove this type of thinking to be useful? ✔ What are the 4 brain types, or neurosignatures, and how can we be sure we understand them for ourselves, and for others? ✔ Why is understanding our optimal level of stress important for our workplace productivity and happiness? ✔ An example of when Friederike used her neurosignature under pressure. ✔ What to expect from some of the interviews in The Brain-Friendly Workplace ✔ An important tip from John Medina on the "power problem" that happens at the brain level, for people in positions of leadership.     FOLLOW FRIEDERIKE FABRITIUS Website https://friederikefabritius.com/ LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/friederikefabritius/ Twitter https://twitter.com/FriederikeFab YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8wD4PRM2RablIfUVDzT2WA Facebook https://www.facebook.com/FriederikeFabritius Amazon: www.amazon.com/author/friederikefabritius SEE PAST NEUROSCIENCE MEETS SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING PODCAST EPISODES https://www.achieveit360.com/episodes/ There's much more to this new workplace, overriding old, outdated paradigms, than meets the eye, and Friederike Fabritius's NEW book, The Brain-Friendly Workplace is FULL of ideas to help all of us adapt our workplace, so that our brains will work at their best.   Welcome back to The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast where we bridge the gap between theory and practice, with strategies, tools and ideas we can all use immediately, applied to the most current brain research to heighten productivity in our schools, sports environments and modern workplaces. I'm Andrea Samadi and launched this podcast to share how important an understanding of our brain is for our everyday life and results. My vision is to bring the experts to you, share their research, books, ideas and resources to help you to implement their proven strategies, whether you are a teacher working in the classroom or in the corporate environment. Be sure to listen to the EPISODE prior to this one, #257, as I do cover a DEEP DIVE to put us all in the right mind-set, or should I say, brain-set, for today's interview. I'm so very excited for today's interview, EPISODE #258, as we have a returning guest, from one of our early episodes, #27[i], Friederike Fabritius, all the way from Germany, who dove deep into her book, The Leading Brain: Neuroscience Hacks to Work Smarter, Better, Happier when we first launched our podcast back in 2019. What was crazy about finding Friederike back then, is that I found her on YouTube, from a presentation she did on Leadership and the Brain, and it really helped me to understand the chemicals involved in the brain during peak performance, and what it looks like when the brain is involved in FLOW, which is something I think we all want to master. What Friederike might not know, is that I watched her presentation many times over, back in 2017, taking notes OVER my notes, as it helped me to understand why people perform the way they do at work, why some people excel, and others seem to be missing something, and why certain people gravitate towards certain positions based on the chemicals predominantly in their brain. What became clear to me from this diagram, from this presentation where you can watch Friederike[ii], on “Fun, Fear and Focus” is that some positions in the workplace (at the beginning of the curve) are routine, and require people to do the same thing every day, (and some people are wired this way) but for those who are not, they will find themselves to be under-challenged and bored, without a brain strategy in place. Similarly, some positions that require NEW daily challenges are designed for those workers who enjoy constantly putting out fires and would be bored if their work was routine, the same way every day, but these positions often lead to burnout, without a brain strategy in place. We ALL need to find our optimal stress point, so that our work challenges us just the right amount, leading us to that place of optimal workplace happiness. I could see clearly with this example, why I was very unhappy when I left my “exciting” job in field sales, covering Higher Education/University Campuses in the southwest region, moving to “inside” sales where I sat at a desk, and was bored and under-challenged until I figured out that I needed to offset my desk time, with exercise. This diagram also comes into my mind when I see someone working very hard, or burning the candle at both ends, as Friederike cautioned that this type of work pattern isn't sustainable and can lead to depression, burnout and even changing the brain to where people under these high levels of stress begin to see stress in places where there isn't any, or experience “hyper arousal.”   I'm always looking for productivity tips that we can all use, and it's clear that stress in our workplaces is at an all-time high, globally. We know that “2/3 of people report being stressed at work, to the point they can't sleep at night”[iii]  so I was thrilled to see that Friederike's new book was focused on changing the workplace, not the employee, to create the best environment for happiness and productivity. Let's welcome back, returning guest, and my friend from EP #27 Friederike Fabritius[iv], a neuroscientist, author and public speaker, who works with leaders to help them to understand how their brain works, and like I mentioned from that first presentation I saw with high level business executives, she will share how we can all find our optimal stress points,  with the secrets from her NEWLY released book, The Brain-Friendly Workplace that hit #3 on The Wall Street Journal Best-Selling Books List, and remains on this list today, and show us how we can all adapt our workplaces, for optimal productivity, health and happiness.   Welcome back Friederike! It's incredible to see you again. Congratulations on your new book hitting the Wall Street Journal's Best-Selling List!! That's AWESOME!! INTRO Q: So, I was reading your book, and you know, I feel like we can think we know someone, but when you read their book, you get a whole new layer of understanding behind someone with knowledge you might not have known before. I felt like I knew you fairly well from studying everything I could find online about your work, interviewing you with your first book back on EP #27, and then I'm reading your NEW book, preparing for this interview, and I come to the part in the Introduction on “Happy to Be Fired” and I knew you came from the Max Plank Institute[v] where all the Nobel prize winners came from, but I had no idea why you left. Your story gave me so much insight into my own neurosignature, or what I need to be happy with work, and I think this understanding is a HUGE missing link in the workplace. Can we start with why you were “Happy to be Fired” and why understanding our brain is the first step towards being happy with our work? Q1:. My next question is kind of long, but it will help set up how to Address the Neuro-Gap from Chapter 1 of your book. Can I share how I see the “Neuro-Gap?” I'm always learning something, and trying to make connections with this learning. Last week I took this fascinating course called “How to Think Like an FBI Profiler”[vi] with Special Agent John Douglas who they created the Netflix Series Mindhunter after his cases. I learned so much from him, but one part that stuck out to me was he spoke about how he brought creativity, intuition, keeping an open mind to solving his cases, something that the FBI lacked before he came on board because women were under-represented in the FBI.[vii] He talked about solving a case when a female investigator said she wanted to go with her gut, and blow up a note from a murderer and place it on a billboard to see if anyone would recognize the writing.  