Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning
We cover the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning (for schools) and emotional intelligence training (in the workplace). Our podcast provides tools, resources and ideas for parents, teachers and employees to improve well-being, achievement and productivity using simple neuroscience as it relates to our cognitive (the skills our brain uses to think, read, remember, pay attention), social and interpersonal relationships (with ourselves and others) and emotional learning (where we recognize and manage our emotions, demonstrate empathy and cope with frustration and stress). Season 1: Provides you with the tools, resources and ideas to implement proven strategies backed by the most current neuroscience research to help you to achieve the long-term gains of implementing a social and emotional learning program in your school, or emotional intelligence program in your workplace. Season 2: Features high level guests who tie in social, emotional and cognitive strategies for high performance in schools, sports and the workplace. Season 3: Ties in some of the top motivational business books and guest with the most current brain research to take your results and productivity to the next level. Season 4: Brings in positive mental health and wellness strategies to help cope with the stresses of life, improving cognition, productivity and results. Season 5: Continues with the theme of mental health and well-being with strategies for implementing practical neuroscience to improve results for schools, sports and the workplace. Season 6: The Future of Educational Neuroscience and its impact on our next generation. Diving deeper into the Science of Learning. Season 7: Brain Health and Well-Being (Focused on Physical and Mental Health). Season 8: Brain Health and Learning (Focused on How An Understanding of Our Brain Can Improve Learning in Ourselves (adults, teachers, workers) as well as future generations of learners. Season 9: Strengthening Our Foundations: Neuroscience 101: Going Back to the Basics PART 1 Season 10:Strengthening Our Foundations: Neuroscience 101: Going Back to the Basics PART 2 Season 11: The Neuroscience of Self-Leadership
Episodes
Episodes
Tuesday Dec 10, 2019
Tuesday Dec 10, 2019
Welcome to EPISODE #31, this is Andrea Samadi, a former educator who has been fascinated with understanding the science behind high performance strategies in schools, sports and the workplace for the past 20 years. Today we have a flashback interview from 2016. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be sharing some of our high-level interviews that are hosted in our online learning portal for schools and the workplace. These interviews are eye-opening with some of the most powerful insights from world leaders, and high achievers from around the globe. This interview was audio only, but there are some visuals on YouTube of Nik's work.
Today I want to introduce you to The Thrillionaire® Entrepreneurial Alchemist, Civilian Astronaut, Extreme Adventurer, and Keynote Speaker. Nik Halik is the founder and CEO of Lifestyle Revolution and 5 Day Weekend®. He became a multi-millionaire and amassed great wealth through savvy investments in property, business and the financial markets. Nik’s group of companies have financially educated and life coached over 1 Million clients in over 57 countries.
Nik has trekked to over 157 countries, dived to the wreck of the Titanic to have lunch on the bow, been active as a mountaineer on some of the world's highest peaks, performed a HALO skydive above the summit of Mt Everest in the Himalayas, climbed into the crater of an exploding erupting volcano [1,700 Degrees Fahrenheit] for an overnight sleepover and just recently, entering the hermit kingdom of North Korea to expose a sweat shop factory operating illegally for an American conglomerate. To learn more about Nik Halik visit www.nikhalik.com or find him on Twitter @nikhalik or Facebook Nik Halik. He was the back-up Astronaut for the NASA / Russian Soyuz TMA-13 flight to the International Space Station in 2008. He currently remains in mission allocation status for a future flight to Earth's only manned outpost in orbit– the International Space Station with the Russian Federation.
Andrea Samadi: He has a crazy background. If you look him up, you can see, and when you get to know Nik, you learn that he's humble down to earth with zero ego. He just wants to do as much as he can to help others. Take a listen to what Nik has to say. His story is so powerful, it will blow your mind on how he's taken his vision for his life and created a screenplay for that vision and how he's living that out now.
QUESTIONS NIK WILL UNCOVER
Question 1: I’ve never seen anyone who has set and achieved such high goals for themselves. What was the situation that ignited your passion to live life to its fullest?
Question 2: How did you heal your body so you could go out into the world and accomplish your goals?
Question 3: Nik, you make everything look so simple. Was what you have done difficult? How do you approach the obstacles you have faced?
Question 4: Do you still count down each day in your life so you live each day to it’s fullest? NOTE: The ticker website is no longer working, but the concept or idea is valuable.
Question 5: What do you do in your down time? Do you watch tv and if so, what are you watching/learning from these days?
Introduction: For the first decade of his life, Nick Halik was medically confined to his bedroom, so at age eight he drafted the screenplay of his life, including his top 10 list of goals. At age 14 he opened up his very first business. At age 17 he relocated to Hollywood, California to perform live on stage. At age 19 he bought his very first investment property. Five years later, he became a multimillionaire. Now he owns private homes in the most beautiful places on earth, nature versus the planet and pursues exciting how your adrenaline and Epic adventures. He has summited the highest mountains in the world and visited over 100 countries. He's dived down five miles and had lunch on the bow of the ship wreck Titanic. He empowers thousands of individuals, passionately sharing his life story and insights on how to live a true life. In 2009, he wrote an additional goal to create and inspire 1 million new thrilling airs across the globe and to sell fund the building of educational schools in poor remote villages across South America and Africa. Nik became a flight qualified and certified civilian astronaut. Now he's set to rocket to outer space, live on a space station and with future plans to walk the lunar surface of the moon, completing the remainder of his original top 10 list of goals. Let's give a warm welcome to global wealth strategists, successful entrepreneur, national speaker, astronauts, high adrenaline adventure and best selling author.
Andrea Samadi: Nik, we are thrilled to speak with you today where we reached you today.
Nik Halik: I'm just basically, you know, in a airline lounge right now. I've just been traveling around the world. I've been in Iran, Italy, and Brazil the last, 10 days. I've been in a whirlwind tour. And, right now I'm just making my way to Asia and Australia the next few days.
Andrea Samadi: So exciting. Now, Nik, the purpose of this call is to inspire young people who study the Jumpstart to Success program. So they're motivated and empowered by your story to create their own exciting ethic following your lead in example. Now I'm going to give a quick background for those who are listening and have not heard of Nik Halik yet, but if anyone goes on Google and just looks up your name, you'll be blown away by what he has accomplished in his lifetime. Now, Nik, I've never heard of people who've set goals like this. Can you go and explain to our listeners what situation influenced you to set such extraordinary goals for yourself
Nik Halik: Definitely you know, like, I mean for the first 10 years of my life, for those who are not really privy to my life story, but, I was medically confined to my bedroom. I had chronic allergies, debilitating asthma, and I pretty much led that the boy in the plastic bubble type life kind of thing. I never really joined academia until about age 10. So I believe my initial conditioning was somewhat different because I sort of grew up, I mean my, my initial mentors where the encyclopedia Britannica and the world of Tintin who was this animated cartoon hero, this Robin reporter going into most craziest adventures around the world. And it's amazing how sort of reflect on my life. I mean there's the articulate side, but there's also the, the, there's also the, the kaleidoscopic adventurous side gang on wakey crazy adventures and all sorts of this kind of things.
Nik Halik: So for me, I sort of grew up differently because the world, to me, that, I will never be able to lead, live a ordinary life. I mean, I'll always be played by medical complications, medical hurdles or whatever. So for me, I've, I just changed the polarity on the whole world. I mean, I just changed my whole map of the world. In fact, you know, basically everybody knows, I just perceived it as a temporary. Yes and I just, I kind of, I just changed the polarity of my thinking. So an actual fact as opposed to being tired, I was going to live a very ordinary lifestyle. I knew that I to extract more out of my life in order to live a more extra ordinary type life. So at age eight, I drafted the screenplay to my life and those top 10 list of goals, is basically consumed over 32 years of my life and I'm still acting out those goals, those very same goals.
Andrea Samadi: Wow. What a story.That's just amazing. I can understand how it happened because I'm a mom and I had a daughter who was ill, very ill, young, and so I'd had to pull her out of school so I understand how it happened, but in my head, at age 10, how did you, did you heal yourself, do you think?
Nik Halik: Here's the thing, I mean, I was placed in an incubator round about 30 days old and I mean I was, I was actually born a 10 pound five ounces and I, and I lost a lot of weight. I got really sick, was in and out of hospitals for like for the first, you know, the first eight years kind of thing. And that was tough and for a long time there, you know, in incredibly paranoid parents as you can imagine. But here's the thing, you know, say pharmaceutically, doped, you know, addicted and it wasn't around until about age 10 that I basically just stopped taking all the pharmaceutical drugs. You see. The thing was my immune system was so addicted. These debilitating and chronic allergies and asthma.
Nik Halik: What have you, I mean, You are so weak that I'm even a sick of dust and in cental Poland. But, I stopped, I changed the polarity thinking I stopped, I refuse to go the doctors and the hospitals and I refuse to take the medication. And, it wasn't like an overnight turnaround. But, it was a gradual process and I just, you know, I mean, I really healed. But here's the thing, I, I believe that the doctors and the pharmaceutical industry had sabotaged my health and all I basically did was, you know, I gave life to that particular you know, mindset I guess. And I, I had personally altered that particular paradigm and change it. So I can just, I can do things more on my terms as opposed to being dictated to by the pharmaceutical industry.
Andrea Samadi: absolutely. So you really did find and prove the mind body connection,
Nik Halik: And it's like a particular frequency. Once you dial into it, it's like bottles of the bag. It's like there was just, you know, there was a whole world that that appeared to me kind of thing. And, for me, what really kept me going was when I, when I sort of digested and absorbed every page of the encyclopedia Britannica, I knew there was a world that that existed outside my bedroom windows kind of thing. And that was the one of those that was that captivating, caliber budding type energy though that kept me going because I wanted to like, you know, live their life that existed in the encyclopedia Britannica. And I knew that all's all up to me and that's an actual day. And the crazy thing was a, I wrote down my top 10 list of goals and as I reflect on our same top 10 list of goals, inadvertently what I did was I drafted the screenplay to my life because, and, and since age eight, you know, I've been the actor, the producer, and a director of my top 10 screenplay that I wrote down as an eight year old.
Nik Halik: And you know, I'm still accountable to their young eight year old. They're still resides in my heart because here's my coach and I'm still the student because it's the little, this little eight year old kid still inside me, they're still dictates and drives my life.
Andrea Samadi: Wow. Nick, it's such a powerful story when, when I read what you've accomplished, I was curious how you got past and healed your body to start blowing out all your goals so at age 14 opening your first business. It couldn't have just happened. Like it seemed like it was so easy for you.
Nik Halik: I mean, trust me, I've had every medical, every medical hurdle and obstacle. I mean, I'm going to want, I embrace obstacles. I love obstacles. I look, I seek obstacles where most people actually feel and a deterred by them. For me, it's the only way to grow and for me. And so I'm so fortunate, even though I had all these, I had all these medical dramas, I'm so fortunate to have had that type of experience because it extracted more out of my life. It extracted more out of me because, you know, being pharmaceutically addicted, I lost my faculty of thinking. Whereas I claimed ownership on my thinking and you know, and you know. And an interesting thing was, you know, those top 10 list of goals. I didn't view it as a, as a bucket list because I don't believe in bucket lists.
Nik Halik: I think, I think buckle is a very negative because you know, why have a buckle list and you know, and then you know, be told you've got terminal cancer and then one day decide to live a life. I mean, I became the assessment on my own life. In other words, they become this. I became like an assassin going out there to make sure that I extract the most kaleidoscopic adventures and just add as much color into my life and nothing because I was deprived of that in my first book and using my life. Trust me. I mean, you know, I've just, life has just reciprocated with interests for me.
Andrea Samadi: Absolutely. I actually saw an interview that you did on 21st century TV with Lou Hardy that you mentioned that you had somewhere a ticker. Do you still do that Are you still, um, timing each day as if it's your last
Nik Halik: yeah, I've actually got a, I'll put up a website a number of years ago and it's basically my, my countdown clock to my life expiry enough basically every day. I mean, I'm, you know, I, all my life I've always, I've always done the most extreme things, but I've always polarized and changed the polarity of how I basically view life. NOTE: The ticker is no longer on Nik's website, but the idea is still valuable.
Nik Halik: I mean, look, there are statistics out there that basically tell how long I'm going to live for, for example, a female in America is about, uh, about 81 and for a male 77 is the average. Well, here's the thing, why do people buy into this? What do people bind to these statistics? And what I view, you know, these are invested interests, is, is there an agenda. And it turned out to a lot of individuals when they do retire with continues in retirement, most people tend to die because they've lost it. They've given up a purpose led life a lot without purpose, basically all you're doing is you'll, you'll, you're retiring and you'll find your job securing preparation to dichotomy. So for me, I love life because I knew that the first 10 years of my life were very, very young and very tumultuous kind of thing.
Nik Halik: So for me, I love live and I've gone to great lengths to make sure that I loved my life and live my life each day as if it's my lines kind of thing. And genetically wise, looking at my family tree, my great, great grandparents, my grandparents, and you know, really exemplary the family tree and examining my culture, the foods that I eat, how I live my life. I sort of worked out a particular age that I see foreseeable in relation to my light's expiring date. And I created a, I created a countdown clock.
Nik Halik: I've got a thousand of clients who are using my philosophy and they've taught me that the productivity levels have skyrocketed over 200% because they're getting more done on the day. They're this, they're smiling, they're more happy each day because they're approaching age days. If it's the last day. And think about it, if today was your last day, what would you do differently You'll extract more out of it. You'll tell people that you love them, you know, your contact friends they haven't seen in years, and take them out to lunch, you'll go down and do dates, point of vigils without the accolades kind of thing. You'd go in there and make a difference. So that's exactly how I approached my life on a daily basis. So, I mean today, I've got you can, you can probably, I'll tell you exactly how many, how many thousands of hours I've got to go.
Nik Halik: Um, It's probably about, I mean, you've probably got a NikHalik.com you could probably say for yourself, but it's a very, very unique social experiment that's really had a great impact on my clients.
Andrea Samadi:So there is no television watching on your end? I see you don't waste your time?
Nik Halik: I'll look, I'll watch probably television at nighttime kind of thing. But for me it's gotta be, um, it's going to be educational. It's gonna be something, it's going to be insightful. And it's unfortunate. I mean, I live in the United States in an 85% of American television is all reality TV. I mean, you know, there's, here's the thing, the system right now, the way it works, there's, there's a, there's an agenda right now about the dumbing, the dumbing down and the numbing, the numbing down on the world's population. Because when you dumbed down the population, you keep them in field and then capitalism kicks in and you make sure that, um, uh, society basically takes on way too much debt.
Nik Halik: Now they live in fear of losing their house, their job, their car, and whatever kind of thing. And now you're, you're dumbing down the population. You feed them crap on television, which means you're now able to control the population. It control the faculty of their respective thinking. And what happens People die on time. Why Because it's, it's, I mean, look, there's, there's a lot of thinking around this. And the way I look alive is I'm not gonna allow anybody else to dictate their perception of me. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna allow anybody else to define my reality. In other words, I've drafted my own screenplay of my own date, my own expiry date. Uh, in life. There are two rules. One of the one, there are no rules. One, number two is don't forget rule number one. And that's pretty much how I view live.
Nik Halik: And I, I can control anything in the world except the weather and traffic. But I want to, I want control. I want total dominion about everything in life. And for me, it's all about I'm living, love my own terms and conditions at all times.
Andrea Samadi: Absolutely, did anyone discourage you or laugh when you showed them your goals?
Nik Halik: You know what, And it only served the purpose of energizing me further. And I love it. I, NASA is a lab dream still is. A lot of individuals are say no because I perceived a person's no as a temporary. Yes. Because ultimately I will always get in my way. Right. You know, you know, I'll negotiate my way out of any particular circumstance in life. I'll always get to my way because, you know, for me it's, it's, it's, it's not about changing my life.
Nik Halik: I want to impact other people's lives because in the words of Socrates, Socrates said in life, and let it be measured by your contribution. You know So for me, I view myself and my teachings as a bottle break for, you know, for freedom seeking free spirit of visionaries, change agents, rebels, rockstars, entrepreneurs and pioneers. And that is my why. That's what defines me. That's what drives me and me. That's what I'm, you know, that's what really calibrates me because there are individuals just like me who says they are different, you know, I mean, you know, I mean, I've cut a part of my life now to the highest order right now. You know, why Because I sensed the disturbances in the fabric of human society and I knew there was something there. And I'm new and I'm, and I view my teachings and my, my, my role as a leader right now, you know, uh, I'm a big enough light, Illumina and a path for others to follow. I want to be a lighthouse. I want to inspire them so they in turn can inspire the next generation and the next generation kind of thing. Because, you know, the way I look at it, there's a brain rewarding neural pathway, which gives access to that reckless life quality that produces this particular calibration of energy.
Andrea Samadi: Absolutely. How did you, who mentored you to get to this level of thinking I know the adventures of Tintin on television, the Britannica, but, who, who got your mind to this level?
Nik Halik: Yeah. Well, here's the thing, right Um, you know, for the age of the men, I've always been inspired by a lot of individuals. I've always been inspired by a lot of individuals, um, historical figures who then became part of my virtual mastermind in my teenage years. I used to have cutouts on my virtual mastermind individuals from the history. And I would always, I would always recount back to them and go, what would he say What would he do What would they say So I had my virtual mastermind. They were pretty much a part of my life and my teenage years. But it wasn't until I arrived in the United States as a teenager that I'm Bob Proctor's teaching. Bob, we had a great kaleidoscopic influence I have in my life kind of thing. And, you know, Bob gave me a set of You Were Born Rich and Bob Proctor also exposed me to Napoleon Hill or all in the same year.
Nik Halik: And mind you, I was only a teenager at this particular point. And the funny thing is being exposed to Napoleon Hill's work by Bob Proctor, I'm now an advisor for the Napoleon Hill Foundation. I've actually partnered with them and I've been involved at a couple of projects with them, in a couple of their, products, which is, which has been a great, a great testimony to their particular calibrating mindset kind of thing. But being exposed as a young teenager and now being an advisor for their sane Napoleon Hill Foundation, and absolute buzz. But definitely I actually, Bob Proctor is my, in a Bob's like the alkaline battery of the personal development industry kind of thing. And Bob Proctor, you know, I call him my godfather, but, he's had his, an amazing impact on my life too. And I love the guy. I mean, I'm going to be with him in a couple of months time. We'll be speaking together in Toronto, in Canada. But, he truly is an Epic individual.
Andrea Samadi: Absolutely. We share the same mentor. He's behind the whole Jumpstart to Success program through videos. And he's definitely the one that I met in my late twenties that changed my path.
Nik Halik: Right. Definitely. It like, you know, he drills deeper than anybody else in the industry kind of thing. And like is a, is it really is a, it's just a, is this a wonderful noble individuals, a wonderful person.
Andrea Samadi: Exactly. Now, Nick, what are you doing now with your time What's your next step
Nik Halik: Well, for me, I'm, I'm on this constant quest to basically, visit every country on the planet. I've now been to 135 countries. I've got 63 more countries remaining. You know, I've climbed the highest mountains in the world. You know, I've had lunch in the Titanic, I've rocketed into space. You know, I've, I've explored the deepest caves with the largest crystals on the planet. So for me, it's all about adding more color to my life, you know, and I've got, all those remaining 10 goals that are right down as a young eight year old, eight down, two to go. I've got to fly to the international space station in the coming years that I've already negotiated with the Russian government. And the bigger hurdle, which will be number one, will be toward the lunar surface of the moon. And, um, I've got a backup plan if my life was to expire for whatever reason, I've already paid an American consortium to rock and my crematory remains to the literal sense of the moon.
Nik Halik: That way I will get to walk an event because on the moon there is no atmosphere, no rain, no wind, meaning where my ashes are sprinkled on the moon, I will get to walk on the moon irrespective, I guess, you know. So for me it's all about, um, you know, um, there's so much I want to do and it's like I'm, I'm just, you know, I'm, I'm blessed to live this life and I don't waste each day. I, man, I make each day count, you know, I want to impact people's lives on a daily basis kinda thing. And for me that's, that's what's really, um, as what's calibrated very, very strong in me ever since I was a young boy kind of thing. And, you know, ultimately it's my responsibility to leave the world a better place. You know, it's the legacy, it's the footprints that I'll leave behind and I want to keep that big and of light, still illuminating for the next few centuries. That is
Andrea Samadi: absolutely. Well, Nick, you're incredibly inspiring and we want to follow you and keep up learning from you as you keep moving forward. What's the best way for people to learn and watch you?
Nik Halik: Definitely www.nikhalik.com
Andrea Samadi: Well, you're such an inspiration, Nick, and I want to thank you so much for taking the time as you're traveling on the road and all over the world to speak with our students that will study the Jumpstart to Success program. We're going to follow you and I'll keep everyone updated on where Nik is and we just want to thank you so much. You're an amazing individual, so inspiring and you're definitely making an impact on the world.
Nik Halik: Thank you so much. Definitely. So, you know, in passing, just, you know, dare to dream, Liberty, passion, define your smile and just monetize your passion and monetize your life. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.
Monday Dec 02, 2019
Monday Dec 02, 2019
This is episode #30 with Mark Robert Waldman, one of the world’s leading neuroscience researchers on consciousness, communication, and spirituality, and his discoveries have been published in journals throughout the world. You can listen to the podcast here, or watch the interview and presentation on YouTube.
Welcome to the “Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning” podcast, my name is Andrea Samadi, a former educator who has been fascinated with understanding the science behind high performance strategies in schools, sports and the workplace for the past 20 years. Today we have one of the leading neuroscience researchers in the country who I was blessed to be mentored by 5 years ago when I needed to add the most current brain research to my programs. Mark has an international practice as a NeuroCoach, training students and business leaders how to use the latest discoveries in neuroscience to enhance personal and professional development. I can say that if I was able to learn this information, well enough to teach it to others, that anyone can. Mark took his time and was patient as I learned the basics of neuroscience and he taught me in such a way that I never once felt that the information was too difficult to grasp though it did take effort and focus to learn these new concepts.
Mark has authored 14 books, including the bestseller How God Changes Your Brain, an Oprah pick in 2012. His new book called NeuroWisdom: The New Brain Science of Money, Happiness, and Success contains 100 evidence-based strategies, with guided audios and videos, showing you how to manipulate and balance the major networks of consciousness, awareness, and imagination. These tools are now used in schools, health centers, and businesses throughout the world. He teaches at Loyola Marymount University and his work has been featured in Time Magazine, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Oprah Magazine. He has been on hundreds of radio and television programs including PBS and NPR. For more information, go to www.MarkRobertWaldman.com. You can find Mark on Twitter @MarkRWaldman, LinkedIn or Facebook.
Welcome Mark! It’s always fun to speak with you. I’m so grateful for all that you’ve taught me.
I know you have a presentation planned and will share your screen with us. Before we dive into your lesson:
Can you explain what exactly “Neurowisdom”[i] is (the title of your most recent book) and how we can discover this new voice to guide us towards a greater sense of awareness?
Questions Mark will uncover during presentation:
Can you explain the new research that shows “you can consciously teach your brain to lower neural activity that generates negativity and fear and increase neural activity that generates confidence and positive decision-making?”[ii]
Why is mind-wandering essential for problem-solving and decision-making? “If you don’t allow your brain to enter this highly imaginative state of mental activity before a challenging task, your memory, performance and mental health will be compromised.”[iii] Last summer, I watched the baseball player Wilson Ramos[iv], from the NY Mets, sit and meditate before his game while the other players were warming up. His performance in this game was phenomenal with a homerun and focused play and I did wonder about the science behind his focused mind before the game.
What exactly do you mean when you say that “Daydreaming and mind wandering give you direct access to creative talents that are unique to human beings?”[v] Is this our intuition? What talents do we have? When we get flashes of insight how do we know what they mean? Can we misinterpret what we see? How can we best use this talent/skill?
How do you teach mindfulness to your Executive MBA students, so they learn to “remain calm, relaxed, and highly focused on achieving more goals with little stress?” [vi]
Can you explain what happens when your values are not aligned with your work and why this causes “increased neural stress, happiness fades away, and burnout is more likely to occur?”[vii]
Why do we experience deeper levels of happiness and satisfaction with “self-awareness and social awareness?”[viii]
You Will Learn:
What is Brain-based Experiential Learning and Living
How to use your Intuition
Brain-Network Theory
New Brain Science for Overcoming Anxiety
How the Brain Learns
Discover how your brain likes to learn (it will surprise you and has nothing to do with what you’ve experienced the classroom) 2. Find out why mind-wandering and daydreaming are essential for psychological health. Right in line with Srinivasan Pillay’s book “Tinker, Dabble, Doodle, Try” that talks about the default network in the brain and the power of “unfocusing” your brain. Mark’s book “Neurowisdom” was the first book to talk about the default network mode and provides many practical examples for using your brain to improve finances, happiness and success. 3. Learn how Brain Network Theory is changing the world of neuroscience…and your health! 4. See what living neurons and networks actually look like.
RESOURCES:
Mindfulness Bell App (search in the app store)
[i] Mark Robert Waldman and Chris Manning Neurowisdom: The New Brain Science of Money, Happiness and Success (Jan 31, 2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N9BLBDH/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
[ii] Mark Robert Waldman and Chris Manning Neurowisdom: The New Brain Science of Money, Happiness and Success (Jan 31, 2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N9BLBDH/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 Page 23
[iii] Mark Robert Waldman and Chris Manning Neurowisdom: The New Brain Science of Money, Happiness and Success (Jan 31, 2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N9BLBDH/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 Page 24
[iv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Ramos
[v] Mark Robert Waldman and Chris Manning Neurowisdom: The New Brain Science of Money, Happiness and Success (Jan 31, 2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N9BLBDH/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 Page 24
[vi] Mark Robert Waldman and Chris Manning Neurowisdom: The New Brain Science of Money, Happiness and Success (Jan 31, 2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N9BLBDH/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 Page 27
[vii] Mark Robert Waldman and Chris Manning Neurowisdom: The New Brain Science of Money, Happiness and Success (Jan 31, 2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N9BLBDH/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 Page 28
[viii] Mark Robert Waldman and Chris Manning Neurowisdom: The New Brain Science of Money, Happiness and Success (Jan 31, 2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N9BLBDH/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 Page 82
Monday Nov 25, 2019
How to Re-Wire Your Brain for Happiness and Well-Being to Optimize Learning
Monday Nov 25, 2019
Monday Nov 25, 2019
Welcome to the “Neuroscience Meets SEL” podcast EPISODE #29, my name is Andrea Samadi, a former educator who has been fascinated with understanding the science behind high performance strategies in schools, sports and the workplace for the past 20 years. Let’s dive right into this topic on “How to Re-Wire Your Brain for Happiness and Well-Being to Optimize Learning.” You can watch this episode on YouTube for the visual effects for more impact and learning.
I’m sure most of us are aware that stress is the number one cause behind anxiety, depression, low energy, work burn-out, and cardiovascular disease[i], but do you know how stress impacts our brain? Did you know that:
Chronic stress and depression causes measurable brain shrinkage?[ii]
“51% of us will have a mental health issue (post-traumatic stress, obsessive-compulsive, personality, anxiety, addiction, or an eating disorder to name a few) at some point in their life”[iii] and
that 1/5 students struggle with depression, while ¼ struggle with anxiety which means we have reached epidemic levels with today’s youth.
And these shocking statistics impacts society with:
Work burn-out
Anxiety and Depression
Cardiovascular Disease
Neurological Disorders and eventually leading to
Death
Also Impacting our Students:
A recent study[iv] shows that if the educator is stressed, the student will also be stressed
Stress is impacting our ability to learn
Student behavior was also impacted, contributing to more stress for educators
Dr. Daniel Amen, a psychiatrist and brain disorder specialist of the Amen Clinics[v] and the father of Chloe Amen from podcast #25 with “Strategies to Change Your Brain to Change Your Grades”[vi] explains that “if you struggle with attention, focus, sadness, anxiety, worry, flexibility, stubbornness, or impulsivity, welcome to the club—this is normal.”[vii] These days it is more normal to have a problem, than not have a problem. Most of us will have a mental health issue in our lifetime—and when it happens, we think that we are the only one and that no one else understands. Dr. Amen has a book coming out in March 3, 2020 called “The End of Mental Illness: How Neuroscience is Transforming Psychiatry and Helping Prevent or Reverse Mood and Anxiety Disorders, ADHD, Addictions, PTSD, Psychosis, Personality Disorders and More.”[viii] If left untreated, these brain disorders can have “serious personal, interpersonal, occupational and social consequences.”[ix]
In this podcast episode, we are going to look at the neuroscience of happiness, anxiety, stress, learning and retention with some ideas and strategies to naturally improve each area, so that we can get a handle on life’s largest challenges with an understanding of our brain chemistry. Our goal is to intentionally set ourselves up for success with this new level of awareness.
We will cover:
A reminder of the recipe for peak performance (fun, fear, focus) from episode #27.
What’s the neuroscience of happiness—and how to boost our serotonin levels to generate more happiness.
What’s the neuroscience of anxiety (our body’s natural response to stress that can become a mental disorder when someone regularly feels unusually high levels of anxiety) and stress (which is our body’s response to a challenge or demand) with strategies to calm our limbic, emotional brain.
What’s the neuroscience of learning and how can we be sure that our brain is primed to learn?