Creative, out of the box thinking wasn't a usual strategy within the male dominated FBI agents, but he was known for his out of the box thinking, and went with this woman's idea, and this method is how they identified their criminal and were able to put him behind bars. Is this what you call “The Neuro-Gap?” (overrepresentation of high dopamine/high testosterone brain systems, and systems thinking, at the executive level) that would have ignored this type of creative thinking to solve problems that came from this one female agent? Q1B: Of course, I saw the Neuro-Gap in the corporate world when I was there. My creative, intuitive ideas for building curriculum that covered social and emotional learning connected to neuroscience was something that our curriculum team couldn't even fathom 13 years ago, when I worked in the publishing field, so I had to leave, and highlight this space on this podcast years later. What about others in different fields? Women in sports? Female actors? Or even like the example I used with female agents in the FBI? How do you see change occurring here in our present-day workplaces? Not everyone can just quit and start over like we did. How can people move forward if their brain signature is not what's usually at the top? Q1C: Can you give some examples of lateral thinking vs linear or systems thinking and perhaps ways that you've seen creative thinking emerge in The Brain-Friendly Workplace? I was definitely told my ideas were lateral. Can you explain this type of thinking and why it's important to embrace people who think this way in the workplace? Q1D: Where do these flashes of insight come from? Can science give us some insight to why some people can “see” things that others might think to be crazy? Q2: What's a quick and simple way to discover what our neurosignature is? I know that my brain is high with dopamine, as I get bored easily, need autonomy, and challenge on a daily basis, and there's also this intuitive, creative side to me, that's the estrogen/oxytocin signature that I think is the same as yours? How can we pinpoint what our signature is? IMAGE CREDIT: Carolin Nischwitz Q2B: I had to laugh at the Testosterone Signature, because it's my husband to a “t.” Not to name call or anything, but I would take out direct and put the word that starts with an a in there. It's actually something I admire in strong people (male or female) because I wish I was like this more myself. The strong drive to succeed at any cost even if they come off as being abrupt, I like people who are decisive and direct. You say that 1/3 of women have a high testosterone brain, yet women don't make up 1/3 of corporate leaders. How would you suggest women with this neurosignature embrace their brain and move into leadership positions to change this in the future? Q3: Can we review your incredible presentation that I mention in the backstory, where I first found your work back in 2017 with what we should all know and understand about ourselves, to achieve peak performance/find our optimal stress point? Q4: When I got to Chapter 4 of your book, and you were talking about your first-ever TEDx talk, I had to look through my LinkedIn messages, as I thought I remembered chatting with you just BEFORE you went onstage for that event as we were planning our first interview, and you mentioned that your technology had failed.  How did your neurosignature help you in this situation? This has been the STORY of 2022 for me. Q5: Your book is something I'm going to be studying for some time. I could ask you a question on each chapter, each interview, and each brain tip but we'd be here for a long time. I loved seeing some of the researchers I most admire, like Dr. Andrew Huberman, from Stanford, and Mathew Walker, the Sleep Diplomat, but I most loved seeing your interview with John Medina, as I remember you asking me for his contact information. I was thrilled to see him in there in Chapter 7 and so glad you were able to reach and connect with him. I forgot how absolutely funny  he can be, but also, he covers a serious topic, of some brain “power problems” that I think are important to understand for those in positions of leadership. What would be one “power problem” John Medina mentioned, and how can those in leadership positions mitigate this problem? NOTE: Andrea asked John Medina if there's a way he would suggest this "power problem" could be mitigated. He said: "You pose a great question, and I have one piece of bad news and two pieces of good news to share in response. To date, there is no randomized blinded trial of which I am aware that has been shown to successfully force someone to understand the consequences of their actions, especially when they think normal rules don't apply to them.  The first piece of good news is that the research world isn't clueless about the issue. Connecting one's behaviors to the consequences of those behaviors is the hallmark of a cognitive gadget called executive function. There is a wealth of solid behavioral work discussing how to improve executive function.  The second piece of good news concerns the concept of prophylactic education, essentially warning people in advance of what is likely to happen to them if they're not careful. Prophylactic education can go along way towards neutralizing certain bad behaviors, from reducing the number of medical malpractice lawsuits in surgical units to reducing sexism in the workplace." John Medina This was exactly what Friederike suggested as a solution. Make people aware of the consequences of their actions. John Medina called this "prophylactic education." Q6: Is there anything important I've missed? Friederike, I want to thank you very much for coming back on the podcast for a second time, and for creating such an engaging and important book that I know will help all of us to become happier in the workplace. For people who want to reach you, is the best place your website? Thank you!  About The Brain-Friendly Workplace The Brain-Friendly Workplace[viii] envisions a new kind of office where thought-diversity is acknowledged, invited, and supported. Complementing racial and gender diversity, and coinciding with shifting employee trends following the Great Resignation and remote work revolution, “diversity of mind” can lead to better employee retention, higher innovation and creativity, and increased sales.  In The Brain-Friendly Workplace, Friederike Fabritius makes the case for a radically different kind of environment that recognizes the unique “neurosignature” of each person and supports employee wellbeing by shifting from “hustle” to “outcome” culture. These cultural and environmental changes naturally create pathways for more diverse executive leadership. Especially for women who have long had to choose between high-impact careers and having a family. Where “lean-in” trainings and countless DEI initiatives have failed to make material differences in corporate diversity, The Brain-Friendly Workplace is a science-backed, field tested approach with proven impact at leading companies like EY (formerly Ernst & Young), thyssenkrupp, and Boston Consulting Group. Rather than approaching diversity from a numbers perspective, Fabritius demonstrates that supporting neurodiversity naturally leads to better gender and racial representation at the top.  THE BRAIN FRIENDLY WORKPLACE https://friederikefabritius.com/books/the-brain-friendly-workplace/   REFERENCES: [i] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #27 with Friederike Fabritius on “The Recipe for Achieving Peak Performance.” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/pioneer-in-the-field-of-neuroleadership-friederike-fabritius-on-the-recipe-for-achieving-peak-performance/ [ii] Friederike Fabritius “Neuroleadership: A New Approach” YouTube Published Dec. 11th, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g4XhlLZ5ak [iii] Intro to The Brian Friendly Workplace Published on YouTube September 2022  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La9yqt0v9f4 [iv] Friederike Fabritius on The Brain-Friendly Workplace  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI3XxIkNSOQ [v] Max Plank Institute https://www.mpg.de/institutes [vi] How to Think Like an FBI Profiler https://www.masterclass.com/classes/john-douglas-teaches-how-to-think-like-an-fbi-profiler/chapters/ [vii] Women Agents in the FBI: In Their Own Words https://www.fbi.gov/video-repository/own-words.mp4/view [viii] The Brain Friendly Workplace: Why Talented People Qui and How to Make Them Stay by Friederike Fabritius Published Oct. 11th, 2022  https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Friendly-Workplace-Talented-People-Quit/dp/1538159538/ref=sr_1_3?crid=3NVHQ2JCDQ2NP&keywords=brain+friendly+workplace&qid=1667939024&sprefix=brain+friendly+%2Caps%2C213&sr=8-3