All of the answers to these questions can be found within the chemistry of our brain and with how active or hard certain parts of the brain are working. The best course I have taken to understand how my own brain is working is Dr. Amen’s Thrive by 25 Online Course[x] where he outlines some of the most common problems he sees within the brain with natural solutions to overcome each challenge. The most interesting fact I found was that diet and exercise were solutions to the most common brain problems he spoke about, (anxiety/depression/emotional issues) so if you are eating healthy, getting enough sleep, taking supplements and exercising, you are on the right track for preventing the most common brain problems.
Have you ever thought about your brain with regards to your work, learning, success or productivity? What about your happiness, personal life or relationships? “Your brain controls everything that you do, so when it works right, you work right.”[xi] It’s only been the past five years for me, where I’ve been learning about the importance of my brain and its health and I’m not surprised that the recent advances in neuroscience have led to an emerging field of educational neuroscience—bringing together researchers in cognitive neuroscience, educational psychology, and technology to create new programs for the classroom. Why not look at the application of these ideas for the workplace and our personal lives as well?
Mental health is something that society still doesn’t talk openly about. When I look at my personal family situation, with my 2 parents and 2 sisters and myself—my parents and both of my sisters struggled with depression at one point. You can add me to statistics as I didn’t figure out healthy eating habits until my late 20s when a doctor[xii] recommended I cut sugar out of my diet, (I’m talking about all sugar, including high glycemic fruits) and it completely transformed my life, cleaning up every health issue I had. Although our family didn’t talk about the importance of our mental health growing up, or the importance of diet and exercise (I remember begging my Dad to let me go running in an ice storm because exercise has always been my solution to improve well-being) my Mom taught us about the importance of using our mind to attain our goals. I’m sure no one was surprised when I decided to take move from Toronto (where half the year we dealt with dark, gloomy days and freezing weather) to the sunny, bright and warm climate in Arizona, with year round sunshine and vast mountains for daily exercise, --what research shows combats the most common brain problems. The environment you live in impacts your happiness, but if you don’t have the ability to pick up and move somewhere else, there are many other strategies you can incorporate to boost your mood, which is turn will boost your results. As a kid, I also wondered if helping my parents more with tidying the house would help offset some of their stress, but I know now, that there was much more involved with what was happening to them than just needing help with housework. Understanding the chemistry of our brain, and what brain type[xiii] we have is important, and then we can look for strategies to help promote our brain and body health for optimal results in our life.
NOTE: Look up and take Dr. Amen’s Brain Type Assessment[xiv] to get an idea of what type of brain you have. You will receive an email with a video explaining your brain type, characteristics of this type of brain, dietary suggestions for your specific brain type and a full report with your brain fit score. My Brain Fit Score was 82/100 and Brain Type 1 and I’m fully aware of the areas I can improve on. The dietary suggestions were also right on the mark for me. Awareness is the key so that we can take action for these improvements to occur. Try it out!
Remember the Neuroscience of Success: Dopamine, Noradrenaline, Acetyl Choline (Fun, Fear, and Focus)
In our podcast #27 with Friederike Fabritius, we covered the DNA of success or peak performance[xv] which is that brain state where we lose the presence of time and are the most productive. She mentioned the importance of having fun with your work, releasing the neurotransmitter dopamine, having just enough fear or a challenge to release the neurotransmitter noradrenaline and that with these two factors, focus will occur, and the neurotransmitter acetyl choline will be released. These three factors must be in place for peak performance to occur and when we hit this level of performance, it’s important that we are able to manage our distractions so that we can stay here for as long as possible for those higher levels of productivity.
Throughout the episodes on this podcast, I’ve been focused on finding those leaders who are doing important work in the field of social emotional learning and neuroscience—to show how these two emerging fields can impact our cognitive abilities. It’s clear that people are drawn to this work, not just in schools, but this understanding has implications in different areas of society like economics, law and security.[xvi] It’s interesting to see how understanding how our minds and brains work in addition to self-awareness is spreading around the world as more and more people are looking for solutions to life’s challenges from within. I also noticed that listeners to this podcast are increasing rapidly as we now are in over 42 countries. I do appreciate the feedback and support for these ideas, and it does help me to hear what you think as we move ahead. Each of these episodes are currently being transcribed and will be released as my next book.
What is the Neuroscience of Happiness? Increase Serotonin with that 5:1 Ratio of Positives to Negatives
We all want to experience happiness, and there is a neuroscience to happiness. Dr. Rick Hanson, a neuropsychologist and New York Times Best Selling author, is one of the leading experts in the neuroscience of happiness. In the 2019 Mindful Peace Summit, he opened his session by explaining that he got into the work of mindfulness and began searching for answers to the neuroscience of happiness because in his youth he “wondered why people were so unhappy, including himself. He wanted to be less lonely, and more proud of himself”[xvii] and recalled that most of his childhood consisted of feeling “less than” others so he grew up lacking confidence in himself. If we don’t get the acceptance we needed growing up, that will translate into an emptiness that lingers in your mindset and will impact our future performance. Dr. Hanson explains that if you want to be more confident, you must “embrace experiences that bring out your confidence.”[xviii] We see many young people, like the successful podcaster Lewis Howes,[xix] (Who does The School of Greatness Podcast)[xx] who were bullied as a kid, turn to boxing or wrestling as a way to fight back and gain this confidence back.
Dr. Hanson noticed in college that when he ignored how he was feeling, he just kept feeling bad about himself, but when he had a positive experience, and stayed with it, over time he was able to build more positive experiences than negative, building up his confidence. He explains that “neurons that fire together, wire together” and he was actually rewiring his brain from being insecure and negative, to confident and positive. We also know that you can “name it to tame it”[xxi] and when you are able to express what you are feeling, these feelings and emotions become manageable. There is also the negativity bias to be aware of where the brain must have at least a ratio of 5:1 positive to negative interactions so that the negative interaction won’t cause an impact. As parents, teachers, coaches and co-workers we must remember that when giving someone feedback, we must have at least five positive things to say to every one negative thing since “good experiences bounce off the brain like Teflon and bad experiences stick to the brain, like Velcro.”[xxii] Be sure to consciously focus on the positive experiences so you won’t let that one negative experience stick around, or it will impact your mindset and future results.
Remember: The brain has mood chemicals called neurotransmitters that are “chemical messengers sent into the synapse (of a neuron) by an electrical charge in the axon, released at the synaptic gap to communicate with dendrites of another neuron, impacted heavily by exercise, and nutrition. Levels of the different neurotransmitters have a profound effect on emotion, perception, memory, alertness, and energy.”[xxiii] If you are someone who enjoys intense exercise, you will notice the benefits of endorphins that are released in the brain and reduce our perception of pain. Researchers are still not sure what causes us to have chemical imbalances in the brain, when we don’t feel right, there are some things we can do to change the chemistry of our brain.
STRATEGIES TO INCREASE HAPPINESS and NATURUALLY INCREASE YOUR SEROTININ LEVELS
Embrace experiences that bring out your confidence. Do you know what makes you happy? This takes self-awareness. Do you know what makes other people happy? Do you ask them? Learn more about other by saying “Hey, how’s it going today?” and listen to what they say. Taking this extra step will strengthen your relationship with your co-workers, friends or relationship.
Remember the 5:1 negativity bias and say at least five positives to every one negative piece of feedback since good experiences bounce off the brain like Teflon and bad experiences stick to the brain like Velcro.
Remember that “neurons that fire together wire together,”[xxiv] so stay with the positive feelings more and eventually the negative ones will fade away since neurons that are out of psych, fail to link.
Think of news ways to “generate”[xxv] happiness and start practices that make you feel happier and better about yourself. It really is our responsibility to generate our own happiness. No one can do this for you.
Diet and nutrition, supplements and exercise are also important to boost serotonin levels, increasing happiness naturally. You can take “saffron supplements, 5 HTP, exercise, eat low glycemic, healthy carbs (hummus/berries), and keep your gut healthy with probiotics.” [xxvi]
The Neuroscience of Anxiety: Calming the Basal Ganglia
Within our Limbic System, our emotional brain, is the Basal Ganglia that when revved high, makes us feel anxious. Do you know the difference between anxiety (our body’s natural response to stress that can become a mental disorder when someone regularly feels unusually high levels of anxiety) or stress (which is our body’s response to a challenge or demand)? Some anxiety is normal, and the same goes for stress.
We know there are 3 levels of stress response.
POSITIVE: Brief increase in heart rate, mild elevations in stress hormone levels (what happens when we need to speak in front of a crowd, play a sport, take a test, or that nervous energy we feel before a job interview).
TOLERABLE: Serious, temporary stress responses, buffered by supportive relationships. The key is to have support systems in place for this type of stress.
TOXIC: Prolonged activation of stress response systems in the absence of protective relationships. This is the one we are most concerned about as this type of stress causes the most damage.
We must have strategies in place to help us to reduce anxiety and stress so that they don’t interfere with our day to day life.
STRAEGIES TO REDUCE ANXIETY AND STRESS
Exercise, meditation and deep belly breathing to increase oxygen to the brain.
Go for a walk outside-research shows that different brain regions are activated when you’re outside. Getting out into the sunshine increases the production of Vitamin D and serotonin—plus it just feels good. If you can’t go outside, look out a window.
Zone out-let yourself do nothing for a while and just let your mind wander. Research shows that “creative incubation” happens during mind-wandering. You are more likely to problem-solve successfully if you let your mind wander and then come back to the challenge. Dr. Sriny Pillay writes about the power of the unfocused mind in his most recent book “Tinker, Dabble, Doodle, Try” where you sharpen your ability to think and get things done using your ability to make your mind wander. Flashes of insight and solutions to problems often show up at this time, but we must be willing to allow these breaks.
Unplug from technology—silence is good for the brain.
Mental imagery—warming images (like a cup of hot chocolate) if you are feeling stressed, or a place that makes you happy (the beach).
Dietary supplements like fish oil, magnesium, l theanine (in green tea) and gabba supplements are known to help calm the brain.
The Neuroscience of Learning: Acetyl Choline, Dopamine, Serotonin, Noradrenaline
As far as learning, think about this:
Why is it that I can forget some words I used to know in French (but haven’t practiced in a few years) but that I will never forget my 6th grade teacher, Mr. Walker, teaching me to play basketball, or doing math equations.
Why is it easier for me to learn a second language at age 5 versus age 55?
Why do I learn better after a good night’s sleep?
Why is my creativity enhanced when I run up and down a mountain before I sit at my desk?
If there is a formula for peak performance, (Fun, Fear, Focus), a neuroscience to happiness and anxiety, then there must also be one for learning. Bruce McCandliss, professor in Stanford’s Graduate School of Education and the director of the Stanford Center for Mind, Brain and Computation, believes that brain-imaging technology is revolutionizing the study of educational experiences and their effect on the brain. These brain images are showing new insights in how children are learning to read. He talks about the fact that “when you focus your mind, you actually amplify the circuits in your brain that lead to learning and amplify information processing.”[xxvii] This is something we spoke to Dr. Daniel Siegel[xxviii] about (episode #28) with his “Wheel of Awareness” Meditation. When we are focusing intentionally on something (whether it’s our health, relationships, business or learning) we amplify the information processing and change the structure of the brain in this area. We actually re-wire the brain with the activity we are doing. Remember: Neurons that fire together, wire together and neurons that are out of psych, fail to link. Dr. Siegel mentioned that the research was there to show that this practice improves health in addition to many other benefits.
Let’s see if we can take our understanding to the next level with how neuroscience impacts the learning process so we can create more impactful lessons as an educator, thoughtful skill-building drills as a coach, or connect our employees to new ideas and information in an engaging and enjoyable manner.
STRATEGIES TO INCREASE LEARNING:
USE EMOTION AND FREQUENCY OF USE: To help memories stick and “motivation, cues, context and frequency of use can all affect how accurately you remember something.” [xxix] It’s the reason I remember my 6th grade teacher, and frequency of use is the reason I have forgotten most of the French words I used to know. When learning a new skill, how will you make it memorable?
FIND YOUR FOCUS: If you are a teacher who can creatively get your students to somehow “focus” on their work, you will be re-wiring their brain which will lead to learning. Whether it’s putting their finger under each word they read or using a pointer on their finger as they read, however you can get a student to focus on what they are learning, is where the magic happens. If you look at some of the most successful modern workplaces, you will find they have meditation and exercise rooms, dream walls to record vision and goals, plenty of relaxation areas, and of course, a place to grab a cup of tea, water or coffee. Think about starting meetings with a clear intention for the meeting to stay on track and focused on the outcome.
MORE HAPPINESS, JOY, LAUGHTER: The brain thrives with happiness, joy and laughter. The more we can create fun with our learning, we have seen with peak performance and flow states, we will be encouraging learning in a way that time will be lost. Remember that the recipe for peak performance includes fun!
Major Neurotransmitters that Impact Learning:
Acetyl Choline - plays an important role in learning and memory.
Dopamine - involved in conscious and emotional response and basis of the brain's natural reward system, associated with positivity.
Serotonin – brain balancer, involved in arousal, temperature regulation, sensory perception, regulates melatonin, involved in relaxing, mood, emotions, learning and memory, affected by exercise, eggs, lean meat contains L-tryptophan which helps make serotonin.
Norepinephrine/noradrenaline – arousal, involved in fight or flight stress response, metabolic rate, blood pressure, and mood.[xxx]
On our next episode with Mark Waldman, we will uncover new brain research documented in Mark’s new book Neurowisdom[xxxi] showing that relaxation, creativity, imagination and intuition are essential for learning and problem solving.
Discover how your brain likes to learn (it will surprise you and has nothing to do with what you’ve experienced the classroom) 2. Find out why mind-wandering and daydreaming are essential for psychological health. Right in line with Srinivasan Pillay’s book “Tinker, Dabble, Doodle, Try” that talks about the default network in the brain and the power of “unfocusing” your brain. Mark’s book “Neurowisdom” was the first book to talk about the default network mode and provides many practical examples for using your brain to improve finances, happiness and success. 3. Learn how Brain Network Theory is changing the world of neuroscience…and your health! 4. See what living neurons and networks actually look like.
If we can intentionally practice strategies that reduce our stress and anxiety, while increasing our happiness, we will be well on our way to retaining what we are learning. See you next week!
ADDITIONAL HELP SUGGESTIONS:
These suggestions have been compiled as I am researching these areas to offers ideas, strategies and suggestions to bring more awareness to the topics. Please do know that the ideas and strategies I’m sharing with you should not replace seeking professional help[xxxii] if needed.
[i] Chronic stress disrupts neural coherence between cortico-limbic structures João Filipe Oliveira, Nuno Sérgio Dias, Mariana Correia, Filipa Gama-Pereira, Vanessa Morais Sardinha, Ana Lima, Ana Filipa Oliveira, Luís Ricardo Jacinto, Daniela Silva Ferreira, Ana Maria Silva, Joana Santos Reis, João José Cerqueira, Nuno Sousa Front Neural Circuits. 2013; 7: 10. Published online 2013 Feb 6.
[ii] 72 Amazing Brain Facts (Deane Alban, January 2018). https://bebrainfit.com/human-brain-facts/?fbclid=IwAR0amQTdwOEAlsh_7gQ34RhvJDZefHiZFVYGG7O__hGyOwD_j7lJM0qYxDA
[iii] Brain Thrive by 25 Online Course by Dr. Daniel Amen https://www.amenclinics.com/blog/tag/brain-thrive-by-25/
[iv] “Social and Emotional Learning, Teacher Well-Being, and Student Success: What Do We Know? And Where do We Go From Here?” Webinar June 5th 2018 with Dr. Mark Greenber, Penn State and Dr. Kimberly A. Schonert-Reichl https://vimeo.com/275147739
[v] https://www.amenclinics.com/
[vi] 15-year-old Chloe Amen Reveals Strategies on how to "Change Your Brain, Change Your Grades" https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/15-year-old-chloe-amen-reveals-strategies-on-how-to/id1469683141?i=1000446233385
[vii] ibid
[viii]Dr. Daniel Amen, March 3, 2020 The End of Mental Illness: How Neuroscience is Transforming Psychiatry and Helping Prevent or Reverse Mood and Anxiety Disorders, ADHD, Addictions, PTSD, Psychosis, Personality Disorders and More. https://www.amazon.com/End-Mental-Illness-Neuroscience-Transforming-ebook/dp/B07T6C3CWH/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1574362380&sr=8-3
[ix] https://www.amenclinics.com/spect-gallery/anxiety-depression/
[x] Brain Thrive by 25 Online Course by Dr. Daniel Amen https://www.amenclinics.com/blog/tag/brain-thrive-by-25/
[xi] Brain Thrive by 25 Online Course by Dr. Daniel Amen https://www.amenclinics.com/blog/tag/brain-thrive-by-25/
[xii] Dr. Richard Jacoby and Raquel Baldelomar “Sugar Crush” (Harper Wave, 2nd Edition April 2015) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KPVB4OA/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
[xiii] What’s Your Brain Type Quiz by Dr. Daniel Amen https://brainhealthassessment.com/
[xiv] What’s Your Brain Type Quiz by Dr. Daniel Amen https://brainhealthassessment.com/
[xv] Friederike Fabritius: "Fun, Fear, and Focus: The Neurochemical Recipe for Achieving Peak Performance" | Talks at Google Published Jan.15, 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWi-oCySuFA
[xvi] Educational Neuroscience Michael Thomas Published July 5, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uK3d9hL-IQ
[xvii] 2019 Mindful Kids Peace Summit https://www.mindfulkidspeacesummit.com/first-page
[xviii] Rick Hanson “Hardwiring Happiness” YouTube Published Nov. 7, 2013 TEDx Marin 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpuDyGgIeh0
[xix] https://lewishowes.com/
[xx]Lewis Howes School of Greatness Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-school-of-greatness/id596047499
[xxi] Dr. Dan Siegel “Name it to Tame it” YouTube Published Dec. 8th, 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcDLzppD4Jc
[xxii] Rick Hanson “Hardwiring Happiness” YouTube Published Nov. 7, 2013 TEDx Marin 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpuDyGgIeh0
[xxiii] Neurotransmitters and Learning by Joseph Georgic April 22, 2015 https://www.hastac.org/blogs/joegeorgic/2015/04/22/neurotransmitters-and-learning
[xxiv] “Neurons that Fire Together, Wire Together, So Simple” by Andrea Samadi on LinkedIn published Nov. 17, 2016 https://achieveit360.com/neurons-that-fire-together-wire-together/
[xxv] Brendon Burchard “The Secret to Happiness” https://brendon.com/blog/the-secret-to-happiness/
[xxvi] Brain Thrive by 25 Online Course by Dr. Daniel Amen https://www.amenclinics.com/blog/tag/brain-thrive-by-25/ (Lesson 4 Cingulate and Cognitive Flexibility).
[xxvii] Bruce McCandliss “The Neuroscience of Learning: Thinking Big About Learning” YouTube Published Nov. 3, 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_6fezBz9IA
[xxviii] Dr. Daniel Siegel on “Mindsight: The Basis for Social and Emotional Intelligence” https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/clinical-professor-psychiatry-at-ucla-school-medicine/id1469683141?i=1000456048761
[xxix] 72 Amazing Brain Facts by Deane Alban https://bebrainfit.com/human-brain-facts/
[xxx] Lizzy Brown Learning on the Move: Brain Parts and Neurotransmitters https://www.learningonthemove.org/brain-parts--neurotransmitters.html
[xxxi] Neurowisdom: The New Brain Science of Money, Happiness and Success by Mark Robert Waldman and Chris Manning PhD. (Jan.31, 2017). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N9BLBDH/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
[xxxii] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/find-help/index.shtml
Tuesday Nov 05, 2019
Tuesday Nov 05, 2019
Welcome to the “Neuroscience Meets SEL” podcast, my name is Andrea Samadi, a former educator who has been fascinated with understanding the science behind high performance strategies in schools, sports and the workplace for the past 20 years. This episode is available on YouTube and we highly recommend watching the visuals that go along with this interview for a more immersive experience.
This is episode #28 with Dr. Dan Siegel, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and executive director of the Mindsight Institute 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. He has dozen books the last time I counted with his most recent parenting book with Dr. Tina Payne called The Power of Showing Up: How Parental Presence Shapes Who our Kids Become and How Their Brains Get Wired[i] coming out Jan. 7th, 2020. Be sure to pre-order your copy as it has already hit the top 20 books in cognitive neuroscience, child development and neuropsychology. Also, he is working on the 3rd edition of his book The Developing Mind.
Welcome Dan!
Dr. Siegel, I can personally say that I’m a more mindful[ii] parent, more aware[iii] of myself and others, have learned some no-drama discipline[iv] strategies, feel prepared for when my 2 girls reach their teenage years[v], with the reassurance that I don’t have to be perfect, and that I can repair relationships when my buttons have been pushed—all from reading your books the past few years. It’s such an honor to have you here—your influence is significant with the thousands of people around the globe you’ve been helping with your books, mnemonics to remember your strategies, and tools like your Wheel of Awareness Meditation. Thank you for being so accessible so we can take a deeper dive into some of the important concepts of your work.
Q1: Dr. Siegel, before I get into the questions I have for you, I wanted to ask what led you to write all of these books and create tools to help our next generation become more aware and connected to each other?
Q2: I know we can’t train the next generation of students for the old world; we must do things differently. On our podcast we have been speaking to leaders about the emergence of social and emotional learning skills in our schools and emotional intelligence training programs in the workplace (with people like Casel’s Clark McKown on measuring SEL to Marc Brackett and the importance of Emotional Intelligence and recognizing and naming our feelings. I know you have been working with the Blue School[vi] in New York City. What skills do you think have been missing in our schools and how do we bring these missing skills back for our next generation of students so that we can prepare them for success in the workplace? (3Rs and what else is missing?)
Q3: When I was in my late 20s I started to study the mind with a motivational speaker and learned some strategies that really helped me as an adult related to thinking positively, having a good attitude, awareness, you know those skills we used to call “soft skills” but 20 years ago, there just wasn’t the research behind SEL and mindfulness. Then I heard you mention that when you began surveying mental health professionals around the world who should know about the mind that “95% of them had never even been given a lecture on the mind, and probably couldn’t even tell you what the definition of the mind was”[vii] ) so you wondered how can we expect to develop it, without this understanding and explore the concept of the mind in your book, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation[viii] where you prove that you can define what a healthy mind is, not just describe it.
In your book Mindsight, you say that “Mindsight is the potent skill that is the basis for both emotional and social intelligence.” What is Mindsight? What does the research tell us about our ability to change the structure and function of our brain by using this “Mindsight” and how can this potent skill can set up our next generation for success? How are you using “Mindsight” at the Blue School[ix] is NYC? What are some other ways that Mindsight could be used in schools, homes the workplace or any examples you’ve seen in the field of medicine/health?
Q4: In preparation for this interview, I did a podcast (episode #23) on “Understanding the Difference Between the Mind and the Brain”[x] and this episode rose to the top of our episodes, showing me that listeners are really interested in this topic. Can we look at your definition of 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”[xi] and can you explain why relationships are so important for our well-being health, and an integrated brain as you describe it?
Once we know what the mind is, then how does the mind differ from the brain and what about the fact we have a brain in our gut, not just our head?
Q5: We know that in order to have well students in our classrooms, we need well teachers, just as to have well children in our homes, the parent’s mindset matters. We are coming to grips here with what “the mind” is but we still have a society that struggles with health. Can you explain the best way that we as adults can stay on top of our health and well-being so that we can avoid burn-out and also keeping in mind the research you said has come out of Harvard and McGill University with Martin Teitcher[xii] and Michael Meaney[xiii] on epigenetics and how the stress felt by our grandparents can be passed on and impact our lives? How can we take this new research and use it in such a way that we prevent more stress in our lives and our children’s lives and our student’s lives to create an integrated brain versus a non-integrated brain of chaos or rigidity?
Q6: I have been practicing your Wheel of Awareness meditation[xiv] for the past 2 months while I have been preparing to speak with you. I actually downloaded it from your website in 2015 but didn’t make this a part of my daily routine until recently. I’ve noticed a huge difference in my own thinking process since incorporating this practice. Can you explain why this reflective meditation is different from using let’s say a relaxation app like Calm.com or just listening to peaceful music? What is happening to our brain as we focus inwardly on the four parts of this wheel? What are the outcomes are you seeing of this practice on society?
Q7: Is there anything important that you think I have missed with my questions today to give listeners some tips on how they can be more aware, practice using Mindsight and find a deeper meaning and connection and purpose in this world?
Thank you so much Dr. Siegel for coming on the show to dive deeper into your work. I really could talk to you all day, but know I’ve got to let you go. For those who would like to learn more about Dr. Siegel you can go to www.drdansiegel.com (where he has a ton of tools, books and resources that you can use immediately like the Wheel of Awareness Meditation) or find you on Linkedin (Daniel Siegel), Twitter @DrDanSiegel Instagram @drdansiegel and Facebook. He has a new book coming out The Power of Showing Up[xv] in Jan 2020 with Dr. Tina Bryson that I mentioned in the beginning that is already hitting the TOP 20 books before its release! Thank you again for all you are doing to promote well-being and health in the world. You are a true difference maker and it’s been such a pleasure to have this opportunity to speak with you.
BIO: Daniel J. Siegel received his medical degree from Harvard University and completed his postgraduate medical education at UCLA with training in pediatrics and child, adolescent and adult psychiatry. He served as a National Institute of Mental Health Research Fellow at UCLA, studying family interactions with an emphasis on how attachment experiences influence emotions and behavior. An award-winning educator, he is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and recipient of several honorary fellowships. Dr. Siegel is also the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute, an educational organization, which offers online learning and in-person seminars that focus on how the development of mindsight in individuals, families and communities can be enhanced by examining the interface of human relationships and basic biological processes. His psychotherapy practice includes children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families. He serves as the Medical Director of the LifeSpan Learning Institute and on the Advisory Board of the Blue School in New York City, which has built its curriculum around Dr. Siegel’s Mindsight approach.
Dr. Siegel's unique ability to make complicated scientific concepts exciting and accessible has led him to be invited to address diverse local, national and international groups including mental health professionals, neuroscientists, corporate leaders, educators, parents, public administrators, healthcare providers, policymakers, mediators, judges, and clergy. I was referred to Dr. Siegel’s work when a neuroscience researcher was helping me to add brain-based concepts to my work and I quickly learned the 3 parts of the brain and their functions and was able to teach others using his “Hand Model of the Brain.” [xvi]
WHEEL OF AWARENESS RESOURCE:
https://www.drdansiegel.com/resources/wheel_of_awareness/
REFERENCES:
[i] The Power of Showing Up by Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson (Ballantine Books, January 7, 2020) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1524797715/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i6
[ii] Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human by Daniel J Siegel October 18, 2016 (W.W Norton and Company) https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Journey-Norton-Interpersonal-Neurobiology-ebook/dp/B01CKZM39I/ref=pd_sim_351_2/144-0582078-3016428?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B01CKZM39I&pd_rd_r=524a4609-ef8e-4405-b86e-826c0dfe4756&pd_rd_w=lkyDh&pd_rd_wg=Wj12A&pf_rd_p=5abf8658-0b5f-405c-b880-a6d1b558d4ea&pf_rd_r=GC135MTVN7YQ2YKQA8S0&psc=1&refRID=GC135MTVN7YQ2YKQA8S0
[iii] Aware: The Science and Practice of Presence by Daniel J Siegel August 21, 2018 (Penguin Group, USA) https://www.amazon.com/Aware-Presence-Groundbreaking-Awareness-Meditation/dp/B07FDGTCRM/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=aware+dan+siegel&qid=1572802485&sr=8-1
[iv] No-Drama Discipline: The Whole Brain Way to Calm the Chaos and Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind https://www.amazon.com/No-Drama-Discipline-Whole-Brain-Nurture-Developing-ebook/dp/B00JCS4NMC/ref=pd_sim_351_49?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B00JCS4NMC&pd_rd_r=083bcdfa-8b36-4f44-8b03-ba1253cda3f2&pd_rd_w=MHy7B&pd_rd_wg=mO3Nq&pf_rd_p=5abf8658-0b5f-405c-b880-a6d1b558d4ea&pf_rd_r=8MRRV2G8KZTD8VCED844&psc=1&refRID=8MRRV2G8KZTD8VCED844
[v] Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain Daniel J Siegel January 7, 2014 (Penguin Group, USA) https://www.amazon.com/Brainstorm-Power-Purpose-Teenage-Brain-ebook/dp/B00C5R8378/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=brainstorm&qid=1572803186&s=digital-text&sr=1-1
[vi] https://www.blueschool.org/
[vii] Mindsight: The New Science of Transformation Dr. Dan Siegel https://www.drdansiegel.com/about/mindsight/
[viii] Mindsight: The New Science of Transformation Dr. Dan Siegel https://www.drdansiegel.com/about/mindsight/
[ix] https://www.blueschool.org/
[x] “Neuroscience Meets SEL” Podcast #23 Understanding the Difference Between Your Brain and Mind for Increased Results https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/understanding-your-brain-and-mind-for-increased-results/
[xi] Dr. Dan Siegel Defines The Mind Published Feb. 11, 2010 on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEdq04xbHAs
[xii] https://www.mcleanhospital.org/profile/martin-teicher
[xiii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Meaney
[xiv] https://www.drdansiegel.com/resources/wheel_of_awareness/
[xv] The Power of Showing Up by Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson (Ballantine Books, January 7, 2020) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1524797715/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i6
[xvi] Dr. Dan Siegel’s Hand Model of the Brain Published on YouTube August 9th, 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-m2YcdMdFw
Tuesday Oct 22, 2019
Neuroleadership Pioneer, Friederike Fabritius on "Achieving Peak Performance"
Tuesday Oct 22, 2019
Tuesday Oct 22, 2019
This is episode #27 with a Pioneer in the field of Neuroleadership and author of the book, The Leading Brain, Friederike Fabritius,[i] all the way from Dusseldorf, Germany. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.
Welcome to the “Neuroscience Meets SEL” podcast, my name is Andrea Samadi, a former educator who has been fascinated with understanding the science behind high performance strategies in schools, sports and the workplace for the past 20 years. Today we have an inspiring speaker who I’ve been following for the past 3 years.
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. Her book The Leading Brain: Neuroscience Hacks to Work Smarter, Better, Happier has been translated into several languages and has received numerous awards. Her most recent presentation this year was at Talks at Google[ii] where she describes the recipe for achieving peak performance.
Welcome Friederike! I am beyond excited to be speaking with you today. A warm welcome today as you join us here in Arizona, USA all the way from Germany!
I wanted to let the listeners know that I recorded an episode yesterday[iii] “Simple Strategies for Avoiding the Pitfalls of the 3 Parts of the Brain” so that today we could dive a bit deeper with our time together. If you are listening now and have not heard that episode, be sure to go back and listen to episode #26 as an overview for today.
Q1: I first found you on YouTube when I was searching for a way to understand how our neurotransmitters work in peak performance. I found this video where you explained neuroleadership[iv] just beautifully to top executives in Barcelona, Spain and how we can create peak performance[v] or that flow state we all seek for those high levels of achievement. Can you explain what we need to do to get into peak performance/flow state whether we are an employee looking for improved results in the workplace, an athlete in the field, or a student in the classroom?
Q2: What does flow look and feel like? What can we do to stay in this flow state longer to experience that increased productivity you mention in your book where productivity increases by fivefold?[vi] What is guaranteed to throw us out of flow—so that we don’t do that?
Q3: On our podcast here “The Neuroscience of SEL” we have spoken a lot about self-awareness and understanding our self so we can make the changes needed for improved results. Can you explain why some people need to be challenged in order to perform at their very best, while others need to have less challenge and less stress to do their best work, and what do these people look like in an organization so people listening can recognize what type of person they are on that performance/stress scale?
Q4: We know that the PFC is important for executive functions (like logical thinking, decision-making, or planning) and it’s the part of our brain that determines our level of success in life and with our careers. What strategies do you personally do to strengthen this part of your brain to operate at its best for these high levels of performance?
Q5: What do you think are the next most important parts of the brain for anyone to understand specifically for those who are looking to take new actions or create new habits to achieve higher levels of performance?
Q6: What about mindfulness and meditation? In your book, you mention that “mindfulness has been shown to physically change several regions of the brain in as little as 8 weeks.” Can you explain what parts of the brain mindfulness improves and how this could help people improve their results in life and at work
Q7: In your book, you mention 2 examples of people who didn’t rely on their conscious thinking brain, but they used their unconscious brain to increase the speed, efficiency and accuracy of their performance. The first example was with Sully Sullenberger’s quick thinking with his emergency landing of that plane in the Hudson River and the other was with Wayne Gretzky, who used his unique “hockey sense” to “skate where the puck will be, not where it is.” Can you explain the parts of the brain that are responsible for this gut-instinct or “expert intuition?” and maybe the difference between expert intuition vs just our wishful thinking?
Q8: I could ask you so many more questions but will stick to just one more. It’s about inhibition or the strategy we often use to hide or hold back our real thoughts or feelings about someone or a situation instead of just dealing with them openly with transparency. Can you explain why inhibition is a bad idea, what happens to the brain when we are doing this, what happens to our productivity and a better strategy for people to embrace and acknowledge their thoughts and feelings rather than hide or ignore them?
Q9: Is there anything that you think is important that I might have missed to help listeners implement some hacks for peak performance that will help them to work smarter, better, and happier?
Dr. Freiderike Fabritius it’s been such a pleasure getting to know you. I seriously could have asked you another 10 questions as I found your book fascinating! I love how it offers practical tips and short cuts that anyone can understand and then apply for improved results. The end of chapter summary section was also very helpful for a review of everything covered. For those who would like to learn more about your work they can find your book “The Leading Brain” on Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.[vii] What’s the best way for someone to reach you?
Learn more through your website at https://www.fabulous-brain.com/ , or find you on Linkedin (with your name) and Twitter and Instagram @fabulous_brain
REFERENCES:
[i] https://www.fabulous-brain.com/
[ii] Friederike Fabritius: "Fun, Fear, and Focus: The Neurochemical Recipe for Achieving Peak Performance" | Talks at Google Published Jan.15, 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWi-oCySuFA
[iii]EPISODE 26 “Strategies for Overcoming the Pitfalls of the 3 Parts of Your Brain” https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/strategies-for-overcoming-pitfalls-3-parts-your-brain/id1469683141?i=1000454366492
[iv] Freiderike Fabritius “Neuroleadership: A New Approach” YouTube Published Dec. 11th, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g4XhlLZ5ak
[v]Friederike Fabritius –“The Leading Brain: Neuroscience hacks to work smarter, better, happier” Published Sept. 29, 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOK612_n2Y0
[vi] Friedrike Fabritius “The Leading Brain: Neuroscience Hacks to Work Smarter, Better, Happier” (Feb.21, 2017) https://www.fabulous-brain.com/the-leading-brain (page 108)
[vii]Friedrike Fabritius “The Leading Brain: Neuroscience Hacks to Work Smarter, Better, Happier” (Feb.21, 2017) https://www.fabulous-brain.com/the-leading-brain
Monday Oct 21, 2019
Simple Strategies for Overcoming the Pitfalls of the 3 Parts of Your Brain
Monday Oct 21, 2019
Monday Oct 21, 2019
This episode focuses on understanding the three main parts of your brain and I had to write this lesson and record this prior to the next podcast tomorrow with Dr. Friederike Fabritius as many of my questions to her will rely on the understanding of these three parts of the brain so I thought it was important to record this first. Let’s take a closer look at the human brain, so that the insights Dr. Fabritus will share tomorrow, will have more of an impact.
The human brain is the most complex organ in the body. Parts of the brain communicate with each other and enable us to enjoy food, communicate, and feel emotions; the brain shapes our entire world and all of our experiences. Understanding how to harness the power that exists within your own body is the key to unlocking the code that controls your results and future. What this future looks like is up to you.
Once you have an understanding of how your brain works, and you have some strategies to overcome the pitfalls associated with the three main parts of your brain, you can set yourself up for a razor’s edge advantage over someone else who might not be paying attention to the largest and most complex organ in the human body. To be honest, I was not paying attention to this part of the body until just a few years ago. No one had ever asked me what I was doing for my brain health—not until I started researching in the area of neuroscience did I know these strategies existed. So, don’t worry if this is new to you. We all start at this place.
There are three parts of the brain that I think everyone should understand, whether you are five years old, or 55 years old, we can all understand the basics of how our brain operates for improved results.
Understanding the Reptilian Brain: The Ancient Instinctual Brain also known as The Hindbrain
The brain stem (imagine this part at the top of your spine on the back of your neck) is the oldest part of the brain and is often referred to as the reptilian brain.[i] This is where vital body functions such as heartbeat, respiration, body temperature, and digestion are all monitored and controlled. The brain stem also holds the reticular activating system (RAS), which is responsible for the brain’s alertness—regardless of whether we’re asleep or awake.
This part of the brain functions to keep us alive and safe and works closely with the entire body as well as the limbic system to create our emotional state of mind. The brain stem does not work alone. It is linked to the limbic system above it (in the middle of the brain) to assist, for example, in creating both our fighting states when we feel anger and our fleeing states when we feel fear.[ii]
This Ancient Instinctual Brain Controls Our-
Sensory motor functions (how our body runs)
Survival instinct of fight, flight, freeze, faint[iii]
When we understand that we can't help the fact that when we feel fear with something, consciously or unconsciously, our Reptilian Brain reacts on its own with the urge to fight, flight, or freeze.
FIGHT- is when we react instead of responding to a situation (those times when we let our emotions take control)
FLIGHT- is when we run away
FREEZE- is when we stay frozen and don't even try
To overcome the pitfalls of the Reptilian Brain, we just need to learn strategies for overcoming our fears that are natural, and instinctual, coming from the part of our brain that was designed to keep us alive. Those who are longtime meditators speak of the ability to take the time to respond to a situation rather than reacting but if you are looking for a quick fix, try these simple strategies.[iv]
S-STOP whatever you are doing
T-TAKE deep belly breaths to bring more oxygen to your brain
O-OBSERVE and think “how am I feeling right now in the moment?” Can you name the emotion? When you can name the emotion, science has proven that soothing neurotransmitters are released to calm you down.[v]
P- PROCEED with whatever you are doing with a new awareness.
Our next guest Dr. Friederike Fabritius,[vi] talks about this strategy in her book, The Leading Brain: Neuroscience Hacks to Work Smarter, Better, Happier.[vii]
She also dives into the importance of adding a sense of fun and fear to your work since fun will add the neurotransmitter dopamine that will help you to retain information better and boost your performance, while just the right amount of fear when you try new things, and push your boundaries will release noradrenaline, a positive hormone that’s released when you have a challenge. Adding fun and fear will prevent boredom and drive you towards focus where the brain will release acetyl choline during this time of focused attention to help us to achieve flow or these high levels of peak performance that we all seek.[viii]
Understanding the Second Part of the Brain: The Limbic System
Above the brain stem and below the cerebellum (in the midbrain imagine this part of the brain in the middle) is a collection of structures about the size of a lemon, referred to as the limbic system and sometimes called the mammalian brain or Midbrain. Most of the structures in the limbic system are duplicated in each hemisphere. This area is also responsible for “regulating internal chemical order .”[ix]
The Limbic Brain or The Emotional Brain Controls Our-
Feelings/emotions
Motivations
The brain’s reward circuit
Memory, and our
Immune system
This part of the brain responds really well with motivation and rewards and since it’s the seat of our emotions, this part of the brain will take over ALL the other parts of the brain because our emotional Limbic Brain always wins.[x]
In this part of our brain we all have a REWARD and a THREAT system. Most of us work well when we can see the reward for what we are working on. Our brain will release dopamine as we check off our to-do list items and make progress towards our goals. When we are working in a reward state, we will be happy, in a good mood, high performing and achieving our goals. This state is where we should all aim to spend our time as we will be the most productive.
But when we are in a threat system, our brain will release cortisol and our prefrontal cortex will shut down, making us unable to work as we go into the fight, flight, freeze state. Some people do work well with an element of threat to motivate them, (like when you have a deadline for something you are working on) but too much threat can cause too much stress and lead to eventual burn-out.[xi]
To overcome the pitfalls of the Emotional Limbic System:
Find ways to make the work you do fun so that dopamine (the neurotransmitter that helps us to feel pleasure and satisfaction) will be released and will help you to see rewards and will motivate you to move towards them.
Laugh more because dopamine (this pleasure and satisfaction chemical) is released with laughter. Always keep that funny person on your team who makes everyone laugh. They will help boost the dopamine of your entire team, making everyone motivated towards their goals.
Find ways to keep things new since the brain loves novelty. Remember—we don’t pay attention to boring things.[xii]
Always push your boundaries and challenge yourself to prevent boredom. The brain will release the positive neurotransmitter noradrenaline that will increase alertness and energy.
OTHER IMPORTANT PARTS OF THE LIMBIC SYSTEM that I think are important to know about.
The thalamus is the first part of the brain to receive sensory information (except smell) coming from the outside world.
The hippocampus plays a crucial role in converting short-term memory to long-term memory.
The amygdala plays an important role with emotions, especially fear.
The anterior cingulate connects attention, emotion, social function, and pain perception.[xiii]
The Basal Ganglia is an important part of the brain connected to the cortex, thalamus and brainstem and is connected to procedural learning, habit learning, cognition and emotion. Stay tuned for the next episode to understand the power associated with this part of your brain.
Finally, Understanding the Third Part of the Brain:
The Neocortex/The Decision-Making Brain also called our Forebrain where our Prefrontal Cortex Lives.
The neocortex is the “outer bark of the brain”[xiv] that consists of folded gray matter and resembles a walnut. (Imagine this part of the brain as being folded over the midbrain and connecting all parts together). It is divided into areas that control specific functions that “ultimately are about making maps of various things—from perceptions of the outside world to ideas about the brain and well-being .”[xv]
The Genius, Decision-Making part of the brain is the newest part of the brain (think of it this way—the brain develops from back to front—the oldest part with our brain stem and the newest is the front of our brain) and it tells us to be LOGICAL and REASONABLE with everyone. This part of the brain controls our
Thinking and reflecting
Perceiving and remembering
Reasoning and planning
Language development
Multiple intelligences, and our
Awareness and self-awareness
This is the part of our brain that determines the level of success we will see in our careers. It’s also the part of our brain that reacts when we are tired, or when someone pushes our buttons, we can lose control of the Decision-Making Brain and do or say things are not in our normal character.
It is reassuring to know why we lose control, and how to repair our relationships with those around us when this occurs by addressing it, and stepping back, and then taking some time out before coming back to regain composure.
To overcome the pitfalls of the Decision-Making Brain we can:
Get plenty of sleep and exercise so that we keep our prefrontal cortex operating at its best.
Remember that when we drink alcohol, it will interfere with our decision-making brain and too much alcohol can lead to poor judgment, and even impair your memory.[xvi]
You can take brain supplements to help you to achieve more focus and alertness.[xvii] I follow Dr. Daniel Amen’s[xviii] work and have learned what my brain type is so that I can be sure to be taking the right supplements for my brain type[xix] and follow the best nutritional plan for brain health.
When we can find strategies to keep our brain working at its best, we will perform at our best. I hope these strategies and an understanding of the 3 parts of your brain help you to achieve higher levels of achievement. I’m excited to speak with Dr. Friederike Fabritius tomorrow morning and will dive deeper into the neuroscience of leadership and high performance. See you next tomorrow.
RESOURCES:
Andrea Samadi Level Up: A Brain-Based Strategy to Skyrocket Student Success and Achievement (2015 Wheatmark, Tucson, AZ).
(Lesson 2: Use Your Brain Wisely)
REFERENCES
[i] David D’Sousa, How the Brain Learns, 3rd Ed. Page 18 (Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2006).
[ii] Dr . Daniel J . Siegel, “Brain Insights and Well-Being,” Inspire to Rewire, Psychology Today, January 7, 2015 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/inspire-rewire/201501/brain-insights-and-well-being
[iii] ibid
[iv] Friederike Fabritius, “Take Charge of our Emotions” Published Dec. 10, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liu3cbEB3H8&t=1759s
[v] Dan Siegel “Name it to Tame it” YouTube Published Dec. 8th, 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcDLzppD4Jc
[vi]Friederike Fabritius: "Fun, Fear, and Focus: The Neurochemical Recipe for Achieving Peak Performance" | Talks at Google Published Jan.15, 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWi-oCySuFA
[vii] The Leading Brain by Friederike Fabritius (TarcherPerigee; Reprint edition February 20, 2018).
https://www.amazon.com/Leading-Brain-Neuroscience-Smarter-Happier/dp/0143129368/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+leading+brain&qid=1571680862&sr=8-1
[viii] Friederike Fabritius: Dopamine, Acetylcholine, and Focused Attention https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0C93OcfzGk
[ix] Dr . Joe Dispenza, “TedTalks with Dr . Joe Dispenza,” TED video, 17:50 posted February 8, 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W81CHn4l4AM&t=105s
[x] Friederike Fabritius “Why the Limbic System Always Wins” YouTube Published https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb5UITosUUI
[xi] Friederike Fabritius Prefrontal Cortex, Limbic System and Performance YouTube PublishedOct. 26, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDuQM94RT9M
[xii] John Medina, Brain Rule #4 http://www.brainrules.net/attention
[xiii] Dr . Daniel J . Siegel, “Brain Insights and Well-Being,” Inspire to Rewire, Psychology Today, January 7, 2015 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/inspire-rewire/201501/brain-insights-and-well-being
[xiv] ibid
[xv] ibid
[xvi]Alcohol Memory Blackouts and the Brain https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh27-2/186-196.htm
[xvii]12 Prescriptions for Creating a Healthy Brain and Life by Dr. Daniel Amen Jan. 15, 2018 https://www.amenclinics.com/blog/12-prescriptions-for-creating-a-brain-healthy-life-part-1/
[xviii] http://danielamenmd.com/
[xix] https://brainhealthassessment.com/
Thursday Oct 17, 2019
Thursday Oct 17, 2019
Welcome back to the "Neuroscience Meets SEL" Podcast episode #25 this is Andrea Samadi. This interview will also be available on YouTube. Today we have Mick Neustadt, a retreat teacher at Inward Bound Mindfulness Education,[i] a company that holds in depth mindfulness programs for teens, young adults and parents. Their programs that teach the skills we have been talking about on this podcast like self-awareness, compassion, ethical decision-making, hold retreats across the US, Canada and United Kingdom.
Mick is a long-time mindfulness and meditation practitioner and clinical social worker. As a result of 20 years of personal practice Mick has experienced the profound benefits of mindfulness. He realizes that we have a great capacity to connect deeply with our full selves and others. Through dedicated practice we can transform the way that we relate to ourselves, those closest to us, and the world. With his rich background as a therapist, former schoolteacher and coach, Mick brings a wide range of skills and dedication to helping young people on their journey of self-exploration. Since 2011 he has formally taught mindfulness to teens in schools, on retreats and weekly groups.
Welcome Mick, thank you for taking the time out of your day to share more about mindfulness, meditation and the philopophy of iBme.
Q1: Can you define what “mindfulness” is since this term is used so often these days. Everyone seems to have an idea or thought about what mindfulness programs are.
Q2: Can you explain why mindfulness is so important for young people (and adults) to develop especially these days where anxiety and depression are at an all-time high?
Q3: How does your retreat work compared to someone using an app like Calm or a guided meditation? Can you explain a bit about your process? (I can see a calendar on your website.)[ii] Can you explain how your retreats work?
Q4: Can you explain what the research[iii] says about mindfulness programs? What are the long-term effects of the retreat practice of meditation and mindfulness? 3 months after the retreat, what did the participants notice? And also, would someone receive similar benefits if they just started their own mindfulness practice at home?
Q5: I have heard Jon Kabat Zinn who I know has worked with your organization mention that “the real meditation is with how we live our lives.”[iv] –meaning how we change from being stressed, rushed, to being calmer and more present. What parting thoughts would you like to leave us with about how to get started with a meditation program in our daily lives (perhaps from a parent point of view, student, or someone in the workplace) so anyone can learn how to go from knowing to doing, and reap of the benefits of a mindfulness program.
Thank you so much Mick for sharing your extensive knowledge in this field. If anyone wants to learn more about you and the programs at iBMe, they can go to ibme.com. What’s the best way for them to reach you?
[i] www.ibme.com
[ii] https://ibme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/iBme_Sample-Daily-Schedule.pdf
[iii] https://ibme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Galla-Research-on-I mpacts-of-iBme-Research.pdf
[iv] Jon Kabat Zinn “From Doing to Being” YouTube published Feb. 16, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-2QoTYujNg
Thursday Oct 10, 2019
Thursday Oct 10, 2019
Welcome back to the “Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast” episode #24 this is Andrea Samadi. This interview will also be available on YouTube.
Our very special guest today, Dr. Jeff Rose, is the founder of Leading Ed Solutions[i], a community of school superintendents and leaders providing solutions, strategy and support so that no one has to lead alone. His successful podcast, Leading Education[ii] focuses on innovative conversations surrounding the most important topics that our modern schools face that are relevant to anyone who wants to lead in education and beyond. The topics he tackles are applicable to any leadership position, providing the most up to date ideas and strategies around these enormous concepts that require new ways of thinking for improvement and change.
Jeff has a proven track record of innovation and an unrelenting focus on student achievement. He’s the former Superintendent of Fulton County Schools (which is Atlanta, Georgia’s 4th largest school district) responsible for the leadership, administration and management of over 96,000 students, 105 schools, 14,000 employees and a $1.1 billion general fund budget. During his 23 years in education, he has served as a classroom teacher, principal and a director of school improvement.
Welcome Jeff. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today to share what you are doing to support educational leadership.
Jeff, I love your work and your podcast inspired me to get moving on mine over the summer. I want to dive into some questions to hear your perspective on a few of the topics that I thought were the most relevant in our schools and communities today.
Q1: I’ve heard you describe education as “the perfect mess” because when you are working, you will have challenges, and everyone has an opinion about these challenges. I’ve also heard this as it relates to business. When you are taking action, things will go wrong and it can all feel like a mess. When you are doing nothing, you won’t have problems to solve, but also won’t have any impact for change. What led you to launch your company, Leading Ed solutions and tackle some of the most challenging problems education has seen in the past few decades to impact change and when did you first think about starting this idea?
Q2: There are so many important concepts that you speak about—I love hearing your point of view— but one concept stuck out to me from the earlier episodes when you spoke about how lonely leadership is, when you first felt being lonely at the top and how you got used to this feeling. Unless someone is walking in the shoes of a school superintendent, administrator, or District leader, (or even equate this to those who lead in the corporate world) I know it could be easy to make up what others think your job entails and say things like “Oh, it must be nice….with their xyz assumption.” Hearing your perspective on what leadership is like for those who are given this responsibility is important for anyone who must learn to lead themselves. (We all have heard that to be a good leader is to be a good follower).[iii] Was this why you launched your podcast to give more insight to bridge this gap that exists between school leadership, schools and the community and shed some light with what this leadership role really entails?
Q3: You mention that one of the biggest concerns you hear from parents and the community is the rise in student anxiety these days (episode 4)[iv] and I’m seeing it here in my local community in Chandler, Arizona, USA where this time last year we hit 31child/teen suicides in 15 months.[v] This issue is a huge concern and goes on past the pressure to perform academically in the K-12 system to higher education. (I just heard another podcast by Jay Shetty where he interviewed Laurie Santos[vi] who created the most popular course at Yale to combat this issue when she saw how stressed her students were to perform academically at the beginning of their University career.) Your interview with David Smith and Cathy Murphy from The Summit Counselling Center[vii] really opened my eyes to the fact that we do need to involve the community to bring more awareness and discussion around mental health issues for today’s students.
What do you think is a good call to action for parents to begin this dialogue to support their child’s mental health in addition to their own?
What about our schools? It still feels like this is a topic is not easy for some people to speak openly about. When I first heard of this rise in suicides in my area I had posters created (inspired by a teen in one of my presentations, who was shocked at the statistics in the US compared to Canada—this was a HS student in Toronto—he stood up and said “how is it that we know what to do when we are on fire—we stop, drop and roll, but we don’t know what to do when someone is struggling mentally or emotionally—at all?” The whole room full of District leaders gasped at his observation.)[viii] So we created posters with a call to action for how to recognize the signs and symptoms of a young person struggling with anxiety, and what number to call if they need additional help—but I still felt the awkwardness around the topic as if schools would be happy to not talk about it at all. How can we change this?
How do you see community and faith-based organizations forming stronger relationships with our schools? I know you cover this extensively with a 2-part episode,[ix] but what would be some first steps for a successful school/community partnership?
Q4: You covered the widely discussed topic of School Safety and Social Media on episode 19[x] from the end of August. I have always felt that social media and the advancements of technology are where all of the problems begin for our students—because we just didn’t have these problems when we were growing up because we didn’t have the internet—and these challenges create stress for our teachers and parents and make me question about should I or shouldn’t I buy a phone for my kids? Then I listened to this episode and it made me shift my thinking when I heard your guest from www.bark.us talk about their company’s technology and how they have created an algorithm that has avoided 16 credible school shooting threats. I have heard of similar alerts with credit monitoring, but never thought about this technology moving into the schools. Can you share how you came across this technology and how you see this system supporting our schools in the future? How can we shift people’s perspective to show that technology can solve some of these problems we are seeing with social media, rather than just be the cause of them?
Q5: What would be some parting thoughts with your experience in the past few decades leading in education to impact long-lasting and sustainable change in today’s schools? What is your vision for Leading Ed Solutions?
Jeff is holding an event for Superintendents in Scottsdale, AZ next month. Here are more details. https://www.leadingedsolutions.com/event-az If anyone is interested in learning more, please contact him directly jeff@leadingedsolutions.com
Learn more here https://vimeo.com/334815600
Thank you so much for your time, thoughts and ideas today Jeff and for being so accessible for this conversation. If there are school superintendents listening, what criteria are you looking for to join your inner circle? If anyone is interested in contacting you, is the best way through your website leadingedsolutions.com? They can also find you on LinkedIn and @DrJeffRose on Twitter. Thank you.
REFERENCES:
[i] https://www.leadingedsolutions.com/
[ii] Leading Education with Jeff Rose Podcast on iTunes https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/leading-education-with-jeff-rose/id1456969336
[iii] Research: To be a good leader, start by being a good follower by Kim Peters August 6, 2018 https://hbr.org/2018/08/research-to-be-a-good-leader-start-by-being-a-good-follower
[iv] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/student-anxiety-and-social-emotional-challenges/id1456969336?i=1000434241155
[v] http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/news/teen-suicides-in-months-fuels-alarm-in-ev/article_7038d252-cf64-11e8-8765-abf84bf9e713.html
[vi] https://jayshetty.me/laurie-santos/
[vii] http://summitcounseling.org/our-leaders/
[viii] https://achieveit360.com/product-category/posters/
[ix] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-line-that-unites-us-part-1/id1456969336?i=1000448861382
[x] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/student-safety-social-media/id1456969336?i=1000448036071
Wednesday Oct 02, 2019
Understanding the Difference Between Your Mind and Brain
Wednesday Oct 02, 2019
Wednesday Oct 02, 2019
If I were to ask you what are the qualities that you most want for your children, students, employees, or even for yourself so that you can reach those optimal levels of health, well-being and happiness, (no matter what part of the world you are listening from), the answer would probably sound something like this. “I want to them to develop a healthy mind, to pursue excellence, to have the skills needed to excel independently, to have compassion and empathy for others, to acquire the skills needed in this ever-changing world, or to adopt the mindset of lifelong learning that’s needed to thrive not just survive in this world” –something along those lines that focuses on developing the minds of our next generation with social and emotional skills.
In order to bridge this gap between knowing and actually implementing these skills, we must first of all have a clear understanding of what they are. If social and emotional skills are skills that we could say are of the developed mind, and we are moving into cognitive skills of the brain, it leads us to question what is the difference between the mind and the brain before we continue further? Once we have a clear definition of each of these, it’s much easier to continue to develop and implement these strategies needed for improved results. Have you ever thought about what your mind is? What about your brain? And how are they different?
Dr. Dan Siegel, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA, (who I’m so excited to share will be coming on the podcast later next month) has spent a considerable amount of time defining the mind.[i] He was shocked when he first started to study the mind and began surveying mental health professionals around the world who should know about the mind that “95% of them had never even been given a lecture on the mind, and probably couldn’t even tell you what the definition of the mind was”[ii] so he wondered how can we expect to develop it, without this understanding? He explores the concept of the mind in his book, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation[iii] where he proves that you can define what a healthy mind is, not just describe it. His book allows that Mindsight “is the potent skill that is the basis for both emotional and social intelligence.”[iv] He explains that psychology means the study of the mind and behavior and elaborates that “when a parent senses the inner mental life of their child, (their mind) their child does really well in life. This ability to see the mind actually changes the structure of their brain. It’s called neural integration.”[v] Siegel further explains that when we can adopt this practice of “seeing the inner-life” or the minds of our students, children, friends or family members, it makes a considerable difference in the results and well-being that they achieve. Even developing our own practice of being more mindfully present of our own inner mind can “change the ends of the chromosomes in your cells”[vi] proving that what you do with your mind, makes a difference for the health of your body and your relationships.
Dan Siegel explains that a neuroscientist would define the mind “as the activity of the brain”[vii] but he could not settle on this definition as a therapist since this would mean our brain would control everything that we do. He came up with a definition in the mid-1990s that made the most sense to him and his colleagues and it was that the mind “is 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.”[viii] This definition really got me thinking. I probably listened to it for a good week.
It got me thinking about the flow of energy and information and how it comes into our body through our senses, and what we do with this information to cause the results in our life. One of my first mentors studied the mind intensively and came up with a picture diagram that he called the stickperson[ix] that originated from the work of the late Dr. Thurman Fleet from San Antonio, Texas, who was the founder of Concept Therapy. Dr. Fleet’s diagram of the mind included the conscious mind that included how we perceive the outside world with our five senses, our (sight, touch, taste, hearing and smell) which is how we take in information from the outside world, along with the six higher faculties of our mind, our (perception, reasoning, will, memory, imagination and intuition) that give us a deeper perspective of the information we receive. The diagram also shows the sub-conscious (or non-conscious mind as it is more commonly called today) where information comes in automatically, and the fact that what we think about with our mind, shows up with our thoughts, feelings and actions, and causes the results in our life as our conditions, circumstances and environment change based on the actions that we take.[x] Dr. Fleet’s diagram shows how important it is that we understand how our mind operates in order to reach our highest levels of potential.