“As human beings, our job in life to help people realize how rare and valuable each of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has—or ever will have.” Chantel Prat, PhD who quotes Fred Rogers, in her new book, The Neuroscience of You. Watch this interview on YouTube here https://youtu.be/JCpD9vGe4As  On this episode we will learn:  ✔  How to understand ourselves better, before understanding others, with our brain in mind. ✔ Why Dr. Anna Lembke said "The Neuroscience of You" is "smart, funny, and irreverent" and a "must read for any budding neuroscientists out there." ✔ What happens at our brain level when we are out of synch with someone else? ✔ A review of Theory of Mind and why it's crucial for our success and "predicts the way a team will perform." ✔ How to improve our Theory of Mind. Welcome back to The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast where we bridge the gap between theory and practice, with strategies, tools and ideas we can all use immediately, applied to the most current brain research to heighten productivity in our schools, sports environments and modern workplaces. I'm Andrea Samadi and launched this podcast to share how important an understanding of our brain is for our everyday life and results. My vision is to bring the experts to you, share their research, books, ideas and resources to help you to implement their proven strategies, whether you are a teacher working in the classroom or in the corporate environment. For today's EPISODE #255, we will be speaking with Dr. Chantel Prat, Ph.D.,[i] who I've mentioned a few times on this podcast. I came across Dr. Prat's NEW book, The Neuroscience of You[ii] that she just released this August while researching for EP #245 back in September, on “Using Neuroscience to Recognize Individuality and Uniqueness”[iii] because her name kept coming up when I was searching for “using neuroscience to understand diversity.”  When I started reading her book, it was clear to me that Dr. Prat is heavily invested in the research that helps all of us to first of all understand ourselves on a deeper level, which will help us to understand others. If you look at the Levels of Consciousness Model that I drew out from EP 151, you can see that I have listed Dr. Prat's work in the fully aware column, as I think this is what her work prepares us for.  While you can see our podcast has touched on different levels of consciousness, and since this is such a difficult concept that many scientists still cannot explain, I think it makes things easier if we can map concepts out so we can see what we are talking about visually. I know that after today's episode, Dr. Prat will open our eyes and awareness a bit more to see who we are, in relation to those around us, with some new ideas for creating synergy with those we are no in synch with. Here's a bit about Dr. Prat. Chantel Prat is a Professor at the University of Washington in the Departments of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Linguistics, and at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, the Center for Neurotechnology, and the Institute for Neuroengineering. A cognitive neuroscientist by training, her interdisciplinary research investigates the biological basis of individual differences in cognition, with an emphasis on understanding the shared neural mechanisms underpinning language and higher-level executive functions. In English…I would translate that to “Dr. Prat helps us to understand ourselves and others” which is why she kept coming up when I was search for understanding unique differences, or that all brain are not alike. Dr. Chantel Prat was the first neuroscientist to directly link two human brains through technology. Her research has explored virtual reality, neural linking, and the diversity of our brains throughout development. Learning about the science of our brains and nervous systems empowers us with greater ability to build the lives we want. Some of the power within Dr. Prat's work is that she highlights that neuroscience truly is not a one size fits all field. As Dr. Chantel Prat explains, "being equal does not require us to be the same."  She is featured in the 2019 documentary, I Am Human and her studies have been profiled in media ranging from Scientific American, Psychology Today, and Science Daily to Rolling Stone, Popular Mechanics, Pacific Standard, Travel + Leisure, and National Public Radio. Let's meet Dr. Chantel Prat, and see what we can learn about embracing each other's differences, at the brain level, and what this really means and looks like. I'm sure this discussion will change our perspectives of how we think of others who we aren't on the same page with, and hopefully help us to all find common ground with those we work with, live with and interact with on a daily basis, with some new strategies to improve our daily results, with our brain in mind. Welcome Dr. Prat, thank you for coming on the podcast today, and sharing a deeper look at your NEW book, The Neuroscience of You, that I've already been promoting since I saw it come out this summer. Intro Question: Dr. Prat, I've already mentioned you many times on this podcast, tying your work to past episodes and speakers, but what caught my eye while reading your book, and researching you further, was the reason “Why” you wrote this book. What was it that motivated you to dive into the importance of understanding ourselves better, as well as others, with our brain in mind? Q1: When I saw Dr. Anna Lembke's review of your book, that it's a began with “smart, and funny” which is not a usual combination for books about the brain, and a “must read for any budding neuroscientists out there and anyone else who wants to know how our brains work and why it matters.” (This review says a lot about you, your work and ability to connect with everyone who want to learn this topic that can be difficult, dry and confusing). We had Dr. Lebmke on the podcast last September for EPISODE #162 on her book Dopamine Nation[iv] and going on the theme of her insightful review of your book, I wondered what would you say is important for us to all know (Neuroscience 101) BEFORE we read what was also noted to be “one of the best books on neuroscience for the lay person.” Q2: Dr. Prat, when I heard you mention “Theory of Mind” as something that can predict how well a team will perform, you took me back to one of our early episodes #42 with Dr. John Medina the author of “Brain Rules”[v] mentioned Theory of Mind in our interview, with ways we can all improve it, in order to relate to others on a deeper level. What happens to us initially when someone's brain is making them behave in a way that we don't understand, and why is being able to “model the mind of someone else” crucial for our success, like you said “it most predicts the way a team will perform?” Q2B: I took a stab at writing an episode when I first launched this podcast on Theory of Mind, back in March 2020[vi] that talks about when I first learned about ToM when I asked my Mom to explain to me how I could recognize a murderer from a regular person, as there were these horrific murders in Toronto happening at the time, and the killers didn't “look” like bad people to me. My Mom, I'm not kidding gasped when I asked her this, and said “did you not look at their eyes?” which led to her working with me every week on reading facial cues, and reading the mind in someone's eyes. John Medina talked about ways we could improve this skill (he said by reading literary fiction books and studying well crafted, award winning writing). What do you think? How can we further improve our ToM, and how can this tool help us all to connect with others on a deeper level/improve our results or even keep us away from bad people? Q3: In PART 1 of the book you describe some of the biological features that shape the way we experience our personal reality. I LOVE this concept you mention about story-telling, as I worked 6 years in the motivational speaking industry, that's all about the importance of “the stories we tell ourselves” or keeping a positive mindset or even being careful of the things we say out loud that could be limiting. Until seeing your book, I didn't realize just how integral our brain's design is for shaping our story-telling process. Can you explain what how our brain creates and produces the stories we experience, and how can we use an understanding of our brain to create the story with the outcome that we desire? (Landing the successful job, or achieving a huge win at work). Q4: Is there anything important that I've missed?  