In our last interview with the Founding Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and author of the book Permission to Feel,[xi] Marc Brackett reminded us that “people don’t lose their jobs because of a lack of ability in the cognitive areas, it’s usually because of social skills—someone who just doesn’t fit into the organization for some reason, or who can’t seem to get along with the team.”[xii] Developing these social skills of the mind is what we all want. These are the universal skills that we want for ourselves and for others and it’s interesting that it’s taken so long for our schools to put an emphasis on developing the minds of our next generation of students.
The benefits of learning these skills does take time to be seen, but the research is evident. Casel (the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning) has clear research that proves that implementing these SEL skills will improve students’ academic abilities. Casel’s meta-analysis of 213 studies involving 270,000+ students showed that “SEL interventions that address CASEL’s five core competencies (that we have covered in our social and emotional track) increased students’ academic performance by 11 percentile points, compared to students who did not participate in such SEL programs. Students also showed improved classroom behavior, an increased ability to manage stress and depression, and better attitudes about themselves, others, and school.[xiii]
The research also showed that we as parents, educators, coaches and counselors must first of all practice these concepts ourselves, before we teach others because if we haven’t developed a practice ourselves, our students will pick up on the lack of authenticity and won’t take the concept seriously either.
Marc Brackett also shared with us that the social and emotional competencies were harder to learn and implement than the cognitive strategies. He reminded us in episode 22 that “we can’t be sure that once we have learned a strategy (for example like one for improving our mindset) that we will then be able to implement that strategy while under stress whereas memorization of our times tables, a cognitive skill, is much easier to learn, use and remember.”[xiv] It’s a lifelong commitment to understanding ourselves, our emotions and continuing to apply the strategies to regulate us. We should refer back to the strategies in the social and emotional lessons to be sure that we are continuing to “sharpen the saw”[xv] and implementing these ideas for continual improved results.
Once we have a solid practice for developing our social and emotional mindset, (understanding ourselves and our emotions) it makes sense to move onto the cognitive strategies which are the processes of thinking and include the ability to focus and pay attention, set goals, plan and organize, persevere and problem solve.[xvi]
If cognition is the realm of thinking, then metacognition involves thinking about our thinking, reflecting on your own thinking process and the ability to monitor and manage your learning. This is where we must begin to create a plan to improve what we would like to learn. It is possible to learn anything with the right study habits, the ability to practice and refine the skills needed, with a positive growth mindset, we can create those “Aha Moments” of learning that come when we persist through something we are working on.
What Slows Down Our Learning?
Stress and anxiety make it difficult for learning to occur. When you feel threatened or anxious, the brain releases chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol. These chemicals quickly alter the way that you think, feel and behave and shut down the oldest part of the brain that are designed to keep us safe when we feel stress. It’s smart to learn quick and simple relaxation strategies that you can use immediately when you feel stressed or anxious. Taking some deep, long breaths can fuel your brain for focused attention and learning and prevent your emotions from taking control. If you are looking for a longer term solution, research does show that those who consistently practice mindfulness and mediation strategies, decrease the size of the amygdala, (the part of the brain that highjacks our emotions) and improves our ability to handle stressful situations so that we possess more equanimity, a mental calmness, composure and evenness of temper, especially during difficult situations.
What Strengthens Our Brain and Cognition?
When you are curious and interested, you will be ready to put in the effort needed to work hard and concentrate on new information. You must also be happy and relaxed in order to consolidate this new information. In his book Words Can Change Your Brain[xvii], Mark Robert Waldman outlines his brain-scan research suggesting that “the strategies incorporated in mindfulness could strengthen the neural circuits associated with empathy, compassion and moral decision making .”[xviii] This demonstrates just how powerful it can be to stop and think . Incorporating mindfulness into your daily routine can enable you to be more observant, creative, and ready to see the opportunity within your daily obstacles and challenges.
Here are Three Tips to Strengthen Your Brain and Cognition That You Can Implement Immediately:
Take brief relaxation breaks to maintain focus and improve your ability to problem solve. We must find a way to relax our brain and body. It’s during these “resting states” that remarkable activity takes place, allowing the brain to creatively solve problems. Dr. Srini Pillay, an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, wrote a book about the importance of this resting period in his book, Tinker, Dabble, Doodle, Try: Unlock the Power of the Unfocused Mind.[xix] In this book Pillay explains that too much focus depletes your brain of glucose and depletes you. Be mindful of ways to eliminate decision fatigue and allow those times for your mind to become unfocused. He shared that Einstein discovered his Theory of Relativity by using his intuition, and then used logic to explain it. Unfocused time can take you to places and insights where focus cannot.
Improve the circuits of your brain by learning to look within for answers. In his book, “Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation” Dr . Siegel shares that teachers introduced to “mindsight or the ability to focus on the inner life of their student or child” teach with the brain in mind and are reaching students in deeper and more lasting ways .”[xx] The research shows that developing the ability to make sense of your own life and past experiences, translates into the development of your students and children. Dr. Siegel is an expert on Attachment Research and discusses the fact that having Mindsight ourselves, will help develop securely attached children who will learn resilience.
Create a plan for persistence. If your first plan does not succeed, what will you try next. Map out strategies for your plan b and be ready to pivot or try something new if the first plan fails. Those who fail, often attribute their failure to lack of inspiration, ability, talent or lack of time, but most often it’s due to insufficient application of strategies towards a goal and lack of persistence.
I hope you have found these tips and further study of the mind vs the brain to be helpful as we move into the cognitive track and dive deeper into how we can use our brain to facilitate and improve our ability to learn and create lasting results. I’m excited to speak with Dr. Siegel the start of November. His work has inspired a lot of my early research into the brain and there’s no one like him who can explain such complex concepts in a way that anyone can understand them. I look forward to bringing in new experts to inspire new ways of thinking around the power and purpose of our brain in our cognitive track. See you next time.
RESOURCES:
Integrating Social, Emotional and Academic Development (SEAD) March 2019 The Aspen Institute https://www.aspeninstitute.org/publications/integrating-social-emotional-and-academic-development-sead-an-action-guide-for-school-leadership-teams/
“How to Reach the Aha Moment of Learning” Diagram adapted by Andrea Samadi with permission https://www.dropbox.com/s/lktxwm2u130vllr/18-Metacognition.jpg?dl=0
REFERENCES:
[i] Dr. Dan Siegel Defines The Mind Published Feb. 11, 2010 on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEdq04xbHAs
[ii] TEDx Sunset Park Dr. Dan Siegel “What is the Mind?” YouTube Published July 4, 2012 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak5GCyBFY4E
[iii] Mindsight: The New Science of Transformation Dr. Dan Siegel https://www.drdansiegel.com/about/mindsight/
[iv] Mindsight: The New Science of Transformation Dr. Dan Siegel https://www.drdansiegel.com/about/mindsight/
[v] TEDx Sunset Park Dr. Dan Siegel “What is the Mind?” YouTube Published July 4, 2012 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak5GCyBFY4E
[vi] TEDx Sunset Park Dr. Dan Siegel “What is the Mind?” YouTube Published July 4, 2012 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak5GCyBFY4E
[vii] Dr. Dan Siegel Defines The Mind Published Feb. 11, 2010 on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEdq04xbHAs
[viii] Dr. Dan Siegel Defines The Mind Published Feb. 11, 2010 on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEdq04xbHAs
[ix] How Your Mind Works Proctor Gallagher Institute, idea originally from Dr. Thurman Fleet https://www.proctorgallagherinstitute.com/25593/how-your-mind-works
[x] How Your Mind Works Proctor Gallagher Institute, idea originally from Dr. Thurman Fleet https://www.proctorgallagherinstitute.com/25593/how-your-mind-works
[xi] Marc Brackett “Permission to Feel” https://www.marcbrackett.com/
[xii] Marc Brackett on the Importance of Emotional Intelligence https://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/marc-brackett-on-the-importance-of-emotional-intelligence/
[xiii] The Impact of SEL https://casel.org/impact/
[xiv] EPISODE #22 Interview with Marc Brackett, Founding Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/founding-director-yale-center-for-emotional-intelligence/id1469683141?i=1000450933434
[xv] Sharpen the Saw 7th Habit of Highly Effective People Stephen Covey https://www.franklincovey.com/the-7-habits/habit-7.html
[xvi] Integrating Social, Emotional and Academic Development (SEAD) March 2019 The Aspen Institute https://www.aspeninstitute.org/publications/integrating-social-emotional-and-academic-development-sead-an-action-guide-for-school-leadership-teams/
[xvii] Andrew Newburg M .D . and Mark Robert Waldman, “Words Can Change Your Brain,” (The Penguin Group, New York, New York) Page 12
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0074VTHMA/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
[xviii] Andrew Newburg M .D . and Mark Robert Waldman, “Words Can Change Your Brain,” (The Penguin Group, New York, New York) Page 12
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0074VTHMA/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
[xix] Dr. Srini Pillay Tinker, Dabble, Doodle, Try: Unlock the Power of the Unfocused Mind https://www.amazon.com/Tinker-Dabble-Doodle-Try-Unfocused-ebook/dp/B01JWDZ7SK/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=pillay+tinker&qid=1570042219&s=digital-text&sr=1-1
[xx] Dan Siegel, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation, (New York: Bantam, 2010) Kindle Edition Location 133 https://www.amazon.com/Mindsight-New-Science-Personal-Transformation-ebook/dp/B002XHNONS/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=mindsight&qid=1570042869&s=digital-text&sr=1-1
Monday Sep 23, 2019
Monday Sep 23, 2019
Watch this interview on YouTube here.
Marc Brackett, Ph.D., [i]is the Founder and Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence [ii]and a Professor in the Child Study Center of Yale University. He is the lead developer of the RULER approach,[iii] (the 5 skills of emotional intelligence). RULER is an evidence-based approach to social and emotional learning that has been adopted by nearly 2,000 pre-K through high schools across the United States and in other countries and the approach is seeing huge success.[iv] He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (known as CASEL)[v]. Marc’s new book, Permission to Feel (Celadon/Macmillan) inspires a new mindset around the power of emotions to transform our lives. Instead of the idea that our “emotions get in the way of our success, they are actually the key to it.”[vi] Using science, passion, and lively storytelling, this book serves as a guide for understanding our own and others’ emotions, as well as provides innovative strategies for developing emotional intelligence in adults and children so that emotions help, rather than hinder, our success and well-being. I haven’t been able to put his book down because it captivated me!
Welcome Marc!
Q1: I am thrilled, excited, motivated, and inspired to be speaking with you—all of those yellow (high energy and pleasant feelings) on your Mood Meter Chart—that tool you developed to help people become aware of their feelings—that’s in the first few pages of your book. I actually watched your Talk at Google[vii] and learned so much—before I had started to read “Permission to Feel” I thought I would introduce this concept of “how do you feel” to my girls (ages 10 and 8) and that it would be just like how we added Growth Mindset into our homework slot. But I had an eye-opening situation that showed me we are not as emotionally literate as I had thought in my household. Can I tell you the story of what happened to get your point of view on the situation? So, a couple of weekends ago we went to see the movie, Lion King, and my two girls were the only kids in the theatre bawling their eyes out when Musafa, the Dad, dies. I thought, let me see if I can give them “Permission to Feel” and implement Marc’s book —so I say, “Why are you crying?” expecting they would say “because the Dad died and I don’t want my Dad to die” and we would start a conversation about that but my oldest just grunted and pushed me away, and the youngest was crying too hard to say anything at all. I realized that we could be doing a better job with talking about emotions in our home. Marc, what happens when we deny the “Permission to Feel” and where would you suggest anyone begin when implementing your RULER approach, whether we are a parent, teacher or employee in the workplace?
Q2: Now that I know this approach—and know that knowledge and application are poles apart, can you explain what are the biggest things we should avoid, and what should we watch for to be sure we are properly implementing the RULER approach?
Q3: When I first opened your book “Permission to Feel” and saw the Mood Meter Chart I went straight to where I hang out most of the time. (Upbeat, cheerful, lively, focused, and joyful) that’s me—but to get here—takes daily work (meditation and exercise) that has taken some time to figure out what I must do to be my best self. Then I thought about some other people in my world working in high stress careers who hang out in stressed, anxious, frustrated, and worried with different work responsibilities and priorities. What are some strategies you suggest helping people who might be hanging out in the red quadrant who are pressed for time to create this work/life balance?
Q4: Can you give a quick background for why this book is so important and timely with such a rise in mental health issues these days? We all know the shocking statistics for our nation’s youth with the current suicide epidemic, and depression and anxiety being common in kids at young ages these days. How did we arrive at this place where we still struggle to talk about how we feel—how even the most educated in this field could use some help, especially with the first 3 strategies of recognizing, understanding and labelling our own and other people’s emotions?
Q5: Self-regulation is always the most requested topic I hear when I’m working with a school. I heard you mention how important this skill is even for those in the workplace. In one of your most recent interviews, you mentioned that “people don’t lose their jobs because of their abilities in the cognitive areas, it’s usually because of their inability to regulate.”[viii] What does the research tell us about the parts of our life that emotions drive so we can improve these life skills and increase our performance? How can we learn the language and strategies to better manage our emotions?
Q6: What is your vision for “Permission to Feel” and the work you are doing with the Yale Center of Emotional Intelligence and anything important that you would like to add that we might have missed?
Thank you so much Marc for writing this book the way that you did, sharing your true self, to show the importance of feeling the emotions in our lives, so that we can truly reach those higher levels of achievement. If anyone wants to reach you, what is the best way? To buy the book you can go to http://www.marcbrackett.com/ I also saw that you are starting a new blog to help people to become emotion scientists. Where can we find more about this? I will be sure to follow the blog and keep you posted on our results as we implement the RULER approach in our home. Thank you Marc!
[i] https://www.marcbrackett.com/
[ii] http://ei.yale.edu/
[iii] https://www.rulerapproach.org/
[iv] https://www.gettingsmart.com/2019/09/permission-to-feel-the-link-between-emotional-intelligence-and-academic-success/
[v] https://casel.org/
[vi] https://www.gettingsmart.com/2019/09/permission-to-feel-the-link-between-emotional-intelligence-and-academic-success/
[vii] Marc Brackett Emotional Intelligence as a Superpower Published July 31, 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcFefehMpZ0
[viii] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/marc-brackett-on-the-importance-of-emotional-intelligence/
Wednesday Sep 18, 2019
Filmmaker Spencer Taylor on his Educational Documentary "The Death of Recess"
Wednesday Sep 18, 2019
Wednesday Sep 18, 2019
You can watch the interview on YouTube here. Today we have someone I have been watching, cheering on, supporting and giving him all the love I can possibly imagine because when I first heard about his goal to create an educational documentary to impact change on our struggling schools, I knew he would be the one to accomplish this. Spencer Taylor is a filmmaker, the co-founder of Vybesource (a movement of conscious thinkers dedicated to mind, body and soul) and he has spent the past 3 years traveling the world from the US, Canada, Finland, and China, to interview leaders in education for his upcoming documentary “The Death of Recess.”
Welcome Spencer from the road…on your way to LV! It’s great to have you here to share what you have been up to the past 3 years.
Q1: Can you give some background on your vision for this film that you have been working so hard on, and why you saw the need to get this information into the world? Also, how will this documentary be different than what we are used to watching on Netflix?
Q2: What are some of the challenges you have learned about from this interview process and how will someone watching your film be able to make changes?
Q3: What are some of the main differences you saw going from the US to Canada and into schools in Finland—where their educational system is labeled as the best in the world with school hours cut in half, little homework, no standardized tests, 50 minute recess and free lunch[i]. What changes do you think we need to focus on here?
Q4: What other issues does the film covers and what do you hope to accomplish with the release of this film?
Q5: Who was the most impactful interview you did and why?
Thank you so much Spencer for taking the time to share the vision of this documentary. This is important work and I know you are beyond busy. I appreciate your time, and all you are doing. What is the best way to support the release of the film moving forward? Contact Spencer@VybeSource.com if you are a school with an innovative story that you would like to share.
Thanks Spencer!
[i] https://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/january/finnish-schools-reform-012012.html
Monday Sep 16, 2019
Monday Sep 16, 2019
Welcome back to the “Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast” EPISODE 20 this is Andrea Samadi. I want to thank everyone who has been tuning into these episodes. In just a few short months of launching, we have reached 20 countries and the feedback has been incredible. Not only am I hearing that the topics are relevant and applicable, but the need is very clear to continue to interview new leaders in this field of social and emotional learning/emotional intelligence and neuroscience and continue to offer ideas and strategies that can be implemented immediately. If you do have feedback or want to reach me directly, you can find me (Andrea Samadi) on LinkedIn or Twitter or send me an email to andrea@achieveit360.com
Our initial goal with this podcast was to close the gap recent surveys show exists in our workforce where 58 percent of employers say college graduates aren’t adequately prepared for today’s workforce, and those employers noted a particular gap in social and emotional skills. Research shows that social-emotional skills like social awareness, self-regulation, and growth mindset (the skills that we have been covering in the past episodes) are crucial to college and career readiness. The outcomes of developing these intelligences are vast as they impact our performance, leadership, personal excellence, time management, and decision-making.
As we have progressed, these episodes are bringing together leaders and practitioners in the field who have programs, products, books, and ideas to share, with an urgent need to get this message out to impact our schools, communities, and workplaces. As Clark McKown, the President of xSEL Labs, SEL Assessment mentioned in our podcast interview EPISODE 10, “it’s important that we bring people to have conversations (around SEL/emotional intelligence) to propel us forward—bringing the different strands of the SEL movement together—and having them coordinate is going to be (the) key. There’s potential for a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts.”[i] I hope that you agree with me how important this work is, and if you are finding these episodes helpful, please do share them on your social media so that others can gain access.
So far, we’ve covered five of the six social and emotional learning competencies to dive deep into and tie in how an understanding of our brain can facilitate these strategies. The sixth social and emotional competency, Mindset, fits in to the Social and Emotional Track with the ability to understand your own emotions (when you feel like something might be difficult and you become frustrated and ready to give up) as well as the Cognitive Track, using the executive functions of our brain—with the needed ability to persevere, problem solve, and come up with a different strategy.
With each competency, we investigate the best practices that you can use to develop and improve your own SEL/Emotional Intelligence and well-being practice, before extending these strategies to your districts, schools, classrooms, workplaces and communities. We must first of all practice the concept ourselves, before we teach others because if we haven’t developed a practice ourselves, our students will pick up on the lack of authenticity and won’t take the concept seriously either. The interviews are designed so that you can hear directly from experts in the field who are using these skills on a daily basis. We want the ideas you take away with you to be actionable whether you are an educator working in a school, an employee or manager in a corporation, or someone just looking to take their skills to the next level. Be sure to look for the resources in the show notes section if you would like to dive deeper into this topic.
Moving onto the topic of “Mindset” it’s important to notice that ten years after Carol Dweck’s essential finding that for “children who have a “growth mindset” their intelligence can be developed (and students) are better able to overcome academic stumbling blocks than those who have a “fixed mindset” (who think) that intelligence is predetermined (or they must be born with a certain set of skills that can’t be changed)— (these findings are) as relevant as ever.”[ii] Dweck’s work has reached thousands of schools, students and teachers, around the world and her research has been recognized and honored as she was the recipient of the $3.8 million Yidan Prize, the world’s largest international prize in educational research and development.
Applying growth mindset has proven to be something that has not been simple or easy to do—whether in the classroom, workplace, or even in the field of athletics. In the next few sections we will look at the obstacles behind the application of growth mindset in each of these three fields with some suggested strategies for a successful implementation. John Hattie, Professor and Deputy Dean of the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, answers the key question of "WHEN is the appropriate situation for thinking in a growth manner over a fixed manner?"[iii] In the following situations, having access to growth thinking helps resolve the situation, move the person forward, and not lead to resistance, over reaction and fear of flight into a fixed mindset. The major situations for growth mindset are:
When we do not know an answer
When we make error
When we experience failure or
When we are anxious.
In each of these situations, having a strategy to help us to pivot, try a new angle, so we can learn from what did not work last time, will help access those breakthroughs, and those Aha! Moments of learning that can only occur when we persist and persevere instead of giving up. Our end goal is to work towards changing our belief in ourselves, giving us confidence and hope, that comes with time, effort and with each new experience where we overcome a struggle.
Let’s Examine the Obstacles Behind the Application of Growth Mindset in the Classroom:
An Education Week survey found that “the vast majority of educators believe that a growth-oriented mindset can help improve students’ motivation, commitment and engagement in learning. But the study found that applying those ideas to practice, and helping students shift their mindset around learning, remains an elusive challenge.”[iv]
Key Findings from the Education Week Survey[v] showed:
∙ Educators believe growth mindset has great potential for teaching and learning. Nearly all teachers (98%) agree that using growth mindset in the classroom will lead to improved student learning.
∙ Teachers see a strong link between a growth mindset and a range of positive student outcomes and behaviors. More than 90 percent believe growth mindset is associated with excitement about learning, persistence, high levels of effort, and participation in class.
∙ Practices thought to foster a growth mindset are consistently used in the classroom. The majority of teachers report praising students for their effort on a daily basis or encouraging them to continue improving in areas of strength or to try new strategies when they are struggling.
∙ However, putting growth mindset into practice poses significant challenges. Only 20 percent of teachers strongly believe they are good at fostering a growth mindset in their own students. They have even less confidence in their fellow teachers and school administrators. And just one in five say they have deeply integrated growth mindset into their teaching practice.
So, what’s happening to yield such a gap with theory and practice?
Carol Dweck has expressed “concern that teachers are placing emphasis merely on students’ efforts instead of their learning strategies”[vi] and wants to remind us that the real purpose behind growth mindset was to boost student’s learning. All of the effort in the world will not yield results if it’s the wrong strategy for the student.
Three Strategies That Build Growth Mindset in the Light of These Obstacles
Have students try different learning strategies for different subject areas. While preparing a book report, “one student may find a graphic organizer to be a helpful tool for citing evidence, while another prefers to highlight supporting points in different colors. Another might list every possible option for evidence and cross out the weakest ones.”[vii] They may have an entirely different strategy for studying for a science test that would involve mnemonics and memorization, and rote practice of math problems for a math test. Whatever method they choose to use, they will need to monitor and observe how this strategy is working for them and make adjustments when needed.
Be sure that teachers are not labelling students “as difficult to teach based on their perceived mindsets.”[viii] It might be easier to suggest that a student has a “fixed mindset” rather than identify a learning challenge with a student. Be sure that all options are explored for each student with the proper interventions put in place.
Be careful of a “false” growth mindset. We all want to believe that we have a growth mindset all of the time, but the truth is, that we all go back and forth, depending on what we are doing, and the different circumstances in our lives. Dweck herself notes “we are all a mixture of growth and fixed and need to understand both in ourselves. (She) particularly notes the reactions we have when we face challenges, are overly anxious, in fight or flight. [ix] Self-awareness comes into play here as we learn to identify the skills in our life that we have a desire to change, and perhaps the ones that we are happy with where they are.
What About Obstacles Behind the Application of Growth Mindset in Athletics
The Rover Soccer Training Academy, one of the top teams in the UK Soccer League, whose Director of Team Performance, Tony Faulkner, came to visit Carol Dweck to find some answers to the problem he was having with some of their players not reaching their highest potential. The problem existed because the British culture held the belief that “soccer stars are born, not made” and if you believe this, and have incredible talent, then the belief would impede this player from seeing the point of daily practice to improve their craft.
Before we can see the benefits that having a Growth Mindset yields, we have to hold the belief that we can in fact change with effort, hard work, practice, persistence and perseverance and because of the British culture, this team needed to do some work with their core beliefs and Cognitive Biases.
What are Cognitive Biases and How Do They Work?
A cognitive bias is “a type of error in thinking that occurs when people are processing and interpreting information in the world around them.”[x] There are over 200 known cognitive biases that cause us to think and act irrationally[xi] and are the result of our brain’s need to simplify information, helping us make decisions quickly. When we are making decisions, we must take in information quickly, and the brain does this by way of a mental shortcut called heuristics that can be accurate, but can also sway us a certain way, causing us to make poor decisions based on our own limited thinking.
Learn more about a few of the most common types of cognitive biases that can distort your thinking.[xii]
Confirmation Bias: This is favoring information that conforms to your existing beliefs and discounting evidence that does not conform. A confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias that involves favoring information that confirms your previously existing beliefs or biases.[xiii]
The Bandwagon Effect: This is the tendency for people to do or think things because other people do or think them.
Availability Heuristic: This is placing greater value on information that comes to your mind quickly. You give greater credence to this information and tend to overestimate the probability and likelihood of similar things happening in the future.
Halo Effect: Your overall impression of a person influences how you feel and think about his or her character. This especially applies to physical attractiveness influencing how you rate their other qualities.
Self-Serving Bias: This is the tendency to blame external forces when bad things happen and give yourself credit when good things happen. When you win a poker hand it is due to your skill at reading the other players and knowing the odds, while when you lose it is due to getting dealt a poor hand.
Attentional Bias: This is the tendency to pay attention to some things while simultaneously ignoring others. When making a decision on which car to buy, you may pay attention to the look and feel of the exterior and interior but ignore the safety record and gas mileage.
Actor-Observer Bias: This is the tendency to attribute your own actions to external causes while attributing other people's behaviors to internal causes. You attribute your high cholesterol level to genetics while you consider others to have a high level due to poor diet and lack of exercise.
Functional Fixedness: This is the tendency to see objects as only working in a particular way. If you don't have a hammer, you never consider that a big wrench can also be used to drive a nail into the wall. You may think you don't need thumbtacks because you have no corkboard on which to tack things, but not consider their other uses. This could extend to people's functions, such as not realizing a personal assistant has skills to be in a leadership role.
Anchoring Bias: This is the tendency to rely too heavily on the very first piece of information you learn. If you learn the average price for a car is a certain value, you will think any amount below that is a good deal, perhaps not searching for better deals. You can use this bias to set the expectations of others by putting the first information on the table for consideration.
Misinformation Effect: This is the tendency for post-event information to interfere with the memory of the original event. It is easy to have your memory influenced by what you hear about the event from others. Knowledge of this effect has led to a mistrust of eyewitness information.
False Consensus Effect: This is the tendency to overestimate how much other people agree with you.
Optimism Bias: This bias leads you to believe that you are less likely to suffer from misfortune and more likely to attain success than your peers.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect: This is when people believe that they are smarter and more capable than they really are when they can't recognize their own incompetence.
The Rovers soccer Training Academy in the UK was definitely suffering from the Bandwagon Effect—the tendency for people to do or think things because other people do or think them since most people believed that “soccer stars were born and not made” and that daily practice and drills wasn’t important for certain players. They had to work on looking at their belief system to make changes in the results of their players. Dweck gave advice for the Rovers Soccer Training Academy that holds true for anyone stuck in a fixed mindset. “Changing mindsets is not like surgery,” she says. “You can’t simply remove the fixed mindset and replace it with the growth mindset.” The Rovers are starting their workshops with recent recruits — their youngest, most malleable players. The team’s talent scouts will be asking about new players’ views on talent and training — not to screen out those with a fixed mindset, but to target them for special training.[xiv]
Tips for Building a Growth Mindset with Cognitive Biases in Mind
The first step is to be aware of the fact that cognitive biases exist and that we must challenge our own thinking and beliefs.
Pick ONE cognitive bias and look at where we might be making flawed decisions based on your beliefs. Having discussions on the bias can help bring more awareness to how other people think.
Why is Growth Mindset Important in the Workplace or Your Organization?
We know that developing emotional and cognitive skills like growth mindset yield noticeable results in the workplace with the ability to recognize our emotions when we are becoming frustrated with something we are working on, and then having the ability to try another strategy, angle or plan for success to overcome the challenge.
So, what are some things that you and your organization could be doing to develop a growth mindset? Carol Dweck’s research outlines the main attributes that create a growth-mindset environment. This includes;
Presentation skills are learnable.
Conveying that the organization values learning and perseverance, not just ready-made genius or talent.
Giving feedback in a way that promotes learning and future success and presenting managers or coaches as resources for learning. (Dweck, 2007)
Promoting time to think and reflect.
OUTCOMES AND RESULTS
IN SCHOOLS: A review of the key findings from Edweek’s survey that once the theory and practice of Growth Mindset are implemented,
Nearly all teachers (98%) agree that using growth mindset in the classroom will lead to improved student learning.
More than 90 percent believe growth mindset is associated with excitement about learning, persistence, high levels of effort, and participation in class.
The majority of teachers report praising students for their effort on a daily basis or encouraging them to continue improving in areas of strength or to try new strategies when they are struggling.
IN ATHLETICS: As we saw with the Rovers Soccer Training Academy, once the players were able to adopt a Growth Mindset, the entire organization was able to align their values and beliefs behind consistent daily practice for success and infuse these beliefs into the future of the academy.
IN THE WORKPLACE:
Did you know that employees in a “growth mindset” organization are: [xv]
47% likelier to say that their colleagues are trustworthy,34% likelier to feel a strong sense of ownership and commitment to the organization, and,49% likelier to say that the company fosters innovation (HBR, November 2014).
Whatever reason you might be interested in learning more about Growth Mindset, just keep in mind what Carol Dweck herself suggests, that we cannot just remove a Fixed Mindset and replace it will a Growth Mindset. It will take time and practice to develop a Growth Mindset in your brain, but just like anything we do, with practice, those pathways form and eventually become habits, yielding us the results that we have worked so hard to attain.
Thank you for staying right to end of this episode. I’m grateful for your support and interest in these topics and look forward to sharing some of the most successful leaders in the field and social and emotional learning and emotional intelligence to help put this theory into practice. Stay tuned for my next guest…he’s someone who won’t need much of an introduction if you are in the field of education. I can’t wait to share his most recent book and work…see you next time.
RESOURCES
11 Cognitive Biases in Marketing by Tamas Oszi Published June 9, 2022 https://antavo.com/blog/cognitive-biases-in-marketing/
“Mindset in the Classroom: A National Study of K-12 Teachers” by Education Week Research Center https://secure.edweek.org/media/ewrc_mindsetintheclassroom_sept2016.pdf
REFERENCES:
[i] Clark McKown, President of xSEL Labs “Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast Interview) August 2, 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9-CvUbHkc0&list=PLb5Z3cA_mnKhiYc5glhacO9k9WTrSgjzW&index=7&t=1199s
[ii] “Why Mindset Matters” by Marina Krakovsky https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/why-mindset-matters (Oct. 20, 2017).
[iii]Misinterpreting the Growth Mindset: Why We're Doing Students a Disservice by Peter DeWitt June 28, 2017
https://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25920011&item=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.edweek.org%2Fv1%2Fblog%2F95%2Findex.html%3Fuuid%3D72639
[iv] “Why Growth Mindset Still Has some Growing to Do” by Rupa Chandra Gupta Nov.12, 2018 https://www.edsurge.com/amp/news/2018-11-12-why-the-growth-mindset-still-needs-to-grow-up
[v] “Mindset in the Classroom: A National Study of K-12 Teachers” by Education Week Research Center https://secure.edweek.org/media/ewrc_mindsetintheclassroom_sept2016.pdf
[vi] “Mindset in the Classroom: A National Study of K-12 Teachers” by Education Week Research Center https://secure.edweek.org/media/ewrc_mindsetintheclassroom_sept2016.pdf (page 5)
[vii] “Why Growth Mindset Still Has some Growing to Do” by Rupa Chandra Gupta Nov.12, 2018 https://www.edsurge.com/amp/news/2018-11-12-why-the-growth-mindset-still-needs-to-grow-up
[viii] “Mindset in the Classroom: A National Study of K-12 Teachers” by Education Week Research Center https://secure.edweek.org/media/ewrc_mindsetintheclassroom_sept2016.pdf (page 5)
[ix] Misinterpreting the Growth Mindset: Why We're Doing Students a Disservice by Peter DeWitt June 28, 2017
https://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25920011&item=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.edweek.org%2Fv1%2Fblog%2F95%2Findex.html%3Fuuid%3D72639
[x] How Cognitive Biases Influence How You Think and Act by Kendra Cherry September 7, 2019 https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-cognitive-bias-2794963
[xi] Infographic https://www.instagram.com/p/B0TNjU0lr_s/?utm_source=ig_web_options_share_sheet
[xii] How Cognitive Biases Influence How You Think and Act by Kendra Cherry September 7, 2019 https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-cognitive-bias-2794963
[xiii] How Confirmation Bias Work by Kendra Cherry Sept. 8, 2019 https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-confirmation-bias-2795024
[xiv] “Why Mindset Matters” by Marina Krakovsky https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/why-mindset-matters (Oct. 20, 2017).
[xv] Growth Mindset—Why is it Important for Your Organization? By Lisa Everton Nov.7, 2018 https://www.centreforleadershipadvantage.com/2018/11/07/growth-mindset-why-is-it-important-for-your-organisation/
Tuesday Sep 10, 2019
Tuesday Sep 10, 2019
Welcome back to the “Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast” EPISODE 19 this is Andrea Samadi. This interview will be broadcast on YouTube as well as on the regular podcast channel, so be sure to look for the YouTube link in the show notes if you would like to view the video.
Today we have Bob Jerus, author of “Mind Matters: Applying Emotional Intelligence for Personal and Professional Success”[i] among five other books on the topic of communication, leadership and sales. His focus is on making performance, teamwork and organizational development happier and more result driven. He’s a certified human resource professional with over 30 years of experience in staffing, development, engagement and organizational development. He founded Success Dynamics International and developed the EIQ-2 Learning Systems. As a university professor and administrator, he developed, taught, administered, delivered and assessed both curriculum and courses at graduate and undergraduate levels for traditional, adult education and on-line programs. He’s taught marketing, management, HR, adult development and psychology with a focus on measurable, sustainable results.
Bob has been a trusted advisor for the work we do with Achieveit360, and someone I reach out to often for advice with his in-depth knowledge in a wealth of different areas.
Welcome Bob! It’s great to speak to you face to face for a change.
Q1: It’s interesting and timely that we are speaking on World Suicide Prevention Day since the one of the last times I reached out to you for advice was to get some help in this area with some challenges I was seeing in our local schools. Can you provide some background on where you started your career and perhaps any words of advice on suicide prevention, since this is your area of expertise?
Q2: We see a movement these days to implement social and emotional learning/emotional intelligence programs in our schools and workplaces. Why do you think programs like this are so important right now?
Q3: Your book “Mind Matters: Applying Emotional Intelligence for Personal and Professional Success” explains every facet imaginable for success using Emotional Intelligence for Personal and Professional Success. I love how it’s written in a how-to style, connecting the brain and the most recent neuroscience research, with many graphics and visuals to guide the reader towards implementing the wisdom in each chapter. Can you explain why you wrote “Mind Matters” and what is your favorite/most important concept this book teaches?
Q4: Self-regulation (managing one’s emotions) is always the most requested topic I am asked about when working with schools. Obviously, this is a skill that must be trained, but in your experience, why is it so difficult to perceive, understand and manage our emotions so that we can find that balance of self-leadership that’s so important in the workplace?
Q5: What is your current vision now for your work with Success Dynamics and bringing Emotional Intelligence into the workplace?
Q6: Is there anything that I might have missed? Any final words of wisdom that you would like to leave with us to help us to stay focused on applying emotional intelligence for more success in our life?
[i] Mind Matters: Applying Emotional Intelligence for Personal and Professional Success” https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Matters-Emotional-Intelligence-Professional/dp/1502441918
RESOURCES:
Robert Jerus Article from LinkeIn “Suicide: The Final Answer?” https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/suicide-final-answer-robert-jerus-sphr-always-on-your-mind-2e/?trackingId=RjS3pyL0TOeDZnHnxFtEOQ%3D%3D
Emotional Intelligence Training with Bob Jerus http://www.eiq-2.com/
Monday Sep 09, 2019
Monday Sep 09, 2019
Welcome back to the “Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast” EPISODE 18 this is Andrea Samadi. This interview will be broadcast on YouTube as well as on the regular podcast channel, so be sure to look for the YouTube link in the show notes if you would like to view the video.
Today we have someone I have been friends with for almost 10 years. I’ll never forget seeing the review he left for my first book[i] on Amazon and when I saw his interest in what I was doing, I reached out to him to learn more about how he was using books like mine in schools, to see how I could improve. Dr. Kohutek has spent his adult life working in the fields of psychology, neuropsychology and education. Through the experience of working with a myriad of students in settings ranging from Charter, Title I, Parochial schools, residential treatment centers, and psychiatric hospitals. He’s able to provide examples of situations which many elementary and middle school students experience in today’s educational system.
I’ve been interested in his books[ii] over the years, and this is our second interview. We spoke many years ago about enhancing children’s cognitive abilities, years before educational neuroscience was so prevalent in our schools. I was thrilled and honored when he asked me to write the Foreword to his most recent book, “Chloe and Josh Learn Grit and Resilience with Grit Gal” volume 1, available this week at Barnes and Noble[iii] and Amazon[iv] Welcome Dr. Kohutek, who is on campus today at St. Dominic Savio Catholic High School in Austin, Texas.
Q1: I love this book, especially with it being the first Foreword I have ever written, thank you for this opportunity! Can you tell me what inspired you to write a book on Grit, Mindset and Resilience?
Q2: For years I envisioned tools and books like this in our classrooms and am excited to see the results it will produce. What made you intertwine the social and emotional competencies with the cognitive capabilities—which is exactly what I am doing here on the podcast?
Q3: I love how the book covers these skills connected to stories because our brain looks for and stores memories based on emotions and stories are one way to elicit that emotion. Was there a particular student who made you think of Grit Gal providing the insight to overcome each of the seven stories?
Q4: Why do you think the discussion questions with each chapter are so important? How can you see each chapter helping a student whether they are working with their teacher in the classroom, or at home, with their family?
Q5: Why do you think this book is so timely? Why do most people never develop Grit?
Q6: What is your vision for this book? I see that you are already working on Volume 2. What topics are coming up next?
Q7: What are your final words of wisdom for us on this topic? Anything that we might have missed that you think is important to share?
Q8: Where is the best place for someone to find your book? How can they reach you with any questions?
Thank you very much for taking the time out to speak with me today and share this new book. I’m excited to hear about the results it creates for students and teachers as well to follow this series. Best of luck and thanks for all you are doing for students and schools. I know it’s not easy to write a book with a busy schedule of working in at
[i] https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Teens-Revealed-Teenagers-Leadership/dp/1604940336
[ii] https://www.amazon.com/Childrens-Cognitive-Enhancement-Program-Combined/dp/0989116441/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=kohutek&qid=1568050887&s=digital-text&sr=1-5-catcorr
[iii] https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/chloe-and-josh-learn-grit-and-resilience-with-grit-gal-kenneth-j-kohutek-ph-d/1133283703?ean=9781982231224 Barnes and Noble
[iv] https://www.amazon.com/Chloe-Josh-Learn-Grit-Resilience-ebook/dp/B07XMJBDPQ/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=chloe+and+josh+learn+grit&qid=1568050783&s=gateway&sr=8-1 Amazon
Friday Sep 06, 2019
Friday Sep 06, 2019
Welcome back to the “Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast” EPISODE 17 this is Andrea Samadi. This interview will be broadcast on YouTube as well as on the regular podcast channel, so be sure to look for the YouTube link in the show notes if you would like to view the video.
Today we move into our Cognitive Track with Jenny Woo the founder of award-winning Emotional Intelligence games, 52 Conversations and 52 Essential Relationships and Harvard Graduate School of Education researcher of social and emotional learning. With her game, "52 Essential Conversations,[i]" Jenny has created a tool for parents, counselors, and teachers to support children's social-emotional development that comes with her own podcast channel “52 Conversations to inspire children for life”[ii] where she has in depth episodes on topics that match the lessons in her cards. I have both sets of cards here and have been using them with our family the past few weeks and have been having a blast with them.
The game is designed for ages 5 to adult, covering six categories (That align to Casel’s competencies[iii] that we have been covering here on this channel) (self-awareness; relationship skills; self-management; social awareness; responsible decision-making; and diversity, equity, and inclusion) and ask questions such as What is fairness? or What is luck? They can be used in a multitude of ways — as conversation prompts during dinner or daily errands, or in place of playing cards in a game of Go Fish. I used the cards to help stimulate discussion with my own children (ages 7 and 9) on the topic of friendship when my youngest was struggling with this at school. We all gave examples of what being a good friend means, and the examples I am sure will extend outside of our family discussion into her daily life. We all had a blast with the cards and look forward to learning more as we implement them. Her game allows parents and children to learn about one another while developing life skills and preparing them for the world. These cards are used in over 40 countries, all 50 States, in schools and in the workplace, so you can see why I jumped at the chance to speak with Jenny Woo.
Welcome Jenny! Thanks so much for taking the time to be here today. As we move into our cognitive track on the podcast, I was looking for experts to interview and was so excited when we connected on Linkedin.
Q1: Can you give us some background to how you went from the Corporate world in management consulting to Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and how this switch helped you to find your true calling and create such a timely product to help develop social and emotional skills for children, as well as life skills for adults?
Q2: “We’ve seen tremendous advances over the decades in the learning sciences but there are still so many myths out there. Can you help clear up some of the most common myths? For those of you interested, please visit Jenny’s website (in the show notes) for a quiz to see your knowledge of these brain myths.[iv]
We only use 10% of our brain.
If a child cannot sit in a classroom by 3rd grade, then he/she has an undiagnosed learning disability?
The brains of boys/girls develop at different rates?
Academic achievement can be negatively affected by skipping breakfast?
Some children are born naturally creative.
Children learn best when information is presented in their preferred learning style?
Some people are left brain/right brain, and this explains how we learn best?
Listening to classical music increases children’s cognitive reasoning ability?
A common sign of dyslexia is seeing letters backwards.
Teens circadian rhythms cause them to sleep/wake up later?
Q3: From your research, can you give some strategies that you’ve incorporated into your game to help students/adults with their mindset, knowing that there are days we are all thrown off course?
Q4: I recently posted something on Instagram on Cognitive Biases. It was a graphic where I quoted “Did you know there are almost 200 known cognitive biases and distortions that cause us to think and act irrationally.”[v] Someone posted in the comment section “Where do we even begin? I didn’t even know I had these.” Can you explain what cognitive biases are, and what we can do about them, so they don’t negatively impact our decision-making and life?
Q5: When I first began to study with a neuroscience researcher, there was a brain fact about working memory that stuck with me. It was the fact that “the conscious mind can only hold 7-10 words in our working memory.” What does this mean for students and learning? With this in mind, how do you recommend students study for their spelling tests where they have 30 words or more to remember? What are the best strategies for memorization?
Q6: Is there anything else that you think is important that we have missed?
Thank you so much Jenny, I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know you and your work. I’m looking forward to hearing how the Casel Exchange goes for you in October and continuing to support and share your work. Thanks for sharing your time and knowledge today.
Links:
Mind Brain Parenting Website (http://mindbrainparenting.org)
52 Essential Conversations on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FKSQV47)
52 Essential Relationships on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QKMVB35/)
About Jenny Woo (speaking and consulting) (https://mindbrainparenting.org/jenny)
Follow Jenny Woo on Social Media:
@mindbrainparenting for Facebook | Instagram
@mindbrainparent for Twitter
LinkedIn (LinkedIn is the best way to contact). Not sure if I should include my email? It's jwoo@mindbrainparenting.org
Bio: A Harvard-trained educator, neuroscience researcher, and mom of three, Jenny’s career has been dedicated to developing big and small human beings. Jenny founded Mind Brain Parenting and developed 52 Essential Conversations, an “anytime and anywhere” game that builds social and emotional life skills. It won the 2018 Parents’ Choice Awards, featured by CASEL and Harvard University, and used in over 40 countries.
[i] https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/18/09/power-conversation
[ii] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/52-essential-conversations-to-inspire-children/id1418151997
[iii] https://casel.org/core-competencies/
[iv] https://mindbrainparenting.org/parenting-myths
[v] https://www.instagram.com/p/B0TNjU0lr_s/?utm_source=ig_web_options_share_sheet
Friday Aug 30, 2019
Friday Aug 30, 2019
Welcome back to the “Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast” this is Andrea Samadi. This interview will be broadcast on YouTube as well as on the regular podcast channel, so be sure to look for the YouTube link in the show notes if you would like to view the video.
Background and Introduction:
Today we have two pioneers in the field of educational neuroscience; Lori Desautels and Michael McKnight. I first found Lori from her TEDx Talk from Indianapolis[i] when I was searching for anything in the field on educational neuroscience back in 2014. It was 5 years ago that I partnered with Arizona’s Dept of Education and was urged from an Arizona educator to write another book that focused on the brain science behind learning, and back then there wasn’t as much information out there as there is now in this field. I found Judy Willis[ii], and learned about the amygdala highjack, read David Souza’s “How the Brain Learns” and John Medina’s “Brain Rules” and hired a neuroscience researcher (named Mark Robert Waldman[iii] ) so I could be sure I had the correct understanding of the brain and learning, but still needed some help to tie everything together. Finally, I found Lori, and watched her videos to understand the other parts of the brain and how they are interconnected. In Lori’s Ted Talk, she mentioned that “neuroscience and education have come together” and it’s a huge connection because every day experiences change the brain structurally and functionally—and I thought, this is incredible that we can finally explain how we can accelerate learning with this understanding of the brain. And then through Lori, had a chance to see Michael’s work and dive deeper into understanding Adverse Childhood Experiences. So, thank you for all you are both for pioneering this field, and helping so many around the world to understand what at first might seem like complex concepts, (if like most of us, we’ve not had a crash course in how our brain works) so this is groundbreaking by making this all so relatable for everyone.
I’m thrilled to finally “meet” you both, face to face, after many years of emails, social media replies. Please do follow Lori and Michael’s pages as they both share often about the impact; they are igniting in our schools today. I will add their bios in the show notes, so you can learn more, but want to get straight into some questions. Welcome Lori and Michael!
Q1: For new people who are getting to know your work, can you give some background on how you both met and began working together, leading to you writing your two books “Unwritten, The Story of a Living System”[iv] and your most recent book that I haven’t been able to put down “Eyes are Never Quiet: Listening Beneath the Behaviors of our Most Troubled Students”[v] and if you could explain the new movement of being trauma informed?
Q2: I can ask this next question two ways, the first focuses on the problem when I ask “what could we possibly do to make an impact on our schools and students today knowing we are in a crisis with drug use, bullying, suicide and suicide ideation, and anxiety” or I could ask it from this point of view where we change the narrative and focus on the solution by asking “how does shifting away from the traditional disciplinary approach to acknowledge the impact of stress on behavior and our students’ ability to focus and learn” shift the results you are both seeing in our schools today?
Q3: Can you explain what educators, and parents should understand about the brain and how our emotions impact learning?
Q4: I know firsthand about stress in the classroom—my first teaching assignment was a behavioral class back in the late 1990s. Like many teachers, I burned out before I even got started and if you were to ask ANY of my friends back then, I was the least likely to quit. Chapter 1 of your book “Eyes are Never Quiet” was eye-opening and even brought tears to my eyes with the advice that Michael gave an educator (who Lori shared was her daughter making the story even more impactful) because she was at the end of her rope in the classroom. I remember exactly how frustrating that felt and didn’t make the decision to quit and leave the profession quickly—but it did make me wonder—especially with the crisis around teacher shortage, what would happen if ALL new teachers were given Michael’s advice, and found strategies to thrive, not just survive in this profession?
Q5: What is your vision for your work? Where would you like to see the most impact/change?
Q6: What is your vision for the standards in the US as they relate to SEL/neuroscience/health and well-being and how can advocates with this work make sure that all states align as new standards are being created?
Q7: What about the educational publishers? What should they consider when creating new curriculum that aligns with these new standards and important developmental benchmarks for students?
Q6: Do you both have any final thoughts or words of wisdom to leave us encouraged as we continue to learn more about how emotions and learning are intimately connected and processed in the brain? Is there anything I might have missed that you think is important?
Thank you both for so openly sharing your knowledge with the world. I urge any listeners who want to learn more about this work to follow Lori and Michael. Lori is @desautels_phd and Michael is S on Twitter. You can find them on Linkedin, Facebook and Instagram to see their strategies in action. Thank you both.
BIO
Dr. Lori Desautels, is an assistant professor at both the undergraduate and graduate levels at Butler University in Indianapolis. Lori's passion is engaging her students through neuroscience in education, integrating Mind Brain Teaching and Learning Strategies into her courses at Marian and now Butler University.
Dr. Desautels designed and teaches the Applied Educational Neuroscience certificate program at Butler. This program is specifically designed to meet the needs of educators, social workers and counselors who work beside children and adolescents that are experiencing adversity and trauma.
Lori has conducted workshops throughout the United States and abroad. Lori's second book was published in January 2016, "Unwritten, The Story of a Living System," co-authored with Michael McKnight and they recently published “Eyes are Never Quiet: Listening Beneath the Behaviors of Our Most Troubled Students”[vi] that should be required reading for parents, educators, and counselors looking to understand the impact of stress on behavior in today’s schools.
Michael McKnight is currently an educational specialist for the New Jersey Department of Education working in the Cape May and Atlantic County Office of Education. Michael works closely with the 42 school districts in the counties and is involved with a wide range of school issues.
Michael has a passion for creating and supporting Reclaiming Environments for “at-risk” children and youth as well as the adults who serve them.
He has been involved with program and staff development for over 30 years. He views himself, not as an expert, but as a learner and a teacher who has always enjoyed building strength-based cultures with others.
[i] A Call to See and to Serve in Education Lori Desautels, YouTube published Nov. 26th, 2012 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9KhDjGGHCk
[ii] Judy Willis What Do Teachers Need to Know About the Brain YouTube published April 23, 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GdufhdthFo
[iii] TEDx Conejo published 3/27/10 Mark Robert Waldman on “How to Change the World” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvhCLXEeSDQ
[iv] Lori Desautels and Michael McKnight Unwritten: The Story of a Living System: A Pathway to Enlivening and Transforming Education Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing (January 9, 2016) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AF3OVG0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
[vi] Lori Desautels and Michael McKnight Eyes Are Never Quiet: Listening Beneath the Behaviors of our Most Troubled Students https://www.amazon.com/Eyes-Are-Never-Quiet-Listening-ebook/dp/B07ML51Q8G/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3RXFMT86D73A9&keywords=eyes+are+never+quiet&qid=1566934605&s=digital-text&sprefix=eyes+are+never+%2Cdigital-text%2C183&sr=1-1
Wednesday Aug 21, 2019
Donte Dre Winrow on "Breaking into a Challenging Career Path"
Wednesday Aug 21, 2019
Wednesday Aug 21, 2019
Welcome back this is Andrea Samadi, thanks so much for your continued support with this podcast. As we are completing our 15th episode, I’m getting a lot of feedback via social media messages and would love to hear more about what you think about these competencies/episodes...and how they might be of use to you whether you are working with students in the classroom, teams in the boardroom, or you are just looking to take your results to that next level. I can clearly see that the last lesson on “Self-Regulation” that the strategies offered were valuable—it does help me when I receive your feedback on what lessons you like and how they are helpful. This was the most requested competency when I was working with the school market, as everyone wants our students to learn how to self-regulate. It’s also a crucial skill for adults to learn.
This podcast is not only for you, but I’m learning with each interview and episode. When we started, the end of June, it was to provide tools and resources for you—however, in this process, I am getting the best education—which is a testament to the fact that we learn more when we teach others.
Today we have another student who we’ve brought back after 5 years of studying this material, to see how these skills really do transfer from high school into your career for future success. There’s nothing more exciting to me than watching those who can take their results to these higher levels—we all have the ability to do it and then experience the freedom of the life we know we created and had as a vision for—usually one that seemed so far off from reality, but with time, effort, and following that daily grind—one day we wake up and realize we are living the life we had imagined. Then we are amazed, as we look back, connecting the dots, that it wasn’t rocket science, but just following a few simple principles through to completion. So few people follow the principles, or do things in this certain way—to get to these levels, which is why I’m hoping these episodes will offer tips, ideas and strategies to help more people implement these concepts into their daily life.
Today’s guest is someone who has been a friend of mine since we published the Teen Performance Magazine back in 2009. His name is Donte Dre Winrow and he learned the power of networking when he was in high school helping him to break into a career path that he’d never had the opportunity for without knowing certain people. Let’s hear how Donte broke through to reach these higher levels of achievement. Click the link to view the video of this interview on YouTube.
I’m excited for the cognitive track coming up...as we are nearing the end of the social and emotional competencies. Stay tuned for the last SEL competency and moving into the next track of learning. Thanks for listening. Right now, we are reaching 16 countries, all just from organic sharing on social media, no paid advertising. please do send me a message with your thoughts on these episodes, what you like, what you’d like to see....so I can improve moving forward. You can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
Monday Aug 19, 2019
Self-Regulation: The Foundational Learning Skill for Future Success
Monday Aug 19, 2019
Monday Aug 19, 2019
Welcome back to the “Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast” this is Andrea Samadi. Our goal with this podcast is to close the gap recent surveys show exists in our workforce where 58 percent of employers say college graduates aren’t adequately prepared for today’s workforce, and those employers noted a particular gap in social and emotional skills. Research shows that social-emotional skills like social awareness, self-regulation, and growth mindset are crucial to college and career readiness. The outcomes of developing these intelligences are vast as they impact our performance, leadership, personal excellence, time management, and decision-making.
We’ve chosen six social and emotional learning competencies to dive deep into and tie in how an understanding of our brain can facilitate these strategies. With each competency, we’ll investigate the best practices that you can use to develop and improve your own SEL/Emotional Intelligence and well-being practice, before extending these strategies to your districts, schools, classrooms, workplaces and communities. We want the ideas you take away with you to be actionable whether you are an educator working in a school, an employee or manager in a corporation, or someone just looking to take their skills to the next level. Be sure to look for the resources in the show notes section if you would like to dive deeper into this topic.
Our next competency is self-regulation.What is Self-Regulation and Why is it So Important?
Self-regulation is “the ability to manage your emotions and behavior in accordance with the demands of the situation. It includes being able to resist highly emotional reactions to upsetting stimuli, to calm yourself down when you get upset, adjust to a change in expectations and (the ability) to handle frustration”[i] In other words, it’s the ability to bounce back after a setback or disappointment, and the ability to stay in congruence with your inner value system.
The ability to control one's behavior, emotions, and thoughts is an integral skill to be taught to young children as well, so they can form and maintain healthy relationships and connections later in life.[ii] As an adult, self-regulation is important in day to day life as we must learn how to handle and bounce back from life’s challenges and disappointments in our personal and professional lives. This skill is crucial to develop as we all know that life is full of ups and downs and we must be able to navigate through challenging situations before we can reach any level of achievement and success. We all know people who seem to bounce back after adversity. It’s not by luck or chance, it’s because they have learned how to self-regulate and intentionally get themselves back on course. This is a learned skill and one that we must teach or model to our students/children for them to be able to master it as adults.
Scott Bezsylko, the executive director of the Winston Prep school explains that they approach self-regulation skills “in the same way (they) approach other skills, academic or social: (they) isolate that skill and provide practice. When you think of it as a skill to be taught — rather than, say, just bad behavior — it changes the tone and content of the feedback you give kids.” [iii] Just like we would create a drill for improving dribbling for a basketball player, or practicing vocabulary words for a spelling test, we can create practice for self-regulation.
Self-Regulation Tips for Children
The key to teaching these skills to children is to model them, coaching younger children, until they can produce the results on their own.[iv]
MODEL SELF-TALK: This works well with younger students as they learn how to identify their emotions. Teachers can model self-regulation in class by naming the emotions they are experiencing since we learn by watching others. Help students to recognize the emotions they have (for example-today I am feeling frustrated because I am stuck on my math problem) and offer a strategy on how to deal with the problem, perhaps by taking some deep breaths when they feel frustrated and to keep working the problem.[v]
ENCOURAGE SELF-CONTROL: If you are a student and value academic achievement, you’ll have the ability to complete your homework and make sacrifices to study for upcoming tests, instead of watching Netflix or going out with your friends. Teachers can offer tips and strategies that they used personally in pursuit of their goals by offering the rewards they gained from giving up something they liked to do to make time for study. This will build trust with students as they share their own stories and experiences.
UNCOVER THE MOTIVATION: When students understand the importance of what they are studying, how it applies to the real world, or their daily life, there will be motivated to achieve that end goal. They must figure out how to make connections with what they are learning to motivate themselves intrinsically, learning for the fun of it, and become lifelong learners. Encourage students to make a game out of their learning to increase motivation.[vi] How do they learn best? Is it by taking notes, perhaps drawing images next to their notes to help them to identify and remember what they are learning? Do they remember what they are learning if they read their notes out loud? What strategies did you use to study and learn? Have students share their ideas with each other in a classroom discussion as one person’s ideas can help or encourage another to try something new.
REACHING THOSE AHA! MOMENTS: When students start learning something new, they will go through different stages on the way to metacognition, where they are aware of what they are learning. When students can learn to form habits around how they learn best, with time and practice, they will learn how to naturally break through where they may become stuck, to experience the Aha! Moments when they finally understand something that might have escaped them for so long. Students must find ways to relax their brain and body and it’s during those “resting states” that remarkable activity takes place, allowing the brain to creatively solve problems, and take the student to new heights of achievement. Dr. Sriny Pillay, assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard’s Medical School, talks about the power of building “unfocused time into your day” so that you can make better decisions, and become more productive whether you are in the classroom, or boardroom. Dr. Pillay brings in the latest brain research to prove that our brains must have time to rest in order to be productive and that too much focus causes brain fatigue. If you have ever noticed that great ideas come to you sometimes while in the shower, it’s this principle at work. The unfocused brain takes us to new places, insights, and Aha Moments, where focus cannot.
Einstein discovered his theory of relativity in a daydream he had (while he let his mind wander) and he used logic to explain it.
Steve Jobs explained that “you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” [vii] These Aha Moments might not be apparent until you look back at them.
So how does self-regulation translate into the workplace? To reach these high levels of achievement in the workplace, there’s more involved than just using your self-control and your will power. The executive functions of your brain are involved, and we have mentioned in previous episodes that in order to self-regulate, our brain must work right. We must put brain health first by getting enough sleep, nutrition, supplements and exercise, and when our brain works right, we work right. We must have strategies to calm down our emotions first, since our executive functions won’t be working right while we are under stress. Whether that means taking some deep breaths or walking away to recalibrate.