Dr. Prat, I want to thank you very much for coming on the podcast, and sharing your deep and thorough research that you've been doing over the years and explaining it in such a way that we can all understand and use it, in a way that's been fun, entertaining and memorable. Thank you so much for this. For people to connect with you, and buy your book, is the best place to go to your website? https://www.chantelprat.com/ Thank you! Final Thoughts: I had no idea while writing these questions for Dr. Prat that I would learn so much about myself. She really did have it right. Her book is called The Neuroscience of YOU for a reason, and I hope as YOU read the book that you learn something about yourself, that helps you to understand others. I also highly recommend going to Dr. Prat's website and taking the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. I did talk about this on EP #36 but see how you do, and see if you can take what you've learned here, or when you've said “I'm not wired that way” to understand what exactly that means for YOUR brain. RESOURCES: Chatel Prat, How Every Brain is Wired Different and How to Understand Yours Talks at Google Published August 26, 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idloD9qYYCE Chantel Prat on The Curious Minds at Work Podcast with Gayle Allen https://www.gayleallen.net/cm-223-chantel-prat-on-how-every-brain-is-different/ Research https://www.chantelprat.com/research.html Social Intelligence Test Scored 28/36 http://socialintelligence.labinthewild.org/   FOLLOW CHANTEL PRAT Website https://www.chantelprat.com/ Twitter https://twitter.com/ChantelPratPhD BUY The Neuroscience of You https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/624256/the-neuroscience-of-you-by-chantel-prat/   RESOURCES: Two Years Later, We Finally Know Why People Saw “The Dress” Differently by Pascal Wallisch Published April 12, 2017 https://slate.com/technology/2017/04/heres-why-people-saw-the-dress-differently.html#:~:text=Remember%2C%20the%20dress%20is%20actually,Because%20shadows%20overrepresent%20blue%20light.     REFERENCES:   [i] https://www.chantelprat.com/   [ii] The Neuroscience of You: How Every Brain is Different and How to Understand Yours by Chantel Pratt, Ph.D published August 2, 2022 https://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-You-Every-Different-Understand/dp/1524746606   [iii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #245 on ““Using Neuroscience to Recognize Individuality and Uniqueness” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/brain-fact-friday-using-neuroscience-to-recognize-individuality-and-uniqueness/   [iv]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #162 with Dr. Anna Lembke on “Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence”  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/medical-director-of-addictive-medicine-at-stanford-university-dr-anna-lembke-on-dopamine-nation-finding-balance-in-the-age-of-indulgence/   [v]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #42 with John Medina on his book “Brain Rules”  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/dr-john-medina-on-implementing-brain-rules-in-the-schools-and-workplaces-of-the-future/   [vi]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #46 on “Mind-Reading: Developing Theory of Mind in Your Daily Life: As Close as Brain Science Gets” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/as-close-to-mind-reading-as-brain-science-gets-developing-and-using-theory-of-mind-in-your-daily-life/  

In this episode of the Road to Growth podcast, we are pleased to introduce you to John Medina. John is the owner and founder of John Medina Buys Houses. He has been married to his wife Yvette for 12 years and has an 11-year son named Christian. When Yvette and John are not working, they spend as much time as possible with their family and friends, who are lucky enough to live close by. John enjoys fishing and skiing. They enjoy camping as a family and spending time outdoors. As an active member of his church and community, John loves spending time volunteering and helping others.   Learn more and connect with John Medina by visiting him on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmedina-buyshouses/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/JMBuysHouses Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnmedinabuyshouses/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaahtgHo58IMgnK44slAALg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnmedinare/ Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/JohnMedinaBuysHouses/_created/     Be sure to follow us on Twitter: Twitter.com/to_growth on Facebook: facebook.com/Road2Growth   Subscribe to our podcast across the web: https://www.theenriquezgroup.com/blog Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2Cdmacc iTunes: https://apple.co/2F4zAcn Castbox: http://bit.ly/2F4NfQq Google Play: http://bit.ly/2TxUYQ2 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKnzMRkl-PurAb32mCLCMeA?view_as=subscriber   If you are looking to be a Guest on Podcasts please click below  https://kitcaster.com/rtg/  For any San Diego Real Estate Questions Please Follow Us at web: www.TheEnriquezGroup.com Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKnzMRkl-PurAb32mCLCMeA or Call : 858 -345 - 7829 Recently reduced properties in San Diego County * Click **** bit.ly/3cbT65C **** Here* ****************************************************************************

How to make more progress in the next 3 months than you did in the last 1 year: https://2000books.com/quantum How to Double Your Weekly Output while working 10-20 fewer hours/week using a 9 Second Forcing Function Trigger: https://2000books.com/superfast Watch this episode on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/2000books    

Show Description: After providing updates on our businesses, online marketing strategy, and service offerings, Tim highlights three ways to explain a job change in an interview, and Slager educates the audience on utilizing nutrient and meal timing to maximize athletic performance. We end the show talking John Medina's Brain Rules and how our brain gives attention to things. Slager highlights "being your brother's keeper" after assessing a section of Traver Boehm's "Man Uncivilized." Show Highlights: 2:00-12:45: We start the show highlighting a friend we're proud of, and then Tim recaps his summer workout strategy, crucial resources added to his website, and what him and a business mentor are working toward. 12:45-26:00: Slager reflects on his 12-week experience with his relationship coach, his motivation to start Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and how he is creating his services and value with a focus on high-level performance. 26:00-32:15: Tim provides three ways to explain why you left a job in an interview. He also outlines a simple gameplan you can use to see if there are meaningful growth and development opportunities at your current company. 32:15-38:15: Slager discusses how he is applying knowledge in nutrient timing, meal timing, and the anabolic window to elevate performance for athletes, especially combat fighters. 38:15-42:45: In Tim's section of book talk, he dives into John Medina's "Brain Rules," which explains the key factors that grab our brain's attention. Tim analyzes the three things you need to do when selling yourself or your product to someone else by applying the attention principles from the book. 42:45-47:30: Slager recaps a section of Traver Boehm's "Man Uncivilized" and what it means to be your brother's keeper.

How Do You Belong to Yourself and to Others While Building Your Own Identity?   Listen in as Sarah Elkins is joined by Paul Haury in an engaging conversation about the journey in self-belonging and Paul's story. Check it out today! Discovering Clarity One Bite at a Time course is now available!     “Every single one of us is born without self belonging…somewhere along the way our self belonging forms in that space” - Paul Haury   *podcast show notes contributed by Tracy Ackeret   Mentioned:  Brown bottle flu reference.  Belonging by Owen Eastwood.    Brain Rules by John Medina.  --- About Paul Haury: “I guide people to experience belonging, in self-belonging, in their own brilliance, and within their company tribes, to really live & perform better than they ever imagined. In my most recent endeavors, I've served as VP of people & culture and as a professional coach, specializing in belonging and optimal performance for individuals and OrgDev. I believe we perform at our highest when we belong, and believe in shared purpose together. There, we simply fear less and aspire more.” Check out Paul's LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. --- ABOUT SARAH: "Uncovering the right stories for the right audiences so executives, leaders, public speakers, and job seekers can clearly and actively demonstrate their character, values, and vision." In my work with coaching clients, I guide people to improve their communication using storytelling as the foundation of our work together. What I've realized over years of coaching and podcasting is that the majority of people don't realize the impact of the stories they share - on their internal messages, and on the people they're sharing them with. My work with leaders and people who aspire to be leaders follows a similar path to the interviews on my podcast, uncovering pivotal moments in their lives and learning how to share them to connect more authentically with others, to make their presentations and speaking more engaging, to reveal patterns that have kept them stuck or moved them forward, and to improve their relationships at work and at home. The audiobook, Your Stories Don't Define You, How You Tell Them Will is now available! Included with your purchase are two bonus tracks, songs recorded by Sarah's band, Spare Change, in her living room in Montana.  

“As long as we dare to dream and don't get in the way of ourselves, anything is possible—there's truly no end to where our dreams can take us.” Hilary Swank On the episode you will learn: The Neuroscience behind ✔ Why our dreams are so weird, highly emotional and often forgotten. ✔ With a BRAIN STRATEGY you can use to improve your waking life, with your brain and sleep in mind. For returning guests, welcome back, and for those who are new here, I'm Andrea Samadi, author, and educator, with a passion for learning, understanding difficult concepts, and breaking them down so that we can all use and apply the most current research to improve our productivity and results in our schools, sports environments, and modern workplaces. On today's EPISODE #226 and Brain Fact Friday, we are going to dive deeper into the research of Dr. Baland Jalal, who has studied the phenomenon of sleep paralysis and dreams for the past decade, and see what we can learn from our brain, while dreaming. To do this, we are going to review what's happening to the brain during sleep paralysis, and during our REM/dream state to see what we can learn from this understanding. I hope this will open up our level of awareness and help us to understand how our dream world can impact our everyday, waking world. What is Sleep Paralysis? Dr. Jalal and I discussed this terrifying experience in depth on our recent interview, episode #224[i] and most of us can relate to this experience, but wonder what it is, and why it happens, in addition to many other questions I had about dreams themselves. You can see Dr. Jalal's lectures on this topic, where he explains what happens to our brain when we sleep and that we even see things we might say were ghosts. Now that I have heard Dr. Jalal's explanation of what happens to our brains when we are dreaming, I definitely think of my brain now, when analyzing my dreams, with this new awareness. Which brings us to this week's Brain Fact Friday where I want to explore sleep paralysis, why dreams are so weird, and why are they highly emotional, and do this, with our brain in mind. SLEEP PARALYSIS DID YOU KNOW that during REM sleep (when we dream) there's a part of the brain in the brain stem that paralyzes the body to keep us (and our sleeping partner) safe[ii] and another part of our brain (the cortex) that's responsible for our perceptual awareness. Occasionally, we can wake up when we are still in REM sleep, and are perceptually aware, but unable to move as we are paralyzed. This is sleep paralysis, and can feel terrifying, if you have no idea what's going on. I learned from Dr. Jalal that in this state we can also see what we think is a ghost, or which he explains is “an illusion that your brain creates” in the Temporal Parietal Junction (that's close to our Occipital or Visual Lobe) that can project a sense of our self, outside of our body. Have you ever felt or seen something like this and thought it was a ghost? Seeing something like this, paired up with feeling paralyzed can be a terrifying experience as I told him in the interview, and he agreed, with his own sleep paralysis experience. Then, our brain doesn't like the feeling of incompleteness and it will make up a story of what you are seeing. Dr. Jalal explains that in all of the years he has done this work, he has found that our cultural background can influence what we think we are seeing. It took me some time to make the connection, but the ghost I saw, was not far off from an 18th Century Englishman, or even someone wearing the outfits of the guards at Buckingham Palace. I did grow up with a photo of the Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip in my house, and this made me think it could have been the reason why my ghost was of British decent when I was actually in a house in Vancouver, Canada. My brain created this image from a past, cultural memory. WHY ARE DREAMS SO WEIRD? DID YOU KNOW that there's a part of our brain called the Dorsolateral PFC[iii] (a region of the frontal lobes associated with executive functions like working memory and attention) (Curtis and D'Esposito, 2003) that put concepts together in a meaningful way in our life—and that during REM sleep, or when we are dreaming, this part of the brain “shuts off”[iv] so we aren't usually aware that we are dreaming? If you have ever thought “that dream felt so real” this is the reason why, and it also explains why everything in our dreams is messed up and backwards. One minute we are on a bus with friends we haven't seen in years, you grab one of your friends' hand, jump off the bus, and go to the movies, and the next minute, you are back in your childhood home, drinking tea. This is one of my bizarre dreams, and I'm sure you can relate with your dreams. Now that I understand Dr. Jalal's explanation of the part of my brain that puts concepts together in a meaningful way, shutting down during REM sleep, I can clearly see why everything in my dream is disjointed and doesn't make much linear sense. WHY ARE DREAMS FILLED WITH STRONG EMOTION, PAST MEMORIES AND PEOPLE? DID YOU KNOW that during the REM state, or while we are dreaming, that “four areas of the brain fire up: the visual spatial regions (that help people to find their way around the world), the motor cortex (creates movement in the body), the hippocampus (our memory center) and amygdala (that processes strong emotions like fear, pleasure or anger)” “Which is why dreams are often filled with movement, strong emotions, past memories, people, experiences and are irrational.” Mathew Walker[v] tells us on his podcast that's all about why we dream. If you can keep a dream log, over time you can see what's going on in your waking hours, and learn from your dreams. Usually our concerns, worries and fears will show up in our dreams in some way, and you can solve them once you are aware of what they are. To conclude this week's Brain Fact Friday, that came from our recent interview with the world's leading expert on sleep paralysis, Dr. Baland Jalal, we took a closer look at the neuroscience of our dream world, explaining why our dreams are so weird, often highly emotional and what we can learn from them. I have four brain tips to make what we have learned about our brain when we sleep, useful in our daily life. UNDERSTANDING SLEEP PARALYSIS: Once we know what sleep paralysis is, that our brain paralyzes our body to keep us safe, then we can understand what might happen if we become perceptually aware during our REM sleep, and stuck between our sleep and wake state. BRAIN TIP FOR THIS FACT: OUR BRAIN DOESN'T LIKE CONFLICT OR INCOMPLETENESS: So figure out what your story is, if you have had a sleep paralysis experience and it's left you feeling unsettled. I explained my British ghost that my brain created as an illusion to tell the story and fill in the blanks of the unknown. What was YOUR sleep paralysis experience, and how can YOU  make sense of it?   