Here are 3 Self-Regulation Tips for the Workplace
EMBRACE THE DAILY GRIND: Remember that when you are working on something that’s important to you, the more time and effort you put in, focused on this goal, that things don’t get easier for you in this pursuit—they become more difficult. When you become better at what you are doing, gaining more competence, you will gain more success, but things won’t get easier for you—as we would imagine—they get harder as more challenges appear. When you are working, taking action, and doing something, problems and obstacles will show up. Those who are the most successful in their craft will understand and embrace that hardship with daily focus, and consistent practice to overcome the obstacles. With focus, persistence and daily practice, confidence will develop and will propel you forward.
REMEMBER THAT WE HAVE A CHOICE: When difficult situations arise, we have three choices. We can approach (by asking questions), avoid, or attack.[viii] The best results obviously occur when we are able to respond to a situation (approaching it with understanding) rather than react (by avoidance or attack) by asking questions to uncover more and see if there might be something we are missing or some sort of miscommunication. We always have a choice on how we respond to situations. The research is clear that mindfulness and meditation can help increase the gap between a stimulus and our response to it, so those who have developed their own practice, will find making this choice to respond vs react, much easier.[ix]
LEARN TO “SWITCH” IT OFF: Once you are clear on the situation, if your feathers were ruffled and you didn’t like something that occurred, you must have a strategy in place to switch off the emotions that you feel so that you don’t react. An effective strategy used in cognitive behavioral therapy[x] is to say the word “SWITCH” in your head as you focus on switching the negative emotion that you feel to something more positive. We all have automatic negative thoughts that come into our head at times, but we must have a strategy to stop them from ruminating or continuing in a loop, since we know that switching off these negative thoughts is an important step towards self-regulation and moving us towards our goals. I’ve always used the strategy of saying “STOP” when this happens and changing the thought pattern in my head to something more productive.
Outcomes and Results
Self-regulation develops, grows and improves from birth through young adulthood and beyond.[xi] As parents, and teachers working with our students in the classroom, modeling these strategies will be crucial for our students to begin to implement and grasp them. As students move from high school and into the workplace, developing a mindfulness and meditation strategy early on can only further strengthen this skill so that we can provide our best selves in our community, families or workplaces.
Thank you for staying to the end of this episode. Stay tuned for more interviews this week with students who have been applying these principles for the past five years and are returning to share the results they have created in their lives. Next week we will cover the Mindset competency, and move into the Cognitive Track, where we will dive deep into our brain and how are results (personally and professionally) are all controlled by this powerful organ.
RESOURCES:
30 Games and Activities for Self-Regulation https://theinspiredtreehouse.com/self-regulation/
Strong Self-Regulation Skills: Why They are Fundamental by Committee for Children YouTube Published August 1, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4UGDaCgo_s&feature=youtu.be
Emotional Self-Regulation Techniques for Teaching https://www.crisisprevention.com/Blog/October-2016/emotional-self-regulation
Using Your Brain to Get You to Where You Want to Go: Guide for High School Students https://schoolsocialwork.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Brain_Drivers_Education-Operators_Guide.pdf (Massachusetts General Hospital, 2010) This document is available under a royalty-free license at www.schoolpsychiatry.org
Bradley University: How to Teach Clients Self-Regulation Skills https://onlinedegrees.bradley.edu/blog/how-to-teach-clients-self-regulation-skills/
Curriculum for Teaching Emotional Self-Regulation by Scott Carchedi July 24, 2014 https://schoolsocialwork.net/curriculum-for-teaching-emotional-self-regulation/
Middle and High School Self-Regulation Lessons https://apps.esc1.net/ProfessionalDevelopment/uploads/WKDocs/71257/Self-Regulation%20Lessons.pdf
REFERENCES:
[i] How Can We Help Our Kids with Self-Regulation https://childmind.org/article/can-help-kids-self-regulation/amp/
[ii] How to Practice Self-Regulation https://www.verywellmind.com/how-you-can-practice-self-regulation-4163536
[iii] How Can We Help Our Kids with Self-Regulation https://childmind.org/article/can-help-kids-self-regulation/amp/
[iv] How Can We Help Our Kids with Self-Regulation https://childmind.org/article/can-help-kids-self-regulation/amp/
[v] Edutopia article “Teaching Self-Regulation by Modeling” (January, 2019) https://www.edutopia.org/video/teaching-self-regulation-modeling
[vi] Motivation and Self-Regulated Learning https://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2249/Motivation-SELF-REGULATED-LEARNING.html
[vii] Steve Jobs Stanford University Commencement Speech https://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/
[viii] How to Practice Self-Regulation https://www.verywellmind.com/how-you-can-practice-self-regulation-4163536
[ix] Mindfulness, Meditation and Executive Control https://academic.oup.com/scan/article/8/1/85/1694475
[x] What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with Therapist Kati Morton YouTube uploaded Sept. 23, 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7B3n9jobus
[xi] Seven Key Principles of Self-Regulation https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/srts_7_principles_brief_revised_2_15_2017_b508.pdf
Wednesday Aug 14, 2019
Wednesday Aug 14, 2019
Welcome back to the “Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast” this is Andrea Samadi. This interview will be broadcast on YouTube as well as on the regular podcast channel, so be sure to look for the YouTube link in the show notes if you would like to view the video.
Today we have a very special guest. She is someone who has helped us at Achieveit360.com with ideas, video editing, student voice and customized art work since 2015. If you have a copy of the Level Up book, she’s the teen artist on the back cover who designed the original cover of the book for a school administrator who requested a customized version for his school and you can also see more about her story in the history and testimonial section. She was involved in creating the name of the book and program, Level Up, and the videos in the program, all with the teen in mind. She learned how to take action on her ideas at an early age, without any limits in her mind, and we are so excited to share her most recent news. She just accepted a 4 year, all paid, prestigious leadership scholarship at the University of AR Fort Smith and begins this adventure this week! Welcome Sam.
Can you give us an example of when you FIRST started to use your voice as a young teen, and the results that you created by staying true to yourself and developing your strengths/passions/talents with your artwork?
Looking back now, what skills would you say you learned as a teen that helped you with the success you’ve attained with you most recent achievement?
What advice do you have for other students as they are navigating through HS to stay focused on the end result vs drama that can be a part of this time period?
What tips do you have for students who would like to apply for a scholarship like you did? Where do they begin? How do you ever find out about scholarships like this?
How about parents of teens? How can we help our kids be more successful? What should we do more of/less of?
What about secondary school educators? How can they help their students be more successful?
What has winning this scholarship been like for you? How did it feel when you first got the news?
What are you learning there? What will this year look like for you?
What types of courses/programs will you receive that are different than a typical 4-year student? (Extensive Team Building, and other?)
Where do you see yourself AFTER your scholarship?
What are you most excited about learning?
Is there anything that you think is important that we have not covered yet about your journey to get to this point?
Thank you for taking the time out of your day to share your story with us. We are thrilled to see the results that you have created for yourself and know that this is only the beginning. You are destined for a very bright future. Well done.
Friday Aug 09, 2019
Responsible Decision-Making: Begins with Understanding Your Brain Health
Friday Aug 09, 2019
Friday Aug 09, 2019
Welcome back to the “Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast” this is Andrea Samadi. I want to first of all thank YOU for listening and providing feedback of the episodes. Since launching the end of June, without any paid advertising, we are on our 12th episode and we have reached 12 countries so far! This is incredible! Thanks for all the DMs with feedback on the content and how you are implementing these ideas—I do appreciate hearing how these episodes are being received and how you are using this information. If you’d like to reach me with any questions, you can always find me on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Just search Andrea Samadi.
For those who don’t know the background of why we launched the “Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast” it began with the growing movement and interest in social and emotional learning in our schools and need to take these skills into the workplace with emotional intelligence training. Our goal is to close the gap recent surveys show exists in our workforce where 58 percent of employers say college graduates are not adequately prepared for today’s workforce, and those employers noted a particular gap in social and emotional skills like self and social awareness, and growth mindset that are crucial to college and career readiness and are finally being introduced into our schools. We want the ideas you take away with you to be actionable whether you are an educator working in a school, an employee of manager in a corporation, or someone just looking to take their skills to the next level.
As a recap, in our first episode, we shared with you the “Why behind implementing an SEL/emotional intelligence training program in your school or workplace” with some strategies that we offered on how to get started. In the second episode, we introduced the first of the six SEL competencies (self-awareness). This episode has been the most popular so far, and the one I’ve had the most feedback on, showing me that self-awareness is of high interest to those interested in this work—both the school market, as well as the workplace. We’ve tied in interviews to connect you to these skills so you can hear directly from experts from the field and those who are implementing programs with success. With each skill we investigate the best practices and strategies that you can use either in the classroom or workplace to develop and improve your own program and practice, before extending these strategies to others. Don’t forget to look for ideas, tools and resources in the show notes section if you want a deeper dive into the content.
Today we are on the fourth competency, out of six—Responsible Decision-Making.
Understanding the neuroscience[i] behind decision-making can be an important tool when looking for new results.
In our last episode with Chloe Amen, we discussed the importance of brain development and results and the fact that “your brain is not fully developed until the age of 25 for females and 28 for males”[ii] so it is critical that we take care of our brain to ensure that we are able to make sound decisions later in life. An understanding of our brain’s functions and form are crucial to our future success, since our brain is involved in literally everything that we do.
In the Brain Thrive by 25 Online Course (by Dr. Daniel Amen) that was designed to help teens and young adults improve brain function and performance, Chloe Amen (from our last episode) participated in the teen panel and noted that “People don’t realize the decisions they make now (as teens or young adults)—will affect their life later because we aren’t thinking about this at all! Decisions can affect our future—So how can I be my best self?”[iii] Imagine if we had all grown up protecting the organ that controls everything that we do? When I was thirteen, no one ever mentioned the importance of protecting my brain, or how it relates to my future success. We were all told to work hard, go to school and study, with the goal to graduate and pursue a career doing something that you love and enjoy. Future success occurred through hard work, perseverance and what we now call grit and many of us had to figure this one out through trial and error as well, or from an internal drive that had either been ignited in us by our mentors and role models or motivated intrinsically on our own. But with the most recent developments in neuroscience, there is now a new importance of taking care of our brain health, since our brain is involved in literally everything that we do. It controls our thoughts, feelings, how we act and interact with other people, our character, decisions, and actions, not to mention sensory motor functions, regulating internal chemical order and our brain’s alertness, whether we are asleep or awake. There’s so much involved with this powerful organ going on behind the scenes, it shouldn’t shock for any of us to hear that the latest research shows “the brain’s memory capacity is a quadrillion, or 1015” [iv] You can see how an understanding of our brain’s function and an emphasis on brain health is the first step towards making responsible decisions, since the brain is involved in everything that we do.
So, what does this look like in action? We all have situations that happen in our lives where we must step up and assume responsibility for our future success. When we look at our lives, and don’t like the results we have created, it’s up to us to make the changes needed for new results. It all begins with the thoughts we are thinking—our mental mindset. It’s never a lack of knowledge or skill that holds us back, it’s our mindset, the emotional blocks and deeply engrained habits that we have acquired over time (either consciously or subconsciously) that we must release to clear the path for our future successes. It’s our thoughts that cause our feelings and emotions, leading us to take certain actions. The actions that we take cause results that set up our conditions, circumstances and the environment of our life (take a minute to look around you right now—where you are at this exact minute is all based on your past decisions) and if you don’t like what you see, you must go back to change the thoughts you are thinking, (back to your mental mindset) to create new feelings, new actions, new results, and this in turn will create new conditions, circumstances and environments.
Changing our thinking is the first step towards changing our results and no one can do this for you. The next step is taking action on the decisions. Most people get stuck here and end up blaming others for their results when they look around and don’t like what they see. They blame the job market for the fact they don’t have the job they would like to do, or what’s going wrong in the world for whatever results they have created. Responsible people never blame others for their results but take 100% responsibility and ownership. This is an important skill to learn in the classroom as well as the workplace.
Let’s start with the classroom. How do we teach this to our students, especially knowing that their brains are not fully developed yet? Their prefrontal cortex (the front of the brain) that contains the executive functions like focus, judgement, planning and impulse control have not yet developed, so we must begin there to help guide our children and young adults in the decision-making process.
5 Tips to Improve Decision-Making with Students and Young Adults:
Teaching students about the three parts of their brain at an early age is crucial. Children as young as five have the ability to understand their reptilian brain (hindbrain) the oldest part of their brain where they have their survival instincts of flight, flight and freeze. When they realize these reactions happen automatically to keep them safe, they can learn strategies to deal with them when they occur so they don’t get caught off guard. For example, taking deep breaths when they are afraid or nervous instead of running away or avoiding a decision that is naturally shutting down their brain. For their emotional/limbic brain (midbrain) they should understand that this is where their feelings and emotions are controlled and that they must have strategies in place when their buttons get pushed and their emotions take over. Strategies like learning how to respond to situations (by asking questions) rather than automatically reacting based on assumptions without knowing all of the details of a situation. Finally, they have a decision-making brain, the neocortex (forebrain) that controls our thinking and reflecting, reasoning and planning—but this part of the brain is not fully developed until age 25 for females and 28 for males, so we must take guidance from our parents, teachers, friends and role models until we are old enough to make responsible decisions on our own. Parents and teachers must remember that although young adults “think” they are old enough to make their own decisions, we must be there to support, listen and influence the decisions that they make, since these decisions often will impact their future. We can be there as guides to offer tips based on our experiences and role model the results and behaviors we expect of them, but also giving them room to make their own decisions whether they are the best ones or not, they must learn the process of failing forward.
Teens and young adults should understand the power of taking responsibility for themselves and their own decisions. Remember that responsible people never blame others for their results. Think about a time that someone blamed you for something you didn’t do. How did you feel? What did you do about it? Blaming does not change what happened. When you blame others for the results you achieve, you are not being responsible. When you take responsibility for yourself, you understand that you are responsible for your thoughts, feelings, actions, and all the results you create in your life. You realize when something goes wrong in your life that you brought the situation on yourself. No one did it to you. This is a powerful concept when it becomes a habit as it will propel you forward.
Remember that “everything young people do either helps or hurts your brain development”[v] and hurts your long-term success. We know that drugs and alcohol are not good for the developing brain and current research goes far into this understanding proving that there is an epigenetic connection between drug use at an early age and how it impacts not just your future, but the future of your children[vi] proving that drugs and alcohol are not good for anyone’s brain, and especially damaging to the developing brain.
Learn to stop and think when making a decision. Ask “does this feel right?” and you should be able to listen to your gut instinct to know if the decision is responsible. Ask “will this hurt or harm my brain?”[vii] to help make the best decisions for my brain health and future success.
Write it out. Write out the problem you are looking to solve with ideas on how you think you could solve it. Create specific strategies with a timeline attached so you stay on track with your plan. Send this plan to someone you know for new ideas, thoughts, or suggestions, as well as to provide accountability that you will complete the steps to solve the problem. Remember that since your prefrontal cortex is still under construction, you will need support with making decisions until your brain has fully developed. Ask for support or help when needed, whether it’s from a teacher, parent or adult. We all need guidance at certain times in our life. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Decision-Making Tips for the Workplace:
Even though adults have a fully developed prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain that makes decisions, we still need a process to follow to ensure we are making effective and smart decisions that yield the results we are looking for. Remember that to make an effective decision, you must first learn how to think, and this process is carried out by the executive functions in your brain (in your prefrontal cortex): functions like planning, implementing, monitoring, and making adjustments to overcome problems. When working on a goal, or solving a problem, try these 4 simple steps. Eventually they become habitual but having a process will increase your performance.[viii]
Start your decision-making process with these 4 Steps:
Evaluate the Problem You Want to Solve: This process begins in your frontal lobes. What’s the problem? What outcome are you looking for? Is your outcome achievable? Is it meaningful? Attach meaning and emotion to help increase motivation. Make sure everyone on the team is on board with the “why” behind the goal.
Plan Your Strategy: Next, your frontal lobe maps out the strategies needed as you ask yourself “where am I now, where do I want to go, how will I get there and what strategies and tactics do I need?” Create your plan. I’ve seen this plan mapped out many different ways but knowing where you are starting from, what your end goal is, and identifying what’s missing (your gap) is crucial to this step. This is where skill development takes place and the gaps are filled. Get clear on what’s missing and what must we learned to achieve the goal? Who can we consult with to fill in our gaps? Identify the experts you will need.
Implement Your Strategy: Once you have listed the strategies that you will use and the tactics that will follow, your frontal lobe works with your body to put these ideas into action. This is where the hard work comes into play. Roll up your sleeves and get to work.
Monitor and Adjust: When you take action, your frontal lobe is ready to make changes as obstacles come up. Be ready to pivot when needed as you monitor what’s working and what isn’t. Effective decision-making requires ongoing evaluation of these four steps.
The Outcomes of Responsible Decision-Making
With practice, decision-making becomes easier and with students, they will learn to take their time with important decisions, weighing out the pros and cons. Decision-making in the workplace also becomes easier with this four-step approach. Take the time to think and plan ahead of time and it will better prepare you for the future success of the desired outcome and this process with practice will be executed with confidence and certainty as the results you are looking for emerge. It does take effort, hard work and focus, but it’s the first step towards creating predictable results as you follow your decision-making plan, with your brain in mind.
This brings us to the end of this lesson, thanks for your interest and sticking it through right to the end. Next week we have the fifth SEL competency, self-regulation and an exciting interview that ties these competencies all together. See you next week!
RESOURCES:
[i] The Neuroscience of Making a Decision https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201505/the-neuroscience-making-decision?amp
[ii] Brain Thrive by 25 Online Course https://www.brainmdhealth.com/brainthriveby25
[iii] 13-year-old Cloe Amen in the Teen Panel in the Brain Thrive by 25 Online Course https://www.brainmdhealth.com/brainthriveby25
[iv] 72 Amazing Human Brain Facts https://bebrainfit.com/human-brain-facts/?fbclid=IwAR0wepcGNA2FqFjv6XrYBpxakFkI7r4hyyqrwb01a3b01u4UIf4G-228maA
[v] Brain Thrive by 25 Online Course https://www.brainmdhealth.com/brainthriveby25
[vi] How an Understanding of an Individual’s Epigenetics Can Help Measure and Treat Addiction (January 3, 2017) https://www.whatisepigenetics.com/how-understanding-an-individuals-epigenetics-can-help-measure-and-treat-addiction/
[vii] Brain Thrive by 25 Online Course https://www.brainmdhealth.com/brainthriveby25
[viii] Mark Robert Waldman and Chris Manning, Neurowisdom: The New Brain Science of Money, Happiness and Success (Diversion Books, January 31, 2017) https://www.amazon.com/NeuroWisdom-Brain-Science-Happiness-Success-ebook/dp/B01N9BLBDH/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=neurowisdom&qid=1565268860&s=gateway&sr=8-1
Monday Aug 05, 2019
Monday Aug 05, 2019
Welcome back to the “Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast” this is Andrea Samadi. This interview will be broadcast on YouTube as well as on the regular podcast channel, so be sure to look for the YouTube link in the show notes if you would like to view the video.
Today I want to welcome our special guest, Chloe Amen. If you follow Tana and Dr. Daniel Amen’s work on their Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast[i], she doesn’t need an introduction, because the past couple of weeks she’s been speaking about the soon to be released book that was written by her Dad, Dr. Daniel Amen, who draws on his experience as a neuroscientist and psychiatrist as well as the latest brain science to help you study more effectively, learn faster, and understand how your brain works to optimize results (whether we are talking about academic results or results in the boardroom) they both begin with an understanding of our brain. Chloe and her cousin Alizé Castellanos are major contributors to this book, offering modern day strategies that students and adults will relate to (Coming Sept 17th…you can pre-order it on AMAZON)[ii] “Change Your Brain, Change Your Grades.”
Here’s more about Chloe so you can see the vast experience that has led her to be an expert and role model for others in this field at such a young age.
Chloe Amen, now a junior in high school (a straight A student who has just finished sophomore classes) has been a part of the National Honor Society for the past three years. She was a guest star on the popular public television show Feel Better Fast[iii] (with Dr. Daniel Amen), and contributor and guest star in the high school program Brain Thrive by Twenty Five,[iv] which is designed to help teens improve brain function and performance. (This is the most thorough and engaging online course that I have ever taken, teaching the theories of brain development as it relates to life success) and has been used in forward thinking schools looking to give their students the leading edge that comes with these strategies. She is an intern for the Mayor’s Youth Council of Newport Beach, which participates in local government and community service. Chloe also has a passion for service and is an active volunteer for Girls Inc., an afterschool girl’s empowerment program. Chloe has a passion for performing arts, where she is currently pursuing a career. Volunteering at church in activities such as student leadership and campus cleanup has been an ongoing devotion. With her free time Chloe enjoys practicing martial arts, dance, songwriting and singing, and the arts. In elementary and early junior high, Chloe struggled with anxiety and organization which affected her academic performance. Through the techniques she has learned and shared in Change Your Brain, Change Your Grades, she has transformed her mindset and work ethic. As a result, she now has a 4.0 GPA and thoroughly enjoys learning.
Welcome Chloe! It’s an honor to have you here today.
Q1: Can you give us some background of growing up with brain strategies infused into your household and how you got involved with the modern version of this book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life?
Before your involvement with this new book, that’s coming out September 17th, you were already actively involved with helping others understand the power involved with their brain’s function as it relates to achievement. I took the Brain Thrive by 25 Course[v] at least 2 years ago, so am I correct to say that you were 13 when you filmed that? One of the biggest lessons I learned from watching you in the teen panel of was that your brain is not fully developed until age 25 for females and 28 for males.
Q2: Can you give us some thoughts of how this fact has changed your decision-making process and perhaps some thoughts of things you know you will do differently with this knowledge as a young adult? Chloe mentions that she has always been taught to make decisions with her brain health in mind being raised by Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen, leaders and pioneers in this industry.[vi]
Q3: Let’s talk about this NEW book “Change Your Brain, Change Your Grades” that is not just for students. It also contains tips and strategies that can be applicable for anyone looking to improve their results in life (how to get a raise at work)…it’s about learning new things to make yourself more valuable. What interested you to get involved with writing and adding tips into the newer version of this book?
Q4: When it comes to study habits, organization, productivity and results, there’s a knack for finding the right balance that can set you up for success in life…or failure. Can you explain the 3 brain types that “Change Your Brain, Change Your Grades” outlines? What’s your brain type? What are the other types so listeners can figure out what their brain type might be, whether they are a student in the classroom, or an adult looking for a competitive advantage?
Q5: I remember one of my mentors always quoting that “Fear of public speaking is America’s biggest phobia—before death (that’s at #5) meaning that many of us would rather die than make a fool of ourselves in front of others. What tips do you have for public speaking, with the brain in mind? Can you cover why practice before a presentation is so important?
Q6: Nutrition plays a huge role in determining success in the classroom, as well as the boardroom. For those who have not been following your parents’ work, (on the Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast) can you give some tips on how you began to implement healthy nutrition into your life for improved results? Can you talk a bit about how you handle this as a teen when all your friends might be choosing less healthy food options? How did understanding your brain type help you to choose the best diet to optimize your productivity and results?
Q7: With social media emerging as a means of communication the past 22 years with AOL messenger being my first memory of online communication starting in 1997 (a bit before you were born) the world is so different now for teens growing up using technology and social media. How has not taking things personally helped you at age 15 and how do you stay focused on your academics/away from drama that can emerge online?
Q8: Any final thoughts/tips on how you can “Change Your Brain, Change Your Grades” that we might have missed.
Thank you for taking the time out of your Monday that I know includes school work and many other activities to speak with us today. I think you are brilliant beyond your years and I just wish I had an understanding of this information when I was 15. I’m looking forward to the release of this book and what you will create next.
REFERENCES:
[i] https://brainwarriorswaypodcast.com/
[ii] https://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Brain-Grades-Science-Based/dp/1948836858/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=change+your+brain+change+your+grades&qid=1565049736&s=gateway&sr=8-1
[iii] https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/mar/18/feel-better-fast-and-make-it-last-daniel-amen-md/
[iv] https://www.brainmdhealth.com/brainthriveby25
[v] https://www.brainmdhealth.com/brainthriveby25
[vi] http://danielamenmd.com/
Friday Aug 02, 2019
President of xSEL Labs, Clark McKown on "SEL Assessments Made Simple"
Friday Aug 02, 2019
Friday Aug 02, 2019
Welcome back to the “Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast” this is Andrea Samadi. This interview will be broadcast on YouTube as well as on the regular podcast channel, so be sure to look for the YouTube link in the show notes if you would like to view the video.
Today we have Clark McKown, the Founder and President of xSEL Labs, an award-winning social scientist and a leading expert on SEL assessments. His work with SEL assessments began back in 2007 at Rush University and in 2016 he founded xSELLabs and their assessment called SELweb. In 2017 more than 50,000 children completed SELweb during the 2017-2018 school year and they continue to grow.
Welcome Clark. I have some questions that tie into the language of SEL and assessment for others to gain some clarity with these terms. There’s a lot to navigate with all the terminology that often has different meaning for different people, so let’s dive right in.
Q1: When I was referred to your work from Greg Wolcott, an Assistant Superintendent from Chicago, he mentioned you were the #1 person to look at with regards to SEL assessment in the US. We know from the feedback from the Edweek 2019 Social and Emotional Learning in Schools Summit that educators are “interested in social and emotional learning but aren’t always sure where to start” [i] and they are looking for “clear starting points in developing their own SEL strategies and programs.” I wanted to have you on today to share your research and knowledge in the growing field of SEL as many school districts begin to implement their programs[ii] but there’s a lot that I can see that could use some clarification for this field. Can you give an overview of where you see SEL now since you started xSELLabs, and where you see SEL going in the country to bring some clarity to this emerging field? Clark mentions the work Casel is doing with their Collaborating States Initiative[iii] as well as the Assessment Work Group[iv] that he is a steering committee member of.
Q2: What first steps would you recommend a District consider when looking to go from intention to action with implementing an SEL program? You mention in your blog “Social and Emotional Learning Programs and Practices”[v] that there are 2 broad approaches—one being to adopt a widely used SEL program and the other being the kernel approach. Can you explain these approaches with the pros and cons of each? Clark mentions to begin with Casel.org and Casel’s District Resource Center[vi] for your first implementation steps.
Q3: When Districts are choosing an SEL program, a program that is evidence-based, like those found in Casel’s program guides[vii], and data-informed SEL programs both matter.
Q4: “One of the main reasons for the historic lack of engagement with social and emotional skill development in schools relates to issues of measurement. It was only a few years ago that a superintendent emailed me an article that asked the question of “how are we going to measure SEL competencies.” He was looking for my thoughts on this and I didn’t know the answer. The latest developments in social and emotional skills measurement allow these skills to be measured meaningfully.”[viii] Can you explain the difference between some measurement tools that are survey-based vs what you have created with SELweb and how SELweb measures SEL competence key performance indicators? How do they differ and why are they both important?[ix] Clark offers his recent book Assessing Students’ Social and Emotional Learning: A Guide to Meaningful Measurement[x] as a resource.
Q5: To wrap this up Clark, what are the important ingredients that you think an SEL program should include? (Teacher Well-Being, Teacher Practices, SEL Competencies).
Thank you, Clark, for the time you took today to explain how SEL assessments work with SELweb. If anyone wants to reach you to learn more, they can contact you through your website www.xsel-labs.com or on Twitter @xSEL_Labs
REFERENCES:
[i] Social and Emotional Learning Ed Week Summit March 20, 2019 https://www.edweek.org/ew/events/social-emotional-learning-in-schools-an-education.html
[ii] Social and Emotional Learning Ed Week Summit March 20, 2019 https://www.edweek.org/ew/events/social-emotional-learning-in-schools-an-education.html
[iii] https://casel.org/collaborative-state-initiative/
[iv] https://casel.org/assessment-work-group/
[v] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/social-emotional-learning-sel-programs-practices-clark-mckown/
[vi] https://drc.casel.org/
[vii] https://casel.org/guide/
[viii] http://measuringsel.casel.org/beyond-past-paradigms-building-a-global-ecosystem-for-the-future-of-learning/
[ix] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/evidence-based-sel-data-informed-same-both-important-clark-mckown/
[x] https://www.amazon.com/Assessing-Students-Social-Emotional-Learning/dp/0393713350
Wednesday Jul 31, 2019
Using Your Brain to Build and Sustain Effective Relationships
Wednesday Jul 31, 2019
Wednesday Jul 31, 2019
Welcome back to the “Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast” this is Andrea Samadi. As a recap, in our first episode, we shared with you the “Why behind implementing an SEL/emotional intelligence training program in your school or workplace.” The second episode we introduced the first of six social and emotional learning competencies that we will be diving deep into over the next six weeks. (Self-awareness, Social Awareness, Relationships, Responsible Decision-Making, Self-Regulation and Mental Mindset). With each competency, we’ll investigate the best practices and strategies that educators/and the workplace can use for themselves to develop and improve their own SEL/Emotional Intelligence and well-being practice, before extending these strategies to their districts, schools, classrooms, workplaces and communities. We’ll offer ideas, tools and resources (in the show notes section)—be sure to take a look at the resources, so that anyone can apply these skills themselves, and then teach others for improved results, focus and productivity.
Today we are going to dive deep into the relationship competency. We did cover this topic in an interview with Assistant Superintendent of Schools from Chicago, and author of the book, Significant 72: Unleashing the Power of Relationships in Today’s Schools, Greg Wolcott. Be sure to see episode 8 with Greg, to learn more about the research behind relationship building and academic achievement.
In addition to schools, relationship building is proving to be the key to success and well-being and the attribute that ties all the pieces in your life together. Dr. Daniel Siegel, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute, proposes in his book “The Developing Mind” that “relationships represented the three aspects of one reality essential to human well-being”[1] (he calls these the 3 Rs, relationships, reflection and resilience) and that “human connections shape neural connections, and each contributes to (developing the) mind.”[2] He explains that “we need to teach more in schools than just reading, writing and arithmetic. We should have reflection, relationships and resilience as the 3 Rs.”[3]
Let’s Dive Deeper into Understanding Communication, Relationships and Your Brain:
If you want to strengthen your relationship with another person, relate to them better, and have them relate to or understand you better, you must remain “relaxed, observant, and nonjudgmental.” Otherwise, the person that you are interacting with will “feel and connect to your inner stress, causing their brain to assume a defensive stance”[i] and they won’t trust you. Having the ability to “watch a person’s face, their gestures, and their tone of voice”[4] will cause their brain to align with yours, forming a process called “neural resonance” that allows the closest connection between what two people are thinking and feeling.
Here are Five Ways to Train Your Brain to Connect to Others Mindfully
Remember to observe others mindfully. Before you engage with someone else, always take time to connect this person at the deepest level possible. If you notice facial expressions or body language, ask questions like “how are things going today?” to connect with them and learn more about what could be happening in their world.
Always interact with others in a fair and kind manner. Listen to others without judgement and demonstrate that they matter to you by leaning towards them when they speak and then be sure your body language and facial expression matches what you want to convey, in a supportive manner. Show them that you are actually listening.
Bring warmth to the tone of your voice with every person you interact with. “If you drop the pitch of your voice, you’ll automatically talk more slowly, allowing the listener to better understand you. This strategy was originally developed and tested in 2011 at the Department of Communication Science and Disorders at the University of Houston to help oncologists present bad news to patients.”[5]
Add kindness and compassion activities to your day. “Nearly one hundred peer-reviewed experiments, conducted at universities around the world, have concluded that when practiced for 30 minutes three times a week for a month, it strongly increases positive emotions, improved interpersonal interactions and prosocial behavior, and deepens one’s understanding of others.”[6] Make an effort to do random acts of kindness for others. We all know how good these feel to be on the giving and receiving end of kindness.
Practice forgiveness. At Virginia Commonwealth University, researchers found “that the ability to consciously replace unforgiving feelings with positive feelings affects the peripheral and central nervous system, increasing your own feelings of well-being.”[ii] Researchers have found that being unforgiving can be “damaging to your health, while emotional forgiveness of others reduces anger and stress.”[7] Remember that you can exert your energy more productively if you don’t waste it on negative emotions that zap energy that could be used somewhere else.
FOR PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS FOR THE CLASSROOM:
Ensure everyone feels valued and appreciated. Help students develop meaningful relationships. Make sure you build a support infrastructure with staff to support educator well-being. When one teacher falls, it affects everyone.
“Children are more likely to be respectful when important adults in their lives respect them. They are more likely to care about others if they know they are cared about. Marzano (2003) states that students will resist rules and procedures along with disciplinary actions if the foundation of a good relationship is lacking. He goes on to assert that relationships are perhaps more important at the elementary and junior high levels than at the high school level. And according to Zehm and Kottler (1993), students will never trust us or open themselves up to hear what we have to say, unless they sense that we value and respect them.” [iii]
3 Tips for Improving Relationships in the Classroom:
Creating Connections: Research shows that greeting the student at the door produces a 20 percent increase in academic engagement and a nine percent decrease in disruptive behavior. It creates a connection where students feel “seen, heard and valued; where they give without judgement; and when they derive strength from the relationship.” [iv] Gina Connell, in her article 10 Ways to Build Relationships with Students This Year adds the importance of saying goodbye to this daily routine. At the end of the day, she stands at the classroom door, wishing them a good evening, offering closure to a productive day.[v]
Building Trust: When I think back to my favorite teacher, Mr. Walker, from 5th and 6th grade, I remember that he had a special nickname for each student. The unique name made us feel special, valued and that we mattered. If a nickname is too much, calling students by their names, is one of the most effective ways we can show their uniqueness.
Boost Personalized Learning: Juab School District in Utah improved their high school graduation rates from 78% to 97% by “rethinking what was considered nonnegotiable, to help all students learn more. Class periods could be lengthened, lunch periods could be moved around, deadlines could be changed – all in service of student learning.” [vi] Superintendent Jim Shank made changes including “redesigning its grading system, changing the length of class periods in the high school, switching from iPods to iPads and better using those devices to transform instruction rather than just provide a new medium for traditional activities. At the center of personalized learning has been to focus on building relationships with students every day.” [vii]
So How Does Relationship Building Translate into the Workplace?
At the heart of relationship building in the workplace, is the ability to be socially mindful as all employees work towards achieving company and personal goals. Many of these competencies overlap, and work together, but here’s some suggestions:
Winn Claybaugh, the Dean of Paul Mitchell Schools emphasizes the importance of choosing the right wording in his team meetings, so they are focused on finding solutions instead of solving problems.[viii] Be careful of what you say and how you say it. Don’t open up the meeting with “I’ve got a ton of problems to discuss!” Turn it around to say, “I’m looking for some solutions to the following problems.” You can feel the difference just by saying it this way. Even saying “I don’t like that idea” can cause interpersonal distress[ix] so be mindful of framing your responses so that the conversation flows in a way that solutions can be found.
The research is clear. “Rapid speaking can cause people to distrust you whereas slower speaking will deepen their respect.”[x] We all know it’s important to slow down when speaking, but there is more reason to slow down when we know how our rate of speech impacts how others perceive us. As we mentioned before, slowing down your rate of speech and adding a warm tone to your voice “neurologically improves listener comprehension and reduces stress.” [xi]
Be clear about what you would like to accomplish and keep meetings short. Practice speaking briefly and getting your points across in 20 seconds or less and allow time for others to respond to you. This will help you to learn how to be very clear about what you are saying, and prevent time wasting. When I was working with neuroscience researcher Mark Waldman on a project, he asked me to tell him what I wanted to say in 10 words or less. I found this really difficult to do (since I often had a lot that I needed his help with and to say) and I often just sat there, not knowing how to reduce what I wanted to say to 10 words. It was a powerful activity to train your brain to be clearer in conversations.
Outcomes and Results:
In schools, “Creating strong educational environments for ALL learners continues to be at the forefront of conversations with school systems across the globe.” Professor John Hattie, in his groundbreaking book, Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement (2009), set out to identify which strategies and innovations have the greatest impact on student achievement in schools. His research from over 50,000 educational research studies on 236 million school aged students found that teacher-student relationships have an effect size of .72 (which means that strong teacher-student relationships leads to almost two years of student growth in one year’s time). That’s significant.
In the workplace “EQ refers to someone’s ability to perceive, understand and manage their own feelings and emotions” (Chignell, 2018).
Being more mindful of others in the workplace is one way to improve productivity and results. People will perform better if they feel safe, that they belong and have a purpose for being there. They will be focused on their company goals when they feel valued and respected.
This wraps up EPISODE 9 on How to Build and Sustain Relationships. Thank you for joining us on the “Neuroscience Meets SEL” Podcast and staying right to the end. We appreciate that you are here and want to learn with us.
Resources for Schools:
Significant 72: Unleashing the Power of Relationships in Today’s Schools by Greg Wolcott http://firsteducation-us.com/books-2/
Lost at School by Dr. Ross Green
The Montgomery County (Ohio) Education Service Center and Ohio Department of Education video on Relationships https://vimeo.com/339136732/c21552f28f
ENDNOTES:
[1] Daniel J. Siegel The Developing Mind; How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (The Guilford Press, New York, 2012)
[2] Daniel J. Siegel The Developing Mind; How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (The Guilford Press, New York, 2012) page 13
[3] Dr. Siegel on what we need to teach in school is not just reading, writing, arithmetic, but the 3 Rs (reflection, relationships, and resilience) https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dan-siegel-thrive_n_5214189
[4] Mark Robert Waldman and Chris Manning “Neurowisdom: The New Brain Science of Money, Happiness and Success”
[5] Mark Robert Waldman and Chris Manning “Neurowisdom: The New Brain Science of Money, Happiness and Success”
[6] Mark Robert Waldman and Chris Manning “Neurowisdom: The New Brain Science of Money, Happiness and Success”
[7] Mark Robert Waldman and Chris Manning “Neurowisdom: The New Brain Science of Money, Happiness and Success”
REFERENCES:
[i] Dr. Siegel on what we need to teach in school is not just reading, writing, arithmetic, but the 3 Rs (reflection, relationships, and resilience) https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dan-siegel-thrive_n_5214189
[ii] Forgiveness, health, and well-being: a review of evidence for emotional versus decisional forgiveness, dispositional forgivingness, and reduced unforgiveness. Worthington EL Jr, Witvliet CV, Pietrini P, Miller AJ. J Behav Med. 2007 Aug;30(4):291-302.
[iii] Educator’s Guide to Solving and Preventing Discipline Problems by Mark and Christine Boynton http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/105124/chapters/Developing_Positive_Teacher-Student_Relations.aspx
[iv] Significant 72: Unleashing the Power of Relationships in Today’s Schools by Greg Wolcott http://firsteducation-us.com/books-2/ Page 19
[v] 10 Ways to Build Relationships with Students This Year by Genia Connell (Sept 15, 2016) https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/blog-posts/genia-connell/10-ways-build-relationships-students-year-1/
[vi] Tara Garcia Mathewson “In Utah, Personalized Learning with a Focus on Relationships.” https://hechingerreport.org/in-utah-personalizing-learning-by-focusing-on-relationships/
[vii] Tara Garcia Mathewson “In Utah, Personalized Learning with a Focus on Relationships.” https://hechingerreport.org/in-utah-personalizing-learning-by-focusing-on-relationships/
[viii] The Brain Warrior Way Podcast “How to Become an Effective Leader at Work” with Winn Claybaugh (July 8, 2019). https://brainwarriorswaypodcast.com/how-to-become-an-effective-leader-at-work-with-winn-claybaugh/
[ix] Mark Robert Waldman and Chris Manning Neurowisdom: The New Brain Science of Money, Happiness and Success (Diversion Books, January 2017) (Chapter 11: Developing Your Social Brain).
[x] Celerity and cajolery: Rapid speech may promote or inhibit persuasion through its impact on message elaboration.” Smith SM, Shaffer DR. Personality Soc Psych Bul1. 1991: Dec:17(6):663–69.
[xi] Mark Robert Waldman and Chris Manning Neurowisdom: The New Brain Science of Money, Happiness and Success (Diversion Books, January 2017) (Chapter 11: Developing Your Social Brain).
Friday Jul 26, 2019
Friday Jul 26, 2019
This episode is also available on YouTube.
Our special guest today is Adam Avin, the founder of Wuf Shanti[1], a company that promotes health, wellness, and happiness in children, and encourages peace and positivity. Wuf Shanti was created by a kid for other kids, and started when Adam was younger, with his illustrations, voice and his dream to make a difference in the world. He shares his character, Wuf Shanti, with children across the planet, in the hopes of guiding them down a path of peace and positivity with his programs. His Wuf Shanti videos are in hospitals around the globe, helping children smile while they heal from their cancer treatments and in 25,000 schools across the country. I first met Adam this past Spring when he was hosting the Mindful Kids Peace Summit[2] (a five-day summit that I was a part of) that brought awareness to the need for immediate change in our schools today. It was incredible for me to see his knowledge and enthusiasm for social emotional learning (he understands the competencies just as well as the experts he interviewed) and his experience with mindfulness and meditation as he interviewed over 70 experts!
Welcome Adam! It’s wonderful to speak with you.
Q1: For those who have not yet seen your TEDTALK[3] where you explain this in detail, can you give us some background on your company, what exactly Wuf Shanti does, and the reason why did you started this company?
Q2: I mentioned in the intro that you were a host of the Mindful Kids Peace Summit this year and interviewed over 70 experts. I know to do this well, you need to research your expert in order to ask questions and be able to speak on the topic you are asking them about. What did you learn from interviewing these experts, and hosting this summit?
Q3: Watching your interview with the teacher from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas HS (Chelsea Briggs) was a part of the summit that I will never forget, since one of the main reasons I got involved with this work back in the late 90s was because of the Columbine tragedy (April 20, 1999). This is going back before you were born, I was working with a group of 12 teens who created a pin to honor the 13 lives lost in that tragedy. I kept the pin to remind me of why I am doing this work, and last year, I had the chance to meet Darryl Scott the father of Rachel Scott, the first teen shot that day, and he took a pin to remind him of the ripple effect that his daughter has had on the world. The Parkland shooting (not far from where you live) was 17 lives lost, the worst school shooting since Sandy Hook (20 children and 6 adults). How did speaking with the students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman High School in Parkland impact you and your work?
ADAM: Mentioned that this event inspired him to work harder because the statistics[4] show the need is imminent for change. We agree as the research shows that “80% of children who struggle with mental health issues receive no treatment.”[5]
Q4: We saw “student voice” emerge after the Parkland shooting and it remains a concept, I know schools are placing a focus on. How has Wuf Shanti helped you to bring “student voice” to the forefront? What do your friends think about your work? Have you helped any of your friends with success or coping strategies?
Q5: On a lighter note, it was fun for me to watch your promoting the summit, especially when Maroon 5 noticed you on social media. How do you think bringing in a celebrity helped to spread the word and your goals for the summit?
Q6: What’s your vision for Wuf Shanti? Where would you like to see your programs go?
ADAM: His vision is to have mental health programs in all schools K-12 for students and educators. Educators need stress reduction techniques as well.[6]
Q7: What final advice do you have for anyone listening to bring for mindfulness into their daily lives? (the tips you gave at the end of your TED TALK were perfect).
Thank you for your time Adam. We think you are wise beyond your years and doing incredible work to make an impact spreading social and emotional learning and mindfulness around the country and world. For a 14-year-old, you’ve accomplished more than many adults. I hope you are proud of your hard work and know that you will keep going to do some incredible things.
RESOURCES:
https://wufshanti.com/resources/
https://wufshanti.com/resources/mindful-kids-peace-summit/
https://wufshanti.com/sflpbs-wuf-shanti-schedule-2017-2018/
https://wufshanti.com/resources/kids-association-mindfulness-education/
https://wufshanti.com/giving-back/
https://wufshanti.com/research/
Stay Tuned for the second release of the Mindful Kids Peace Summit coming Sept. 23, 2019.
https://wufshanti.com/resources/mindful-kids-peace-summit/
RESOURCES:
[1] www.wufshanti.com
[2] https://www.mindfulkidspeacesummit.com
[3] “Mindfulness in Education to Lower Stress and Violence” by Adam Avin, TEDxYouth@KC June 10, 2019. https://www.tedxkc.org/adam-avin-kcyouth/
[4] Suicide is the second leading cause of death for ages 15-24 (Center for Disease Control) cdc.org
[5] Dr. Daniel Amen (Thrive by 25 Online Course) https://www.brainmdhealth.com/brain-thrive
[6] “Teacher Stress and Health” by Greenberg MT, Brown JL, and Abenavoli RM (September 2016) https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2016/07/teacher-stress-and-health.html
Tuesday Jul 23, 2019
Tuesday Jul 23, 2019
Welcome back to the “Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast” this is Andrea Samadi. This interview will be broadcast on YouTube as well as on the regular podcast channel, so be sure to look for the YouTube link in the show notes if you would like to view the video.
Our special guest today is Greg Wolcott. He is someone who is “always on the cutting edge of education.” Greg is the author of the book Significant 72: Unleashing the Power of Relationships in Today’s Schools[i] and is on a serious mission to impact our schools with this movement. Greg currently serves as the Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning in a suburb of Chicago as well as an adjunct professor. As an educator in the Chicago area for over 20 years, he is passionate about developing opportunities for all students to succeed as well as finding ways for all teachers and staff members to utilize their strengths to maximize learning. I’m excited to have Greg share more about the “Significant 72” initiative that’s implemented in over two hundred schools across the United States and Canada. Welcome Greg.
Q1: As we dive into the relationship competency, I know there isn’t anyone I could think of that could cover this topic better than you. Can you give some background on the reason why you wrote this book? I remember hearing you talking about the concept of “Significant 72” on an SEL Webinar back in 2016. I remember you mentioned it had to do with the importance of relationship building after 3-day weekends. Where did the concept begin, what does Significant 72 look like in a school (every day, every month and after long breaks)?
Q2: When you mentioned the research you had done, and found the key attribute that all great teachers do—their ability to form strong, caring relationships with students, how did you take this information to help build on this strength to connect with students on a deeper level?
Q3: We know from the research that “When students perceive that their teacher knows them both academically and personally, they are better positioned to take ownership of their learning.” (Edwards & Edick, 2013). We can all recall are favorite teachers who inspired us to learn, but how did they do it? There’s that fine line of showing you care and being too intrusive when asking students about their feelings or personal lives. How did you handle this to get the results you were looking for? GREG: It all began with John Hattie’s research on effect size and how relationship building yielded a gain of 2 years.[ii]
Q5: Can you give us your TOP tips used in “Significant 72” for improving relationships with students?
Q4: What are the outcomes and results from the schools using this method? How are you measuring this data? GREG: They use Panorama Education Surveys[iii]
Q5: What is your 3-5 year vision of where you see “Significant 72” going?
Q 6: To sum this all up, what are some final words of wisdom that you think we can all do (parents, as well as educators) to build stronger, meaningful relationships that foster that home/school connection? GREG: Connections Before Curriculum!
Thank you Greg, for taking the time out of your day to speak with us and share your Significant 72 book, ideas and resources. If someone wants to learn more, they can go to www.significant72.com and find you on Twitter @GregJWolcott to reach you.
[i] www.significant72.com
[ii] https://visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effect-sizes-learning-achievement/
[iii] www.PanoramaEd.com
Saturday Jul 20, 2019
Saturday Jul 20, 2019
In today’s episode we have Helen Maffini, a Canadian/British international educational consultant. You can watch the video of this interview on YouTube as well as listen on our regular podcast channel. Helen is the host of the Mindfulness in Education and Peace Summits, a doctoral researcher, author and educator and will share with us her experience as the host of "The Mindful Peace Summits" that bring educators, business leaders, researchers and experts in the field together in one place, to share their ideas, resources and expertise on the future of "Mindfulness and Meditation" in our schools. With time, these practices will be implemented in more and more schools worldwide, and workplaces will follow the way (like in the UK where meditation is used in parliament). Here Helen's thoughts on the following questions.
Q1: I’ve been blessed to be interviewed by you for your Mindful Peace Summits where you interview leaders across the world in the area of SEL and neuroscience with guests like Dr. Daniel Siegal, the author of Brain Storm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain (and countless other books) as well as many others. Why did you create the Mindful Peace Summits? What have YOU learned from your interviews?
Q2: It was powerful watching 14-year-old Adam Avin hosting your last Mindful Peace Summit in February. I think that student-voice is trending in the country, and Adam is spearheading his way. How did Adam impact your Summit? What did you notice about his participation?
Q3: I know we have similar visions for where we see education going, and we have both come from similar backgrounds. Where do you think SEL is right now in the US opposed to Canada and Internationally? Is the US behind/at the same pace? (I see Canada as being ahead from the fact that in 2016 they hired me to present on SEL/Neuroscience whereas the US is just catching onto this topic). Curious what you think?
Q4: Can you explain your MindBe Curriculum and how it’s impacting schools in Asia? What is your vision for your curriculum? (Canada/USA)?
Q5: What’s on the 3-5 year plan for you? I know you are always working on something. What’s next?
Wednesday Jul 17, 2019
Social-Awareness: How to Change Your Social Brain
Wednesday Jul 17, 2019
Wednesday Jul 17, 2019
Our goal with this podcast is to close the gap recent surveys show exists in our workforce where 58 percent of employers say college graduates aren’t adequately prepared for today’s workforce, and those employers noted a particular gap in social and emotional skills. Research shows that social-emotional skills like social awareness, self-management, and growth mindset are crucial to college and career readiness. We have chosen six social and emotional learning competencies to dive deep into over the next 6 episodes to use as a springboard for discussion and tie in how an understanding of our brain can facilitate these strategies. We want the ideas you take away with you to be actionable whether you are an educator working in a school, an employee or manager in a corporation, or someone just looking to take their skills to the next level. We have done all of the research for you and look forward to hearing about the results that you create.
As a recap, in our first episode, we shared with you the “Why behind implementing an SEL/emotional intelligence training program in your school or workplace.” In the second episode, we introduced the first of the six SEL competencies (self-awareness). With each competency, we’ll investigate the best practices and strategies that you can use to develop and improve your own SEL/Emotional Intelligence and well-being practices, before extending these strategies to your districts, schools, classrooms, workplaces and communities. We’ll offer ideas, tools and resources (in the show notes section) so that anyone can apply these skills themselves, and then teach others for improved results, focus and productivity.
Our next competency is social-awareness.
What is Social-Awareness and Why is it Important?
“Social awareness is the ability to take the perspective of and empathize with others from diverse backgrounds and cultures.” [i] Being socially aware means that we have the ability to:
Recognize our own emotions in addition to other people’s emotions
Use information about our emotions to help guide or direct our thoughts, feelings, actions and behaviors
Be aware of the thoughts, feelings and motivations of others
Be able to take another person’s perspective
“As an educator, part of our role is to help students see the world through others’ eyes.” [ii] How can we become more socially mindful of others? We know that research shows that students with strong social awareness adapt easily to their environment, are empathetic to others, and have fewer behavioral problems.” [iii] This creates a setting where students can focus on learning. Findings also show that students who demonstrate strong social awareness are better able to engage in effective communication with their peers to resolve conflicts and challenges when they arise.
In the workplace, there are a lot of components to think about. We are all equals (men vs women) and of diverse backgrounds and everyone on the team can contribute in a different way to achieve the end goal. We’ve must learn to communicate between different departments-- marketing can’t work without sales and sales can’t operate without marketing. It’s important to learn strategies to connect with all our colleagues.
Tap into Your Own Social-Awareness in 4 Steps
There is a way to train your brain to increase social awareness and create substantial neural changes in your social brain. This practice will help you to change your behavior and in turn, will cause others to trust and connect with you more. Imagine you have a team meeting and you know the outcome that you want from the meeting. There are some steps that you can take BEFORE the meeting that can prime your brain for these results.
STEP 1: Prepare yourself to engage in the present moment. Yawn, stretch, relax and release any negative thoughts and feelings that might be on your mind. You don’t want to carry anything into the meeting to affect the outcome that you want.
STEP 2: Find your power word. Think of a word that resonates with you that represents the outcome of the interaction you are about to have and repeat this word. Words like successful, harmonious, teamwork are examples.
STEP 3: Prime your brain for the outcome. Think of a happy memory that puts you in a good mood. This memory will make you smile and when others see you, will be more trusting of you. This is called neural resonance and can easily be felt. It’s when you feel connected to someone and can’t explain it. There’s a resonance that occurs at the brain level. It can also be felt when you don’t feel a connection to someone, and you get a bad vibe from them. There’s something that your brain doesn’t connect with or it just feels off. This is our mirror neurons at play that help us with social understanding and empathy.
STEP 4: Visualize the interaction you want to have, and you will have with a positive outcome. Remember, your brain can’t determine the difference between what is real and what is imagined, we can use this skill of visualization or our imagination to make our brains fire the exact same way as if we were experiencing what we are thinking or imagining to impact our results.
When you intentionally follow through with a plan to be more socially aware, you will be amazed at the results. It does take practice, but even a few minutes a day can yield outstanding results with how others perceive you.
Think About This: For Educators
Discussion Questions to Increase Your Student’s Social-Awareness
How can you tell when one of your friends is sad, or having a bad day?
What can you do to help someone else if you notice they are “off” when they come to school?
How can you help others fit in and feel included more?
Why is it so important to be in tune with other people’s thoughts and feelings?
Think About This: For the Workplace
Discussion Questions to Increase Workplace Social-Awareness
If you notice your colleague is off, what are some things you can say to them that can be helpful?
When someone new comes to your team, what can you do to help them integrate into the team?
Why is it important to being aware of your colleagues’ unique attitudes, and emotional states?
Outcomes and Results
Positive Classroom Climate: Students with strong social awareness adapt more easily to their environment, empathize with the perspectives of others, and engage in fewer disruptive classroom behaviors. This, in turn, creates an environment where students can focus on learning.[iv]
Better Relationships: Students who demonstrate strong social awareness are able to engage in constructive communication with their peers and resolve conflicts when they arise. These students benefit from peer learning and know how to take advantage of social supports. [v]
Greater Career Success: An employer survey conducted by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills demonstrates that four of the five most important skills for high school graduates entering the work force are linked to social awareness: professionalism, collaboration, communication, and social responsibility. [vi]
Make it common practice to develop these skills, thinking of ways that we can continually give back and help others solve problems, and it will improve the perception that others have of us.
To sum this all up, think of someone you know who is socially mindful. Notice what they do when they are speaking to connect with others. How do they activate your mirror neurons to connect with them empathetically with social understanding? They are connecting with your Limbic/emotional brain where our emotions are controlled, as well as our motivations and the brain’s reward circuit. With practice, this skill can become a habit and yields outstanding results while connecting, impacting others and making you memorable (since emotions help memories form and stick).[vii]
Strategies to Build Social Awareness:
As with all the SEL competencies, when we build our own social awareness, we can model this skill for others. For adults, you can strengthen this skill by using Active and Constructive Responding. “Responses from others perceived to be active and constructive were associated with emotional well-being with better relationship quality, whereas responses perceived to be destructive or passive were negatively associated with these outcomes.” (Gable et al, 2004). [viii]
Strategies for educators/workplace include:
Encouraging your colleagues to share positive news or ideas with each other.
Practice being active and engaged with your response by saying something that shows you listened to the news or idea vs ignoring or half listening.
Try Social Perspective Taking: the capacity to discern the thoughts, feelings, motivations, and points of view of others from their point of view.[ix] Consider the culture the other person comes from and see if you can take another perspective to that person’s thoughts/feelings.
Strategies for students
Have students take out of piece of paper and write down a list of 5 people they would like to improve their relationship with by being more socially mindful of and with them. Each time they interact with a person on the list, have them go through the 4 steps to improve their social interactions (prepare for the interaction, find their power word, prime their brain for the outcome, and visualize the positive outcome). With time and practice, they should notice their relationship with these people improving as neural resonance develops.
Resources:
Social Awareness Toolkit https://www.transformingeducation.org/social-awareness-toolkit/
The Montgomery County (Ohio) Education Service Center and Ohio Department of Education video on Social Awareness https://vimeo.com/339150372/c50495aebe
Student:
Transforming Education “Social Awareness in Students’ Words” YouTube Uploaded Feb 1, 2017 (2:25) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d75gxU6Nyq0
REFERENCES:
[i] Social Awareness Toolkit https://www.transformingeducation.org/social-awareness-toolkit/
[ii] Former Education Secretary, John King.
[iii] Social Awareness Toolkit https://www.transformingeducation.org/social-awareness-toolkit/
[iv] Greenberg, M. T., Weissberg, R. P., O'Brien, M. U., Zins, J. E., Fredericks, L., Resnik, H., & Elias, M. J. (2003). Enhancing school-based prevention and youth development through coordinated social, emotional, and academic learning. American psychologist, 58(6-7), 466.
[v] Social Awareness Toolkit https://www.transformingeducation.org/social-awareness-toolkit/
[vi] Casner-Lotto, J., & Barrington, L. (2006). Are They Really Ready to Work? Employers' Perspectives on the Basic Knowledge and Applied Skills of New Entrants to the 21st Century US Workforce. Partnership for 21st Century Skills. 1 Massachusetts Avenue NW Suite 700, Washington, DC 20001.
[vii] Your Brain: 100 Things You Never Knew (National Geographic)
[viii] Social Awareness Toolkit PowerPoint Slide 5 https://www.transformingeducation.org/social-awareness-toolkit/
[ix] Social Awareness Toolkit PowerPoint Slide 24 https://www.transformingeducation.org/social-awareness-toolkit/
Tuesday Jul 16, 2019
Tuesday Jul 16, 2019
Welcome back to the “Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast” this is Andrea Samadi. This interview will be broadcast on YouTube as well as on the regular podcast channel. Today we are speaking with Jennifer Miller, she’s an author and illustrator of the blog Confident Parents, Confident Kids[i] with over 22,000 followers. She has her master’s degree in Instructional Leadership with a focus on social and emotional development, and has a new book coming out just shortly after the SEL Exchange[ii] this October called Confident Parents, Confident Kids: Raising Emotional Intelligence in Ourselves and Our Kids — From Toddlers to Teenagers.[iii]
Welcome Jennifer, it’s great to meet you after following your work for the past few years. I was excited to see you as a speaker at Casel’s SEL Exchange this coming October where you will be showcasing your research with educators nationally and internationally. This is very exciting!
Q1: Can you give us a sneak peak of the insights you will be sharing at Casel’s pre-conference institute this fall?
Q2: I know we’ve both heard this question many times, and it’s often the question kicked around in many different settings. I hope that this interview can shed some light on some solutions to bridge the gap that exists with the question. The question is….“Whose job is it to educate our kids?” Of course, we know the role of our schools to educate students, but teachers can’t be the only solution. With the fact that students are with their teachers around 6 hours/day, about 180 days/year, [iv] we can’t rely on only the school because there’s a lot of time they are not in school, bringing us to you, for your expertise. Whose job is it?
Q3: What can/should parents be doing at home to support their child’s social and emotional learning? What does SEL look like integrated into family life? (examples for young children-teens)
Q4: How do parents access and translate the robust knowledge base from schools to support them in raising confident, responsible children? What should parents be doing more of to support this new and emergent field?
Q5: How can schools who prioritize social and emotional learning authentically partner with families to maximize success with our children?
Q6: What would be your top 5 tips for a parent to improve their role to support their local school/educator?
Q7: Would be your top 5 tips for teachers to improve their role to support/connect better with parents?
Q8: I’m looking forward to the release of your book Confident Parents, Confident Kids: Raising Emotional Intelligence in Ourselves and Our Kids — and look will do all I can to promote your book to help more families. Can you give us some background on why you wrote this book, and the support it will provide for parents?
Q9: Thank you Jennifer for taking the time out of your day today. Is there anything you think we have missed, any final thoughts for parents/educators who either watch the video on YouTube, or hear the podcast, to learn more about supporting the home/school connection with social and emotional learning?
[i] https://confidentparentsconfidentkids.org/
[ii] https://selexchange.casel.org/
[iii] Pre-order Jennifer Miller’s Book on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Confident-Parents-Kids-Emotional-Intelligence/dp/1592339042/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=jennifer+miller+parenting&qid=1563316995&s=gateway&sr=8-2
[iv] Leading Education Podcast with Jeff Rose https://www.leadingedsolutions.com/about
Thursday Jul 11, 2019
Ron Hall of Valley Day School, PA on "Launching Your Neuroeducational Program"
Thursday Jul 11, 2019
Thursday Jul 11, 2019
Welcome back to the “Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast” this is Andrea Samadi. This interview will be broadcast on YouTube as well as on the regular podcast channel, so be sure to click on the link if you would like to view the video. In this episode we have a special guest, Ron Hall, the Executive Director of Valley Day School[i] in Morristown, Pennsylvania to discuss how his school improved behavioral outcomes with a neuroscientific approach. If you take one look at Valley Day Schools website in the News Section you can see the forward-thinking nature of this school that is applying cutting edge technology in PE class that combines movement with intellect, challenging students to think while they move. They are using virtual reality to travel to different regions of the world and develop empathy. Teachers hold community meetings with students to get to the root cause of behavioral problems over punishment, and they teach their students about table etiquette, and social/emotional intelligence though advanced technology tools.Welcome Ron, thanks for joining us today.
When I saw the article written about your focus on social support rather than the old punitive approach, I knew I had to contact you so you could share your experiences to help other schools that might be thinking of implementing a program like yours. The more I read on your In the News Section of your website, the more excited I got to speak with you to learn more. I know that summer time is a time to get some rest to rejuvenate for the next year, so I do appreciate you speaking with me during the summer break to help others to see some of your strategies.
Let’s dive into the questions…
In your recent interview “Lessons in Leadership: How an Alternative School Improved Behavioral Outcomes with a Neuroscience Approach”[ii] from educationdive.com you mentioned how you were interested in using an understanding of the brain to facilitate learning prior to being hired at Valley Day School over 15 years ago. It was just a bit longer than that when I was a teacher in the classroom and looking for something like this to help me manage a classroom of behavioral students. My principal sent me to a Tribes workshop, but this was not even close to what I needed. What made you look at brain-based learning back then and what did you discover?
We know that 15 years ago there wasn’t the research around social and emotional learning that we now know impacts student achievement and behavior. What do you think is different now than 15 years ago with schools using these strategies to help improve student behavior that we know is tied into achievement? How are you teaching these skills?
What happens if some staff do not buy in, or you see some outliers? How do you handle that? Can you explain the demographics of Valley Day School so that other schools can learn from your experience and model your approach?
When I looked up your website valleyday.org right on your home page banner under “Cutting Edge Technology” I see a student on a computer with a brain jumping out of the screen. It looks like augmented reality (something I have been following for some time now). What program is that? How are you raising funds for such innovative tools?
Where do you see neuroeducation going in the next 5 years and I’m really curious what’s on your roadmap for your next steps in innovation?
I really do wish I knew these strategies back when I was in the classroom. It was probably one of the reasons I burnt out of the profession. I know that you believe that to “effectively manage behavior and improve learning, all staff members need to have a thorough understanding of how the brain operates.” Where would you suggest a school begin when looking to implement a neuroscientific approach to prevent teacher burnout? What are the most important components that teachers should grasp about the brain? Ron suggests starting with Harry Wong’s book, The First Day of School.[iii] What do you think students need to know about how the brain works? Teach students how the brain works. “If students understand how the brain works, they can gain greater control over their personal growth. Therefore, we teach all students how the brain works. The student will learn where emotions and thoughts come from; how the body reacts to stress and threats; and how life choices of nutrition, exercise, and sleep can profoundly impact their functioning.” (RH)
I know that your approach[iv] is centered around developing an environment focused on success. Can you explain how you have used the Bloom Sanctuary Model and Sanchez Resiliency Model to impact your school culture and climate?
We know that what we can measure improves and there’s such an emphasis on measurable outcomes these days, how does what you cannot measure translate into measurable outcomes for you?
What are some of the Behavioral and Clinical Supports that you use for students? What do you have in place to help educators handle the stress that comes along with the job?
For some first steps to implement these strategies in a school or district, I know that having all staff on the same page is important to begin an implementation. “Do your work and research the leaders in the field. I recommend Dr. Lori Desautels [v] and Horatio Sanchez[vi] to begin with. Also Greg Benner [vii]
Is there anything else that I have missed that you think would be important for a District or School to know to implement neuroeducation as a strategy for improving student behavior and achievement?
[i] https://www.valleyday.org
[ii] https://www.educationdive.com/news/lessons-in-leadership-how-an-alternative-school-improved-behavioral-outcom/556977/
[iii] https://www.effectiveteaching.com/store/products/books/new-the-first-days-of-school-5th-edition
[iv] https://www.valleyday.org/domain/20
[v] http://revelationineducation.com/
[vi] https://www.learningandthebrain.com/education-speakers/Horacio-Sanchez
[vii] Gregg Benner @GJBenner on Twitter
Tuesday Jul 02, 2019
Self-Awareness: Know Thyself
Tuesday Jul 02, 2019
Tuesday Jul 02, 2019
In this episode, we will introduce the first of six social and emotional learning competencies (self-awareness) that we will be diving deep into over the next six weeks. With each competency, we’ll investigate the best practices and strategies that educators/and the workplace can use for themselves to develop and improve their own SEL/Emotional Intelligence and well-being practices, before extending these strategies to their districts, schools, classrooms, workplaces and communities. We’ll offer ideas, tools and resources (in the show notes section) so that anyone can apply these skills themselves, and then teach others for improved results, focus and productivity.
With the buzz of the importance and need of social and emotional learning in our schools (and emotional intelligence training in our workplaces), we all know that developing a child’s SEL skills is just as important as their academic content to ensure student motivation and success throughout their school years as well as in their future careers. We do know that students with strong SEL health “demonstrate self-control, communicate well, problem solve, are empathetic, respectful, grateful, gritty and optimistic.”[i] All of the skills our workforce is actively looking for.
We also know that neuroscience has advanced our understanding of these SEL skills. We know that there is a clear connection between educator cortisol increase and student cortisol increase, (meaning that when teachers are stressed, the students will in turn be stressed) and that teachers who demonstrate social and emotional learning competencies (like self-awareness, social awareness, self-regulation, decision-making, relationship building) are more likely to stay in the classroom longer because they are able to work more effectively with challenging students—one of the main reasons for educator burn out. This is something I remember well—since this was one of the reasons I left the classroom over 20 years ago. I wish I knew the research and had some of the tools that I know now, and the importance of working on myself, before considering an impact on others. I hope these ideas, can help offer solutions to deepen the student/teacher relationship as well as connect teachers back to their profession, providing them with that feeling of autonomy, and peace that we all are looking for in our workplace.
In the corporate world, these skills aren’t new, but they are “newly important” and of high urgency to develop in our future generations. A recent survey showed that 58 percent of employers say college graduates aren’t adequately prepared for today’s workforce, and those employers noted a particular gap in social and emotional skills. Our goal with this podcast is to close this gap by exploring six social and emotional learning competencies as a springboard for discussion and tie in how an understanding of our brain can facilitate these strategies. We want the ideas you take away with you to be actionable whether you are an educator working in a school, an employee of manager in a corporation, or someone just looking to take their skills to the next level. We have done all of the research for you and look forward to hearing about the results that you create.
Self-Awareness
Today we will begin with Self-Awareness to kick off our first SEL competency since to “know thyself” is the most substantial achievement we can have in our lifetime.
“The major value in life is not what you get. It’s what you become.” (Jim Rohn, American author, speaker and entrepreneur).
So let’s take a deeper look. What is self-awareness, why do we need it, and how can we get more of it?
Self-awareness is “the ability to see ourselves clearly, understand who we are, how others see us and how we fit into the world.”[ii] When we have self-awareness, we have a power within ourselves because there is a comfort in knowing who exactly who we are and where we fit into the larger world around us. Research shows that “people who are more self-aware have stronger relationships, are more creative, competent are better communicators and perform better at work.”[iii]
Here’s 6 Steps to Becoming More Self Aware
Know Thyself and Then Build Yourself Up With Self-Esteem and Courage: Have you taken the time to think about who you are? Do you know where you fit into your school, workplace, community, state, country and world? Do you know what your purpose is? Your Why? You are more than just an educator or employee in a corporation, but have you thought about, who exactly you are? If you work in the corporate world, I’m sure you can see that you are more than the day to day job that you are doing. Take some time to think about who you are. Let’s say that you were looking for a new job but lacked some of the skills listed in the job description. You know that you can learn these new skills, but now you must believe it and convince the person who will be interviewing you. The key to increasing your self-esteem is to build up your image of yourself, creating new neural pathways in your brain with your desired self-image and by weakening the old negative self-image that you don’t want anymore (perhaps the image of you in your current job or position). You can do this a few different ways but some of the most effective and proven strategies are:
Daily guided meditation focusing on building new neural pathways in the brain…thinking about the desired outcome.
Affirmations that you write yourself to create new neural pathways.
Stop caring about what other people think and just be yourself. Ignore the nay-sayers.
Stop comparing yourself to others!
Strong Self-Esteem (what you think of yourself) + Strong Self-Image (how you think others see you) = Confidence that Builds Competence you will need for the new position ----Creating Extra Energy to Overcome Obstacles that you will face and help you to reach the higher level of achievement. You have to believe and trust in yourself and your abilities in order for others to believe in you. Once you have mastered this skill, you will be well on your way to accomplishing anything.
Building Your Self-Esteem by Improving Your Courage
Brené Brown defines the original meaning of courage as “To share all of yourself. Share your whole story with your whole heart” [iv] even if we must share our vulnerabilities, fears and weaknesses. Remember that everyone has doubts, fears and insecurities. Those who can move forward despite them, are the ones will win. Being courageous also means to be vulnerable enough to share your weaknesses with others. This will allow you to ask for help when you need it.
Without courage you will never move up or forward in life. Remember: There will be no innovation without failure.
To put this into action—whether we are an educator, working in a school, an employee, working in a corporation, or an athlete on a sports team, we must know how our identity fits into the goals of our school, organization or team to reach our greatest levels of achievement. Once we know our identity, and how we fit in, we can begin to hone our skills to take us to the next level. There must be a reason you are showing up to school/work/practice/life day in and day out that goes beyond the grades/money you will earn for you to tap into your highest levels of achievement.
“Schools have a role in shaping students’ development of their own identity, agency, and a sense of purpose in their learning, as well as a role in preparing students with high level knowledge and skills they need to be thriving adults.” (Integrating Social, Emotional and Academic Development: An Action Guide for School Leadership Teams) page 4
For educators: Do you think about the identity of each of your students? Who are they? Do you know something about each one of them? Do you know/use their name? Can you keep up a conversation with them? Do you know what your students are passionate about? Can you tie this into your lesson? Beware of our tendency to teach others how we like to learn best. Be aware of individual student needs.
For workplace managers: Do you know your team members? Just like an educator who knows what motivates their students, do you know what motivates your employees? Why are they working in their current position? Can you tie this into your day to day interaction with them?
Once you know yourself it’s now more about “aligning” to your true self. When you go off track, you will know it (you will feel out of synch and disconnected) and it will be up to you to know yourself well enough to get yourself back on track where things just flow.
Don’t limit yourself: Remember to be careful of labelling yourself based on past performance. “Self-analysis can trap us if we don’t learn to let go of the past.”[v] We cannot base our decisions of what we think we are capable of doing based on what we have done in the past. When things go wrong in our lives, it can taint our self-image and prevent us from reaching for things we really want to be, do or have. Be careful of this trap as you think about who you are. Think about the times when something failed as a lesson that you learned from—not that there is anything wrong with you or your capabilities—but that you were not meant to be doing what failed—at that specific time. In a world where it didn’t matter if you failed, what would you want to be doing? Not the things you know you can do already, (that are easy) or the things that don’t bring you excitement. What do you think about that brings you energy, excitement, joy, passion, perhaps some fear at the thought of it? This is where you must focus your attention to stretch, grow, and allow your true self to emerge.
Keep Stretching Yourself: Have you ever been given an assignment where you thought there was no way that you could complete this? It just seemed to be above your head, above your current capabilities. I have—for sure, but I still accepted the assignment with the goal to grow and challenge myself and it feels incredible when you complete something you thought you could never do at the start! What we find is that we often don’t know what we don’t know and that we are capable of doing much more than we think we can accomplish. Be sure that every quarter (four times a year) you think about whether you are really stretching yourself (with your career/work/finances, your health, relationships, and your contribution to the world). Is there something you have always wanted to do but just have no idea where to begin? Write down the ideas that come to mind and find someone who has done what you want to do. Finding a mentor to coach or guide you along the way is a surefire strategy to ensure that you take action.
Know Your Values: Do you know what values are important to you? Life and decision-making becomes much easier when you are clear on your top values. I keep 5 values in front of me at all times and when I’m working, and something comes up, it’s not difficult to glance over at what I have already acknowledged is important to me when making decisions. There are many ways to uncover your values or things that are important to you in your life. You can hire a coach to help you discover your values[vi] like I have done or discover them with some introspection. Try this activity to uncover your values. Take a piece of paper and on one side label it “Want This in My Life” and the other side is “Don’t Want This in My Life.”Think about your personal life and work life and start to fill in your list of all the things you want or don’t want. You should be able to identify common themes or words will emerge as your values or things that you want in your life. You can also become clear of the things you DON’T want in your life by thinking of times when things were not going right in your personal or work life. Common themes will emerge on both sides of the list and you can identify things that are important to you. For me, my top values include health, growth and challenge. So, when making work decisions, I usually think “will this project offer me growth and challenge.” If not, I know to pass up the project as I will probably be bored and not do my best work. Same goes when learning how you operate in your personal life. If something goes against your values, you will know it, won’t be as productive and you will feel conflicted. It’s a lot easier to know your values up front to eliminate making choices that aren’t right for you.
Create a Morning Routine: Creating a morning routine will simplify your life and warm up your brain. When you wake up, the oldest part of your brain begins to drive you towards your goals that have rewards attached to them. You can make it easier on your brain and eliminate decision fatigue (where you waste energy unnecessarily) or set yourself up for success with some careful planning the night before. Research shows that if you can take the time for a morning routine that involves becoming aware of your mental state, your brain will function much better for the rest of the day. You will be able to do more, with less stress.
Wake up, stretch, and focus on how you feel. What do you notice?
Focus on the positive parts of your day.
Visualize overcoming any obstacles that you can foresee.
Prepare for your day the night before to eliminate decision fatigue.
Be More Outward Focused: Finally, think about how you can help others.
For Educators: Who are your learners? Turn your attention to your students. Do you have strategies to help them discover their strengths? Help them to find out what they are passionate about. How can you bring their strengths/passions into your lessons to help motivate them? Do they have some idea of how their interests tie into the career that they are working towards? I remember a student I was working with last year who was into cars. His face lit up when I gave an example using a car shop and asked him to answer the question…using something he cared about.
For the Workplace: Who are your employees? How can you help support or encourage them? Do you take the time to connect and check in with them at least on a weekly basis? Do you know what motivates them? What can you do to encourage them further?
Outcomes and Results:
When we can identify our true self, we can begin to focus on what difference we will make for others, not dwelling on past mistakes but using them as a catalyst to learn and grow from and create more meaning in our lives.
TO RECAP THIS EPISODE on the 6 Steps on Becoming More Self-Aware, we covered:
Take some time to get to know yourself and discover your identity. Learn how you fit into your school, community, workplace, organization or team. Improve your courage with a strong self-image (what you think of yourself). Having a strong self-image is crucial to ensure that nothing will knock you off course with your goals, however, everyone will experience self-doubt. You must have strategies in place to help you to move past these blocks, and mentors to guide you along the way.
Don’t limit yourself. Be careful not to base your future decisions of what you think you are capable of doing based on what you have done in the past. What do you think about that brings you energy, excitement, joy, passion, perhaps some fear at the thought of it? This is where you must focus your attention to stretch, grow, and allow your true self to develop.
Keep stretching yourself to reach beyond where you think you can go. Find a mentor to coach or guide you along the way.
Know your values and decision-making is much easier.
Create a morning routine to simplify your life.
Be outward focused and give back to others.
That wraps up our 2nd episode on Strategies to Become more self aware. We hope you find the tips helpful! Next episode we will dive deeper into Social-Awareness and Looking Beyond Yourself to Help Others.
Resources:
Self-Awareness: Definition, Benefits and How to Improve by Sylvi Saxena June 17, 2021 https://www.choosingtherapy.com/self-awareness/
The Montgomery County (Ohio) Education Service Center and Ohio Department of Education video on Self-Awareness https://vimeo.com/339138555/1316a95190
VIDEO YouTube “5 Strategies to Improve Your Self-Awareness” (3:08)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-lmNqWUvWI&list=PLb5Z3cA_mnKj5C1ZYZt2bFXnDXFTENhPR&index=6&t=13s
[i] SEL: The Why and Hows of Implementation in a School District (Edweb) https://home.edweb.net/webinar/sel20190404/ (April 4, 2019)
[ii] “Increase Your Self-Awareness with One Simple Fix” YouTube uploaded Nov. 2017 Tasha Eurich https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGdsOXZpyWE
[iii] “Increase Your Self-Awareness with One Simple Fix” YouTube uploaded Nov. 2017 Tasha Eurich https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGdsOXZpyWE
[iv] Dr. Brené Brown: The Two Most Dangerous Words in Your Vocabulary | Super Soul Sunday | OWN (4:06) Published on March 17, 2013. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=4XTcB1evO8c
[v] “Increase Your Self-Awareness with One Simple Fix” YouTube uploaded Nov. 2017 Tasha Eurich https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGdsOXZpyWE
[vi] Email Values Coach Fran Henry Fran@ultimate.life for more information on values coaching.
Friday Jun 21, 2019
Friday Jun 21, 2019
Welcome to our FIRST “Neuroscience Meets SEL Podcast” this is Andrea Samadi. In this episode, we will be talking about the WHY behind setting up a social and emotional learning program in your school or district, or emotional intelligence training in the workplace.
Today I have with me Majid Samadi, Corporate Sales Leader for the past 22 years, and my husband, and we will be talking about “The Why Behind Social and Emotional Learning or Emotional Intelligence Training for Schools and Workplaces” and offering his thoughts with his experience in mind.
Andrea to Majid: As someone who works in the corporate world, why do you think teaching SEL in our classrooms is so important to develop our future generations? What skills do you think are missing?
Majid to Andrea: What about you? Since you were a teacher in the classroom, why do you think SEL programs are so important in today’s classrooms? Why now? Hasn’t SEL always been important for preparing young people for the workplace?
Sure, these skills have always been important, but the research wasn’t there 20 years ago.
When I first started my career in education, in the late 90s, as a classroom teacher, I felt overwhelmed and frustrated by the lack of resources to help me to manage and teach my students (my first teaching assignment was a behavioral class) and I had to be creative to hold their attention, let alone teach what was required. I discovered social and emotional learning skills by chance through a motivational speaker.
After seeing students working with skills that developed their attitude, mindset, confidence and goal-setting abilities, (you know, what we used to call soft skills) and it skyrocketed their results, (I saw kids who were able to go from C grades to A grades, from being a bench warmer to the starting line-up and improving their personal lives) I knew we were onto something. It actually hit me like a brick since I was really struggling to make an impact on the students in my classroom, and then here were these 12 teens talking about their results after only a few months of working with lessons that mirrored growth mindset, and self-awareness…and I knew I was meant to be doing this work back then. It’s been a 20-year journey and I am excited to share the resources and ideas with everyone here on the podcast.
I know it won’t shock educators to know the statistics that support the need for students and SEL but did you know that:
¼ students struggle with anxiety
1/5 struggle with depression
Research now shows us that students with strong SEL health “demonstrate self-control, communicate well, problem solve, are empathetic, respectful, grateful, gritty and optimistic.”[i] We also know that neuroscience has advanced our understanding of these SEL skills.
Here’s more research of what we know now:
“Success in life, and in college and career specifically, relies on student’s cognitive, social, and emotional development. (Integrating Social, Emotional and Academic Development: An Action Guide for School Leadership Teams) page 4
“Research shows that teaching these skills result in immediate and long-term improvement in academic achievements and are a better predictor of success than academic ability alone.” (Perspectives of Youth on High School and SEL Webinar, Dec. 11/18).
(Research of over 200 studies show that students who studies SEL have an 11% gain in academic achievement). School climate, autonomy, educator health improves.
We also know that there is a connection between educator cortisol increase and student cortisol increase. We know that teachers who demonstrate Social and Emotional Learning competencies are more likely to stay in the classroom longer because they are able to work more effectively with challenging students- one of the main causes of burn out. That’s why this topic is of such interest to so many people these days.
“School leader support is the biggest predictor of whether change takes hold and is beneficial” (SEL and Principal Leadership) April 2, 2019 Edweek Webinar. (which is why we knew it was important to launch this podcast with ideas, resources and tools).
Adult SEL must be addressed and trained so teachers can use these skills with their students as they are teaching.
Only a well-regulated adult can help regulate a student. Teaching is a high stress job, tied for nursing. There must be a plan in place for educator well-being.
Since the research is here and proving what we have known for decades, the time is now to implement these programs into the classroom.
We know from the feedback from the Edweek 2019 Social and Emotional Learning in Schools Summit that educators are “interested in social and emotional learning but aren’t always sure where to start” [ii] and they are looking for “clear starting points in developing their own SEL strategies.” [iii]
This was one of the main reasons behind launching this podcast for ideas, tools and resources.
I also just saw a tweet from the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) showing that the US House of Representatives have just passed a bill to increase educational funding by $11.7 B. SEL of one of the initiatives on the list to receive funding (Listed at $260M). Finally, this need is being backed financially. We should see some changes in the next few years.
Andrea to Majid: What do you think? Do you see us at the beginning of the curve?
Andrea to Majid: How about the corporate world? Why do you think emotional intelligence is important for our workplaces? I know in the corporate world, these skills aren’t new, but they are “newly important.” A recent survey showed that 58 percent of employers say college graduates aren’t adequately prepared for today’s workforce, and those employers noted a particular gap in social and emotional skills.
Andrea to Majid: What do you think? You’ve been working in the corporate world for over 22 years. What is emotional intelligence? What kinds of scenarios do you see with this gap with social and emotional skills? What can Emotional Intelligence Training do for the workplace?
First, let’s define Emotional intelligence (shortened to EI or EQ for emotional quotient) can be defined as: “EQ refers to someone’s ability to perceive, understand and manage their own feelings and emotions” (Chignell, 2018). [iv]
Further, there are five distinct components of EI:
Self-awareness: This is important in the workplace because you need to know yourself first before you can help others with your product or service. This is where it all begins.
Self-regulation. There will be many times in the day where you will be tested and to be able to manage your emotions under pressure is very important.
Internal (or intrinsic) motivation. What is motivating you to get up and serve each day, and do you know what motivates your customers?
Empathy is an important skill to have to connect with others. You must be able to see the world through someone else’s eyes.
Social skills are important from ordering your lunch in a restaurant, to picking up your rental car and dealing with the front desk employees in the hotel you are staying at.
It’s easy to see how EI applies in the workplace! Those who learn to master these important skills will get ahead faster with less effort and frustration than those who lack these skills.
Majid gives an example.
Majid to Andrea: So now that we know the “why” behind the introducing a program to your school or workplace, what are some good first steps to begin? For Schools, there are some steps to consider:
Identify your team. In schools this will consist of principals, counselors, teachers, district leaders and students.
Align your mission (what you are doing) with your values and beliefs (why you are doing it). This will create the buy in needed.
Map Out Your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities for Growth and Threats (SWOT) to become more aware of where you are right now, what are some areas of improvement, and some roadblocks with some strategies to overcome them.
Create Your Roadmap: Now that you know where you are, where do you want to go? Based on the analysis above, what are some areas of focus?
Choose Your Program Whether you look at the curriculum we offer with the Level Up program, or another program, choose the topics that will help you solve the needs you have identified and map out your year.
Pick Your Training Format Choose a few schools to implement in the beginning or go District wide with all schools receiving training together.
For the workplace,
Identify your team. In the workplace, office managers, sales leaders, and pick a few leaders from within the organization to help you spearhead your program.
Align your mission (what you are doing) with your values and beliefs (why you are doing it). This will create the buy in needed.
Map Out Your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities for Growth and Threats (SWOT) to become more aware of where you are right now, what are some areas of improvement, and some roadblocks with some strategies to overcome them.
Create Your Roadmap: Now that you know where you are, where do you want to go? Based on the analysis above, what are some areas of focus? Consider doing climate surveys to find out what employees are thinking and feeling.
Choose Your Program Whether you look at the curriculum we offer with the Level Up program, or another program, choose the topics that will help you solve the needs you have identified and map out your year.
Pick Your Training Format Training can be completed via webinar, or live.
Resources:
VIDEO: The Heart-Brain Connection the Neuroscience of SEL (video by Neuroscientist Richard Davidson for Casel.org). https://www.edutopia.org/video/heart-brain-connection-neuroscience-social-emotional-and-academic-learning
WHITE PAPER: SEL Guidance: What Social and Emotional Learning Needs to Succeed (Chester Finn and Frederick Hess) https://www.aei.org/publication/what-social-and-emotional-learning-needs-to-succeed-and-survive/
For School Implementations: Casel’s District Resource Center https://drc.casel.org/
How to Improve Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/emotional-intelligence-workplace/
VIDEO The Impact of Social and Emotional Learning https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YMDp8FHvZt0 (1:14) YouTube November 14, 2018
EndNotes:
[i] SEL: The Why and Hows of Implementation in a School District (Edweb) https://home.edweb.net/webinar/sel20190404/ (April 4, 2019)
[ii] Social and Emotional Learning Ed Week Summit March 20, 2019 https://www.edweek.org/ew/events/social-emotional-learning-in-schools-an-education.html
[iii] Social and Emotional Learning Ed Week Summit March 20, 2019 https://www.edweek.org/ew/events/social-emotional-learning-in-schools-an-education.html
[iv] How to Improve Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/emotional-intelligence-workplace/
Welcome to our Podcast:
We cover the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning (for schools) and emotional intelligence training (in the workplace). Our podcast provides tools, resources and ideas for parents, teachers and employees to improve well-being, achievement and productivity using simple neuroscience as it relates to our cognitive (the skills our brain uses to think, read, remember, pay attention), social and interpersonal relationships (with ourselves and others) and emotional learning (where we recognize and manage our emotions, demonstrate empathy and cope with frustration and stress).
Season 1: Provides you with the tools, resources and ideas to implement proven strategies backed by the most current neuroscience research to help you to achieve the long-term gains of implementing a social and emotional learning program in your school, or emotional intelligence program in your workplace.
Season 2: Features high level guests who tie in social, emotional and cognitive strategies for high performance in schools, sports and the workplace.
Season 3: Ties in some of the top motivational business books and guest with the most current brain research to take your results and productivity to the next level.
Season 4: Brings in positive mental health and wellness strategies to help cope with the stresses of life, improving cognition, productivity and results.
Season 5: Continues with the theme of mental health and well-being with strategies for implementing practical neuroscience to improve results for schools, sports and the workplace.
Season 6: The Future of Educational Neuroscience and its impact on our next generation. Diving deeper into the Science of Learning.
Season 7: Brain Health and Well-Being (Focused on Physical and Mental Health).
Season 8: Brain Health and Learning (Focused on How An Understanding of Our Brain Can Improve Learning in Ourselves (adults, teachers, workers) as well as future generations of learners.
Season 9: Strengthening Our Foundations: Neuroscience 101: Back to the Basics-1
Season 10: Strengthening Our Foundations: Neuroscience 101: Back to the Basics-2