WHY ARE DREAMS SO WEIRD AND OFTEN FORGOTTEN: Since we now know the Dorsolateral PFC, the front part of our brain associated with memory, attention and putting things together in a meaningful way in our life, shuts down during REM sleep, we can now understand why dreams are so weird and events that happen are all over the place. If the part of our brain responsible for our memory is turned off, this explains why “95% of our dreams we don't remember” but we might remember the last few minutes, and last stage of our dreams if we are intentional about it. BRAIN TIP FOR THIS FACT: REPEAT TO REMEMBER: (which is John Medina's Brain Rule #5).[vi] If you want to improve this number see if you can remember your dreams when you wake up. Write them down before you do anything else, or they will be forgotten. Sometimes I'm not even awake yet, and I repeat the dream in my head while I'm brushing my teeth, to help me to remember and write it down when I can. Also, it will help if you are intentional about this practice and say “I will remember my dream” before you go to sleep at night. LEARN WHY DREAMS ARE HIGHLY EMOTIONAL: When we know what parts of the brain fire up during REM sleep, especially our amygdala that processes strong emotions, or past memories and experiences, we can now look for messages in our dreams, over time to see what common themes come up. If we can solve the problems that we find in our waking hours, it will help improve the other 1/3 of our life spent in sleep. BRAIN TIP FOR THIS FACT: SLEEP WELL, THINK WELL (John Medina's Brain Rule #7).[vii] Here's the im portance of sleep again. It keeps coming back on this podcast. John Medina writes in his Brain Rules book, that “people vary on how much sleep they need and when they prefer to get it, but the biological need for a nap is universal.” (Medina, Brain Rules)[viii] If there's something bothering you in your waking hours, it will show up in your dreams in some way, and will impact your sleep. To truly sleep well, leading to improved “attention, executive function, working memory, mood, quantitative skills, logical reasoning and even motor dexterity” (Medina) work out your problems, and add a nap to your day to keep your mind operating at its highest levels. While Dr. Jalal does put his neuroscientific mind first with every question I asked him, there were still some questions that he said science couldn't prove, that have a spiritual side. Instead of saying that some things are not possible, he leaves this up to us to keep an open mind, and perhaps in the future, new advancements in science could move us forward so that we could find answers to the spiritual questions of our dreams in a way to benefit our waking life. Until then, I plan to keep on dreaming, and learning as much as I can on this topic to share with you here. I hope you've enjoyed diving deep into sleep paralysis, why our dreams are so weird, and highly emotional with some tips we can all use to take our understanding and awareness to a new level. It really helped me to make sense of my sleep paralysis experience after interviewing Dr. Jalal, and thinking of ways that we can all use what we learned from his research. I do plan to keep an open mind moving forward to see what else I can learn from lucid dreaming, especially as it relates to improving our psychological well-being. See you next week and hope you have sweet dreams this weekend. REFERENCES: [i] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #224 with Dr. Baland Jalal on “Expanding our Awareness into the Mysteries of the Brain During Sleep” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/harvard-neuroscientist-drbaland-jalalexplainssleepparalysislucid-dreaming-andpremonitionsexpandingour-awareness-into-the-mysteries-ofourbrainduring-sl/ [ii] Sleep Paralysis https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21974-sleep-paralysis#:~:text=Why%20does%20sleep%20paralysis%20happen,or%20coming%20out%20of%20REM. [iii] Dorsolateral PFC https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/dorsolateral-prefrontal-cortex#:~:text=The%20dorsolateral%20prefrontal%20cortex%20is,Pathways%20in%20Clinical%20Neuropsychiatry%2C%202016 [iv] Neuroscience of Dreams and Sleep Paralysis at Harvard University Published on YouTube Feb. 13, 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WBL-51kIkc&t=7s [v] Mathew Walker Podcast The Sleep Diplomat https://www.sleepdiplomat.com/podcast [vi] John Medina's Brain Rule #5 Repeat to Remember https://brainrules.net/short-term-memory/#:~:text=Rule%20%235%3A%20Repeat%20to%20remember.&text=Which%20means%2C%20your%20brain%20can,have%20to%20repeat%20to%20remember. [vii] John Medina's Brain Rule #7 Sleep well, think well.

“Healthy workplaces are characterized by strong communication, mutual respect, and attention to work relationships” and “there's no denying that work and workplaces are experiencing a crisis.” (Dr. Marie Gervais, whose newly released book, The Spirit of Work) is “a path to the enhancement of the soul.” Watch this interview on YouTube here https://youtu.be/md088Ynx0ek   For returning guests, welcome back, and for those who are new here, I'm Andrea Samadi, author, and educator, with a passion for learning, understanding difficult concepts, and breaking them down so that we can all use and apply the most current research to improve our productivity and results in our schools, sports environments, and modern workplaces. On today's episode #214, we will be speaking with Dr. Marie Gervais[i] the CEO of Shift Management Inc and the author of The Spirit of Work[ii]," where she offers a high-level yet approachable model in rethinking how we view and structure work. Her book delves into the fascinating relationship between people and work, combining ancient wisdom, modern science, spirituality, and real-world examples to share insights into developing a soul-sustaining workplace culture. She also has a podcast herself, The Culture and Leadership Podcast[iii] where she dives deeper into this topic. After releasing three interviews this year on workplace burnout, it's been clear that workplaces around the world are indeed experiencing a crisis, as I've had many messages relating to individuals with their specific workplace struggle and Dr. Gervais highlights this new workplace problem in the beginning of her book when she shares that “statistics about workplace engagement, happiness and satisfaction have shown consistent decline and saw significant change since the event of the coronavirus pandemic.” (The Spirit of Work). If you are a leader, change-maker, or anyone looking to build a humane and sustainable system of work, and can see that something needs to change in today's workplace, this interview is for you. I hope we can all learn some new perspectives to create happier workplaces where productivity and creativity soars by looking at how to build our future managers with skills that are based on what humans need to succeed and develop in our future workplaces. In today's episode we will cover: The interconnections between science, business practices and sacred texts as they relate to work Find practical tools and workplace examples to apply to management as a soul-enhancing journey Rethink common but destructive workplace cultural assumptions To see ourselves as a spiritual being with thoughts and actions that have lasting effects This episode has already made me move from my thinking/intellectual mind, and see what we can learn together when we incorporate our spirit and soul into our daily work. Let's meet Dr. Marie Gervais! Welcome Dr. Gervais! It's wonderful to meet you. Thank you for coming on the podcast all the way from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada which I always consider my home country, because that's where I grew up. Dr. Gervais, congratulations on releasing your new book, The Spirit of Work, that I watched you unbox[iv]. I know how exciting it is to put your heart, soul and mind into something and release it to the world. I related when you said that releasing this book was like pushing a bolder up a hill. How has this journey to release this book been for you? I've got to mention the story behind your episode, because there's always so many twists and turns with creating content. While researching each guest for this podcast, I put a considerable amount of thought into what I wanted to ask, look for ways that what I want to ask is being mirrored in the world so our interview can help others for years to come, and I begin to connect with that person (I'd say on a soul level) in this research process. Something that's never happened to me in all my years of content creation. While preparing for your interview, something unexpected happened and I actually lost the 5-page script I'd written, after I had finished it and sent it to your team. I saved it and then after opening it again, it was just blank. Your team got the blank version. I'll never know what happened, (and it might not be worth the time to look into that) but the file somehow became corrupt, as you saw, and I had to stop, think about it all, and recreate your questions.   I know there are always lessons to learn with everything we do and I really do think it happened for a reason to make me think hard about The Spirit of Work that I noticed after creating your questions. When this spirit is present, it drives our work in an entirely different way. INTRO Q: What do you think about this AHA Moment connected to your book and this interview that perhaps I needed to rethink my original questions for you and recreate them from more of a soul level, than mind? Q1: What does the Spirit of Work mean to you and how did a negative experience from your job led you to continuously ask questions about workplace culture leading you to write this book? Q2: We have covered the idea that human beings live simultaneously on three planes (our spiritual/soul side, intellectual/mental side and physical side on many episodes, starting with Dr. Daniel Siegel who talked about “Mindsight[v]” as being “the basis for social and emotional intelligence,” or Dr. John Medina[vi] who mentioned Theory of Mind as a way to connect to others on a deeper level,  my mentor Bob Proctor talked about paying attention to our spiritual side all the time in the creative process and Greg Link mentioned that even when we die, our spirit still exists. Why is the mind/body/soul connection important to you and your work? Q3: I do believe that we create what we imagine and that “we build systems around the outcomes of our beliefs to prove the veracity of our beliefs” (Spirit of Work). How can we build workplaces we love where we can be with others in healthy, enjoyable interactions, that build prosperity and solve conflicts easily? Where do we even begin to make the change that you see? Q4- I saw a quote that made sense to me, and I'm sure anyone listening would agree that “true leaders don't create followers” they create more leaders, but often there's no room for new ideas in our corporate world and its rare, if not impossible to go from the bottom of an organization, to the very top, without someone leaving, proving themselves somewhere else, and coming back with a promotion. Taking this leap outside of an organization (to a new one) is a difficult one, but so often it's the ONLY way for someone to push past this block and forge their own path. What's behind this concept where managers or leaders DO NOT create other leaders, but squash them into a corner, so they have to end up quitting, and proving themselves somewhere else? Is this a fearful leader, and what needs to change for this quote to ring true in more organizations? Q5: For someone who was promoted into a position of leadership (maybe someone with a tech background who didn't have to worry about people skills in the past) and they now find they are dealing with people and all their complexity (mind/body/soul).  What keys to success would you offer this person to unlock the skills that will accelerate anyone in the workplace? Q6: What are some common mistakes that you see in the workplace that leaders can avoid with your experience? Q7: This type of training was left out of ALL the corporate training I ever went through, but was at the center of the work I did while in the motivational speaking industry. We were always looking at how our past would show up in our present-day life, and identify subconscious blocks that might be holding us back. Bob Proctor called them paradigms, or beliefs that have turned into habits over time, that either work for us, or against us. How can leaders help their team members to identify their subconscious blocks to move them forward and towards their goals? Q8: Your call to “rethink work, informed by new understandings about the greatness we are destined to achieve as a human race” is a noble cause that takes thought from all of us. Maybe it was why I lost my original questions, so I had to THINK about them again, and ask them in a way that they came from my heart (from my emotional side after crying a bit) but it made me think about how I bring my “soul” to each interview. What do you want our listeners to take away from this interview? What are your final thoughts we should all take some time to ponder for a bit? Q9: For people to learn more about your book, podcast and the work you do at Shift Management Inc, is the best place to learn more, your website? https://shiftworkplace.com/ Thank you for meeting with me today, and sharing your vision for a happier, more productive workplace with the world. You've given me a lot to think about, and strategies to shift to soul-enhancing thoughts that bring joy with my work, and ways that we can all shift away from when we are soul-diminishing. FOLLOW DR. MARIE GERVAIS Website - http://shiftworkplace.com Twitter - https://twitter.com/shiftworkplace Email - marie@shiftworkplace.com c 780-993-1062 www.shiftworkplace.com/the-spirit-of-work REFERENCES: [i] https://shiftworkplace.com/ [ii] https://shiftworkplace.com/the-spirit-of-work/ [iii] https://shiftworkplace.com/podcast [iv] https://www.instagram.com/p/CdG1iHVolJP/ [v]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #28 with Dr. Daniel Siegel on “Mindsight as the Basis for Social and Emotional Intelligence”  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][vi]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #42 with Dr. John Medina on “Implementing Brain Rules in Our Schools and Workplaces of the Future”  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/dr-john-medina-on-implementing-brain-rules-in-the-schools-and-workplaces-of-the-future/  

Want to avoid mistakes in Long Distance Investing?  Download your FREE document at http://keeponcashflow.clickfunnels.com/7mistakes  Going Long Podcast Episode 201: Live a Fulfilled Life with Mailbox Money In the conversation with today's guest, Dusten Hendrickson, you'll learn the following:   [00:25 - 03:04] Show introduction with comments from Billy. [03:04 - 07:19] Guest introduction and first questions. [07:19 - 18:11] The backstory and decisions made that led Dusten to this point in his journey. [18:11 - 20:49] Dusten talks about why he thinks it's often not the best option to invest in your local market location but instead to invest beyond your backyard and out of state in Real Assets.  [20:49 - 25:20] How to go about finding and hiring the right operator that fits with your plan and is right for your investment project.  [25:20 - 30:40] How Dusten's experience in construction gives him advantages in the Real Estate investment space.  [30:40 - 34:07] Dusten takes a look at the differences in risk between a regular value-add investment and a full scale development investment.  [34:07 - 36:02] We find out what Dusten's definition of Financial Freedom is.  [36:02 - 40:50] Dusten tells us about his Mailbox Money system and investment portal.  Here's what Dusten shared with us during today's conversation:    Where in the world Dusten is based currently: Brookings, South Dakota. The most positive thing to happen in the past 24 hours: Started reading the book, The Go-Giver by Bob Burg! Favourite European City: Copenhagen, Denmark. A mistake that Dusten would like you to learn from so that you don't have to pay full price: Get over your fear of failure, and keep on trying! Book Recommendation: Brain Rules, by John Medina.   Be sure to reach out and connect with Dusten Hendrickson by using the info below:   Website:  https://mailboxmoneyre.com/  To see the Video Version of today's conversation just CLICK HERE.   How to leave a review for The Going Long Podcast: https://youxccbxtu.be/qfRqLVcf8UI    Start taking action TODAY so that you can gain more Education and Control over your financial life.   Do you want to have more control and avoid the mistakes that I made getting started in long distance investing?  Then you can DOWNLOAD the 7 Mistakes to Avoid in Long Distance Investing Guide by clicking HERE.   Be sure to connect with Billy!  He's made it easy for you to do…Just go to any of these sites:   Website: www.billykeels.com Youtube: billykeels Facebook: Billy Keels Fan Page Instagram: @billykeels Twitter: @billykeels LinkedIn: Billy Keels

John Medina is the owner and founder of John Medina Buys Houses.   John's Bio:   I am currently a real estate investor, cash home buyer, house flipper, family man, and believe it or not, a former plumber. As a plumbing contractor for 21 years, I always had a passion for real estate. In 2013 I decided to make buying and renovating houses his full-time job. Since then, I have been in the “house buying business” and has flipped over 70 houses to date. I was born and raised in San Pedro, California (near the Port of Los Angeles). I currently take an active part in my community as it is important for me to be honest with people. As I always say we at my company believe in doing what we say were are going do, be fair, and leave people in better situations than when we found them!” I got interested in real estate because I did have a plumbing business. I worked on a lot of properties over the years. So, I started to think about an investment property or two of my own. I had a budget and wanted to basically leverage that budget. In 2009, I emersed myself in started studying more and more about the industry, the business. As I was about to start looking around, I started to get a little fearful. That's when I enrolled in a Bruce Norris boot camp to look at how to invest in property in California. That's when I started taking action in California. I bought my first property in Wilmington (California) in 2012. Right around then, my plumbing business started slowing down a bit. Instead of ramping up for that business, as I felt things were sort of changing for me, I decided to make real estate investing and house flipping my full-time business. I had the education and confidence and also took another 20-week educational course. In November 2013, I along with my wife and her “okay” [and that was a 1-minute decision because at that point we both knew this was a business we could truly get behind full-time], started shutting down the plumbing business and began ramping up the house flipping business. Social Media Links:: https://www.facebook.com/johnmedinabuyshouses/ https://www.instagram.com/johnmedinare/?hl=en https://twitter.com/JMBuysHouses https://www.linkedin.com/company/john-medina-buys-houses/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaahtgHo58IMgnK44slAALg  

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If you're looking for a piece of advice about creating a profitable real estate business, you're in the right show! Join our guest John Medina explaining how to establish a fantastic team and how to keep your company's tactics evolving. Make sure to listen to more! Key Takeaways from this episode When to rehab or wholesale a property The importance of having a good team in building a business Ways to be a better leader in your own business How to improve your real estate selling process Tips to cultivating positive mindset in a team References/Links Mentioned DarrenDaily On-Demand The 4-Hour Work Week | Paperback and Audible   About John Medina John Medina is the owner and founder of John Medina Buys Houses. The company is a reputable home buyer that does fix and flips. They have been buying houses for cash in Los Angeles and surrounding areas since 2013. When John is not in real estate he is active in his community and loves spending time volunteering and helping others. Connect with John Website: John Medina Buys Houses Email: john@johnmedinabuyshouses.com Instagram: @johnmedinare Facebook: John Medina Buys Houses LinkedIn: John Medina YouTube: John Medina Buys Houses Phone: 310-928-9688   Neil J. Timmins is on a mission to make a deep personal impact in the lives of his team members and business partners through his work as a real-estate investor and mentor. He started as a traditional real estate agent where his team was recognized by the Wall Street Journal as a Top 100 team. Eventually, he made the transition from Realtor to full time investor.  Over the course of his career, Neil has been involved in over $300,000,000 in real estate transactions. Neil's portfolio depth includes assets ranging from houses to industrial properties. Recently, Neil and his team launched the Legacy Impact Partner Program where they partner with fix and flip investors from around the country. Neil's team brings capital to fund and fix rehabs, operational expertise, and years of experience catapulting their partner's business to new heights. Want to partner? You can learn more and book a call with Neil at www.LegacyImpactPartners.com. Connect with Neil Website: Real Grit LinkedIn: Neil J. Timmins Facebook: Neil Timmins

Do not quit, Hard times will come in business but you can not quit. Business owners fail everyday but it is the ones that fail forward that are able to make a real impact on those around us. Check what John Medina has to say about this topic!  Learning the Sales Process: https://clicksandbricksacademy.com/  Welcome Back to Clicks and Bricks Business Podcast! If you are new here welcome for your first time and we appreciate you listening to todays episode. Today is the 137th episode of Clicks and Bricks, Ken is talking to John Medina who is in the real-estate business. He has been around this industry a long time and he tells us his story in how he got started and what made him decide to finally make the jump into being his own boss to live the life he wants to live. He is passionate about never giving up and moving forward now matter what!   04:00 Real-estate business during pandemic  09:00 Overpaying in the Real-estate business  12:30 Corrections in the real-estate market  18:30 Write down your goals  22:45 Marketing budget in the real-estate business  28:18 Target Marketing  33:30 Working from home  37:00 Do not quit   About John:  John was a Plumbing Contractor for 21 years. Yet he always had a passion for Real Estate, in 2013 he decided to make buying and renovating houses his full-time job. Since then he has over 7 years of experience in the house buying business and has flipped over 70 houses adding to his experience in the business.   About John Medina Buys Houses: We are John and Yvette Medina, reputable and local home buyers that fix and flip properties. As Los Angeles house flippers with extensive experience, we have been buying houses for cash in Los Angeles and surrounding areas since 2013 from all types of homeowners, each with very different situations. Our company offers solutions for those situations with an easy and stress-free sales process. We specialize in working closely with homeowners to provide exceptional customer service based on our core values.   Contact:  Facebook https://www.facebook.com/johnmedinabuyshouses/ LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmedina-buyshouses/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/johnmedinare Twitter https://twitter.com/JMBuysHousesPhone (310) 928-9688 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/clicksandbricks/support (https://anchor.fm/clicksandbricks/support) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices