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“What matters is not how things are, but how they interact.“ – Carlo Rovelli, theoretical physicist, in his book, Reality is Not What It Seems Relationships are the key to building our most powerful mind. Our relationships with others build…
“You think because you understand ‘one’ you must also understand ‘two’, because one and one make two. But you must also understand ‘and’.” -Sufi teaching story Attachment – and specifically secure attachment – is one of…
“Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.” -Thich Nhat Hanh* , The Miracle…
Growth mindset can be applied to more aspects of life than we may currently realize. Many of you have heard of growth mindset. Put simply, it is a belief that with consistent action, support and tools, we have a capacity…
Resilient relationships – whether in friendships, intimate partnerships or families – are not about perfection or only positivity. The ruptures within ourselves and our relationships are precisely what our nervous system needs to build a repertoire of strategies that make…
When you feel a way you don’t like to feel… do you know how to get out of it? For those feelings you really enjoy… do you know how to improve the chances you’ll feel them more often? Emotion regulation…
Taking things too personally can lead to over-amplified emotions and reactions that distort our thinking and relationships. We can get better at navigating challenging interactions, feelings and relationships when we understand three particular unconscious influences that play a big role…
“You could say paradigms are harder to change than anything else about a system […] But there’s nothing necessarily physical or expensive or even slow in the process of paradigm change. In a single individual it can happen in a…
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“Through others we become ourselves.” ― Lev S. Vygotsky Do you remember the kinds of words that the people around you, especially your caregivers, used to talk about and solve their problems, regulate their own behavior, and regulate the…
Neuroscience Workshop November 7 Emotion Regulation: mastering our nervous system Learn how we can gain more control over our nervous system states by understanding how they get triggered, and how our system can become biased towards certain states over…
Self-Esteem has a lot to do with how we see ourselves. So does narcissism. But there is a KEY difference in what this self image is. High levels of self-esteem I are related to lower levels of depression…
We are not born with many of the skills we need to reach our highest potential. We are born with the potential to develop them. The malleability and adaptability of the human brain is what makes our intelligence have limitless…
Neuroplasticity and experience-dependence are two of the most important topics for our society. While I believe it should be a part of standard curriculum for all schools across all ages, it is not (yet). That’s why I create this…
“Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary.” -Fred Rogers Do you go through a lot…
Empathy allows us to connect with others on a deep level, to recognize, understand, and even internalize the internal state of another person, their emotions and what they’re going through. A full definition of empathy includes both cognitive and affective…
“You can’t navigate well in an interconnected, feedback-dominated world unless you take your eyes off short-term events and look for long term behavior and structure.” -Donella Meadows, Systems Thinking: A Primer We all have emotion regulation strategies. We all…
Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we never were able to do. Through learning we reperceive the world and our relationship to it. Through learning we extend our capacity to create, to be…
What drives you to do the things you do? When you wake up in the morning, what thoughts or feelings come up and how do they help or hinder you from putting your feet on the floor and starting the…
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“A problem never exists in isolation; it is surrounded by other problems in space and time. The more of the context of a problem that a scientist can comprehend, the greater are his chances of finding a truly adequate solution.”…
After completing all chapters of my book, I’m now heading into intense editing and creating a biomechanics map of systems resilience. I have been loving the writing journey so much. It has pushed me to new levels of stamina…
https://youtu.be/wMp5rtrcSzI Boundaries, anger and aggression reflect important nervous mechanisms that play a role in relational dynamics and emotional strength. The idea of anger & aggression is controversial. On the one hand, when we don’t have control of it, particularly…
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“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning…
AI is a Feedback system that feeds us back what we feed into it. It is one layer out from our experience, meaning that it uses the digital info, 1’s and 0’s- it receives from our symbolic expressions (words &…
As AI becomes increasingly more of an influence in many realms of life at higher speeds than expected – whether we are thinking loss of jobs and the ripple effects of that into the economy and world, or the…
Hello! Just wanted to give a quick update as I get into a busy week of moving back to the US and taking care of a few more things here! I recently had an incredible conversation with the founder of…
So much of what is tied to mental health is tied to the maturation process – the developmental journey of learning how to self-regulate, stay true to one’s own integrity, to know one holds value, and to integrate into…
“When we talk about the big bang or the fabric of space, what we are doing is not a continuation of the free and fantastic stories that humans have told nightly around campfires for hundreds of thousands of years….
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Because of how human brains develop, the only way for maturity to emerge is in the presence of maturity. Listen on Blubrry Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts I remember the first time I gave a…
How often do you plan for things to not go as planned? Using our mind to think about different plans and actions ahead of time in case of emergencies or negative scenarios is a powerful mental tool. It is for…
Brains mature in the presence of mature brains. Maturity is one of the most important, and complex, topics of our current time. Maturity is directly related to mental health, and mental health is at the core of all the…
Learning, adaptation and change are: Enfleshed Embedded Enacted Extended … within the mind-body system for learning. The current education paradigm has not caught up with this fact. What and how we teach children and young people about…
Long form content. We need it. Our brains need it. The next generation needs it. What do I mean by long form content? Books, audio books, long podcasts, in-depth interviews, as well as courses, workshops, seminars, training classes. Images are…
brainwaves and book-writing… First I want to send my appreciation to all of you who are sending me the most beautiful emails and insightful, intriguing questions related to my last newsletter and podcast episode! I will dedicate some time…
It’s Sleep Awareness Week, so I thought I’d share some information about the importance of sleep, dreams and circadian rhythms. Something I have found with many clients, and especially teenagers, is that they are not getting enough sleep. This…
I just sent out a monthly newsletter to email subscribers! If you’d like to receive these (which also include exclusive invites for subscribers, such as an upcoming online Q & A with me), make sure to subscribe using any…
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A quick episode that covers some insights gained over the course of my career in human communication and psychology, child development, teaching, and neuroscience. Highlights include the importance of: mindset, purpose and effective teachers anti-disciplinary thinking and teams…
I talk about challenging ourselves and self-regulating… sometimes I forget that social media is something that feeds us those feel-good hormones, and can keep us constantly trying to engage and get reactions from others, or compare ourselves. I forget…
“Increased struggle leads to increased structural change in the brain.” -Dr. Lara Boyd During a conversation yesterday with a few other beginner jiu jitsu students, someone said, ‘the way I’m learning is I keep failing and then noticing…
Good teachers are rare. They possess an ability to connect with students that is in and of itself a form of intelligence. It requires a high level of attunement to the unfolding processes, reactions, and feedback that is being…
Years ago, I directed programs for kids at the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University. What we understood from experience and research is that no child is born gifted or pre-determined for a specific trajectory. Passion, talent and goals…
“Science is about reading the world from a gradually widening point of view.” — Carlo Rovelli, world renowned quantum physicist A scientist’s mindset is open to questioning what it has learned, what it has been told. It is…
https://youtu.be/YAmCdYYPtYs I spent several hours yesterday (as I do almost every day) with people’s brainwaves and team meetings about self-regulation strategies. Decided to make a short video with some thoughts and themes emerging through book-writing and working with clients. …
As a continuation from a previous post about some favorite travels, I thought I’d share one of those stories… So after traveling on a tiny fishing boat with a couple of friends (where the roof fell off and we…
The moment I can sense the ‘aha’ from someone when they see a situation, themselves, or someone else with ‘new eyes’… that’s a moment I live for. When that person tells me later how that new way of seeing has…
I’m excited to continue to integrate the past couple of decades of my career experience in the field of neuroscience, mindset, and my extensive world travels and outdoor experiences into a way of contributing new perspectives and models for…
One of the most common brainwave profiles I’ve seen with clients over the years are related to anxiety. This is often correlated with very fast frequencies (high beta). (see video below) https://youtu.be/uFvyu_A20Yw A neurochemical that I think…
Sometimes there are no words or on-screen images capable of honoring what we experience. Sink into those spaces. #offscreen #behindthescenes #patience #resilience…
There is something about coffee shops for me… I love how they bring people together, I love when they are done well. This one had a cute book about making the best coffee at home (Chemex is my favorite at-home…
When we talk about the importance of coming together with others, who we surround ourselves with, and what we do when we come together matters. It’s not just about connecting and bonding. In fact, the bonding hormone oxytocin has been found…
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“One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone.” ― Shannon L. Alder Listen on Blubrry Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify How we distract ourselves…
“What is success? To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate the beauty; to…
Taking the day off computers and phone to head to the mountains for the day. Although I am still very immersed in technology, I try to look for inspiration to continue to build towards my vision of a lifestyle…
As I was preparing and editing my interview with Kelly Harris of Warriors Heart for my upcoming podcast episode, a theme emerged: ‘perceived ability to cope’. It’s a concept that is very similar to the idea of agency and…
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” ― Kahlil Gibran Just as in a physical injury, when we embark on a healing journey, we take into account the…
In my wilderness first responder training this past weekend, an important task during various emergency scenarios was to figure out the Mechanism of Injury (MOI). Understanding how a person got hurt was important for figuring out further steps for assessing…
As I began re-writing chapter 5 of my book, I wanted to share some highlights of a few studies. The neurobiology of affiliation – which is tied to interactive regulation – has 2 key components: Biobehavioral Synchrony…
“It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the…
A signal-to-noise ratio tells us about the level of signal power compared to the level of noise power. Signal refers to useful information – meaning frequencies and vibrations that are being transmitted that we ‘want’ to detect because…
The field of psychology and human behavior that emerged out of different schools (the three Viennese schools of psychotherapy, beginning with Freud, then Adler, then Frankl) reveals an evolution from what we can see as humans mature from self-serving…
One of my favorite ways to learn about people and the world is through stories. We take story-telling for granted in the fast-paced, visual-imagery dominated world of technology. Stories I’ve been listening to recently have really shown me how…
The word ‘expedition’ came out of my mouth the other day as I was explaining to a friend that I am attending wilderness first responder training. I didn’t even really know quite what the word meant, but as soon…
The way forward is found on a path through the wilderness of the head and heart—reason and emotion. Thinking, knowing, understanding. Laurence Gonzales To understand our ability to thrive, adapt, survive and flourish, a deeper of understanding of our…
“Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the…
“A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.” – Albert Einstein The idea of preparation is one of the key concepts I’m learning about in partner-based teaching, leadership and facilitation. … not just preparing to succeed but also…
“Never underestimate the empowering effect of human connection. All you need is that one person, who understands you completely, believes in you and makes you feel loved for what you are, to enable you – to unfold the miraculous…
There are neurophysiological effects from witnessing and experiencing events that violate systems embedded within us. These systems are designed to keep us safe and make us care deeply for others. Past events interact with our socio-neurobiology, and can get suppressed,…
“A change in purpose changes a system profoundly, even if every element and interconnection remains the same.” ― Donella H. Meadows Your Mind-Brain-Body is more powerful than you’ve been ‘taught’ to think. That was the key message…
Do you truly believe that growth is possible? That you have the ability to find new ways through whatever it is you’re going through? That one small shift of mindset is the first, critical starting point. Without that shift,…
Posted this earlier and took it down – but realizing I need to allow myself to put this out there no matter what because it’s what’s true to me and my heart… When we have a chance to create…
Thank you to everyone for the beautiful words of support and encouragement I just received from so many people… I was not expecting that! As you all know, I do my best to try to work with what life…
…there is a lot of trial and error involved as I make mistakes and then try to learn and evolve from them as much as I can. It’s not a linear process. It’s ups and downs, starts and stops. Putting…
Transitions have generally been pretty easy for me for some reason. Except this one. Normally when I move, I do it with the goal of settling there for a while. But due to various reasons (including not giving up on…
Humans are literally, neurophysiologically, ‘better together’ than alone Attuned, problem-solving teams, partnerships and family units optimize our individual and collective functioning. Affiliative neuroscience shows us that self-attunement, other-attunement and a common-higher purpose are key to optimizing our mental health,…
Have you ever had the experience of feeling like someone really ‘gets you’? This can take various forms – like being able to share what’s on our mind and the other person holding space for us to explain. It…
“The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.” – Ben Okri, poet and novelist One of my favorite things to do…
How we regulate ourselves and deal with social danger, rejection, status, comparison, the need for acceptance are tied to neurochemicals. These neurochemicals are part of who we are and drive many of our behaviors- including constantly seeking external…
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Danger – and how it is dealt with – is the central theme of attachment – and therefore human interaction. Who we turn to and who we have around us during times of uncertainty and threat affect our abilities for information processing and preparing and responding to future events.
The concept of how we regulate ourselves and with others, and how we deal with social danger, rejection, status, comparison, the need for acceptance, and how we diversify our abilities to navigate our neurochemicals are topics we cover in this Episode of the Mindset Neuroscience Podcast, where I interview Loretta Breuning of the Inner Mammal Institute.
In our interview, we explore:
-The neurochemicals associated with how it feels to have social support – and how this differs from social dominance
-The fluctuations of neurochemicals, feelings and behaviors tied to threat, rejection, and constantly seeking external rewards and short-term gratification
-Being more realistic about the ups and downs of all of our neurochemical states, rather than believing we should feel good all the time.
-The biological purposes to the fluctuations and varieties of states we experience and why it’s helpful for us to understand this so we can get better a-t making choices that are good for our mental and physical health
-The life-threatening feelings people experience when it comes to social rejection, and social comparison
-How our brain and body store information about threats, and how this can significantly influence our current reactions to people
-The idea of ‘dopamine droop’ and our constant urge to seek reward and avoid discomfort
“We have inherited a brain that compares itself to others to promote its survival. It creates has a sense of urgency about how it measures up. If you don’t know you are creating this feeling yourself, you think the world is doing it to you. You feel bitter, resentful, and victimized. Instead, you can accept that the people around you are mammals, and you are a mammal too.” -Loretta Breuning, Inner Mammal Institute
After spending a day with people’s brainwaves yesterday, I was about to wrap up for the evening and was overcome with the sense that it was time to put up another episode so I recorded another portion of one…
Thought I was figuring stuff out… realizing I have sooo much work still to do. Hoping that being near family for a couple months and helping out my mom will help me in my own process of healing as…
“The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” – Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms Don’t know about you.. but I feel the world needs more opportunities, programs and gatherings where our intention…
“The human voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, but it is the most difficult to play.” -Richard Strauss The vibrations of your voice affect the world around you. Every letter, every sound of your voice is…
“We spend our life monitoring our behavior as well as that of others, and our statistical brain constantly draws inferences about what it observes, literally “making up its mind” as it proceeds. Learning who we are is a statistical deduction…
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“Love is at once an affirmation and a transcendence of who we are.” ― Esther Perel “And what is true for human beings is true for every living thing: all organisms require alternating periods of growth and equilibrium. Any person…
German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer used the term the ‘hedgehog’s dilemma’ as a metaphor about the challenges of human intimacy. Although hedgehogs may seek to move closer to one another, they cannot avoid hurting each other with their protective spines….
“The truth of war is constantly being submerged. But it’s our responsibility to reach for ways to deeply understand these stories, these veterans, before their moral injuries harden into isolation and despair. “ – David Wood The truth of war…
“Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh* , The Miracle…
As much as we need to learn how to self-regulate, as mammals we also need safe connections with others in order to restore our systems. It’s part of our oxytocinergic, co-regulating genetic heritage. Every human relationship is therefore a…
“You possess a kind of inner force that seeks to guide you toward your Life’s Task – what you are meant to accomplish in the time that you have to live…” -Robert Greene, Mastery “In childhood this force was clear…
“Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together.” ― Anais Nin I’m never giving up on pursuing the vision that awoke me years ago. …
Resilient relationships – whether in friendships, intimate partnerships or families – are not about perfection or only positivity. The ruptures within ourselves and our relationships are precisely what our nervous system needs to build a repertoire of strategies that…
Our earliest experiences in social settings, including family systems, may include dynamics that lead to internal working models that negatively impact our potential. If the people around us don’t believe in us, or give us cues that we are too…
“Deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. And yet, most people have…
“Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as…
Unity and Individuality When our caregivers first gazed into our eyes and we gazed back at them, we experienced a surge of brain activity, soothing theta waves, opiates and feel-good endorphins. In adults, when there is a strong…
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“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” * ― Leo Tolstoy Listen on Blubrry Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts We are in the most interconnected period that humanity has ever experienced. The…
“The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.” ― Marcus Aurelius Our ability to access a new mindset is a key to our growth and evolution. Because life continues to present us with new challenges and unexpected…
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Learning is a gateway to power and freedom Learning increases our degrees of freedom by giving us new ways to move, communicate and adapt to challenges and capitalize on opportunities. Listen on Blubrry Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple…
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“Once again, the world seems to be less about objects than about interactive relationships.” ― Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics Studying human brains while a person is immobile and alone in an mri machine can only get us so…
“Willpower is more than just a metaphor. Self-control is a finite resource.” – Robert Sapolsky, Behave What internal rewards do you have for continuing to strive towards your goals, to create your best life? Book-writing has exposed me to a world…
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To update our algorithms and enhance our brain functioning, there is one key thing we can do: Intentionally add experiences into our weekly routine that engage our sensory-motor systems in ways that are completely unfamiliar to us.
That is the essence of my interview with Jason Knight, director of Alderleaf Wilderness College. In this interview, we discuss:
-Jason’s journey to becoming a wilderness expert and his desire to connect people more deeply with nature and the types of thinking that come with those experiences;
-How people’s mindsets get disrupted when they experience a learning environment that challenges what they are used to;
-How our awareness expands as we spend time in nature: we begin to see allies, tools and individuated beings;
-A truly embodied perspective of empathy: working with natural systems requires us to move out of our self-referential networks and expand into neural territories that recognize how another living organism can perceive the world differently than us;
-High-level pattern recognition: how get the best possible solution and sustainable way of achieving a goal by expanding the space-time horizon and creating maps to see multiple systems working together across long periods of time
The spectrum of human behavior we see as ranging from inspirational to irritating to horrific are tied to two key mechanisms Self-regulatory systems: neural and behavioral resources that we are NOT born with and must have attachment-based experiences in order…
As children, we all seek a secure base. The harbor we know we can return to and rely on, no matter how upset or distressed or emotionally messy we get. As children, it’s not our job to be a secure…
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In this episode, I explore:
-the difference between our autonomic and somatic nervous systems and why knowing the difference gives us power to change
-biomechanisms we use to protect or defend ourselves that are tied to our past and may not be helpful to us in our current situation (as I am learning, these can be hard habits to break)
-how we can experiment with new patterns using skeletal muscles to control our breath, voice, eyes, hands and body within our social interactions
-10 key mechanical adjustments we can make to move in this world in ways that optimize our functioning and sense of fulfillment
-how our hyper-focus on words & devices makes us lose touch with our bodies, with our environment and with all the non-verbal aspects of life
Growth mindset is more neurologically accurate than fixed mindset. A growth mindset reflects the idea that we can build and evolve our abilities and intelligence. A fixed mindset is the idea that we have ‘fixed’ amounts of intelligence and…
Anxious thinking is associated with fast brainwaves. The more relaxed you are, the slower your brainwave activity. In this video I show you how to slow your brainwaves so you can access a more relaxed state. I also go into:…
“Paradigm: the mindset out of which the system – its goals, structures, rules, delays and parameters – arises.” -Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems The idea of presenting one thing next to another in order to see both more clearly is…
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What is moral injury, and how can we use it as a path to cognitive flexibility, sense of purpose and forgiveness?
In this episode, we explore the following:
– what is moral injury
– what is morality and how it can be used to improve energy efficiency and resilience of the human species
– how forgiveness and flexibility help us activate highly sophisticated and evolved neural mechanisms
– that brain activations that are different in trauma compared with moral injury
– how the human species is an interconnected network of nodes that requires social signaling for trust and cooperation
The best way to get on track to fulfilling your life purpose is to know that there’s no ‘correct’ version of what fulfilling your life’s purpose looks like. Many people seem to believe that it looks like what a celebrity…
Psychic trauma, annihilation anxiety and moral injury reveal fears about how our life and existence is valued by others. Using the example of being ‘chased by a tiger’ to describe fear doesn’t resonate Something that has come to the forefront…
“The residues of the past and the content of the future tend to be formulated, constructed, and reconstructed in terms of that [traumatic] experience” (Dowling, 1986) Read Moral Injury Part 2: Psychic trauma and annihilation anxieties Read and listen…
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Attachment theory is not a ‘theory’.. it’s a part of our neurophysiological operating system Attachment is a way of seeking proximity to an attachment figure. It’s a biobehavioral adaptation that helps us regulate ourselves and explore new frontiers. This in…
Many of us don’t realize how many of our behaviors are automated. We need a certain amount of this automation to free up cognitive processing energy to learn new things, try new behaviors and deal adaptively with new situations. …
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Have you ever had the experience of feeling like someone really ‘gets you’? This can take various forms – like being able to share what’s on our mind and the other person holding space for us to explain. It…
What does it mean to react? An important aspect of the word reaction is ‘re’ – which means that it happens again. To re-act is to act again and again in a similar way. In the psychotherapy…
In this interview, we focus on why learning new ways of being, thinking and reacting can cause discomfort. I share my two ‘origin stories’ of how I got into the world of neuroplasticity and neuroscience research, and my discoveries of…
Have you had an argument recently, or an interaction with someone that didn’t go as you hoped it would?
What was your reaction in this situation? Was it anger, defensiveness, or shutting down?
Did you say what you truly wanted to say?
Did you hold back?
Or did you say something hurtful?
Is there something you feel about this situation that you can’t put your finger on why it bothers you so much? Or do you think you know why, but you don’t know how to express it to that person?
In this podcast episode, I go into
-brain-body mechanisms that lead to overreactions
-connecting the dots between your childhood and anxiety, stress, depression and other challenges you may be facing
-A process to help us be less reactive and increase our attentional control during difficult interactions
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Why do systems fall apart or become dysfunctional?
A system can be a family, relationship, community, business, organization, society. The human mind-brain-body is also a system.
One reason dysfunction can happen is related to hierarchy and ‘signal flow’.
Hierarchies exist throughout nature and throughout human society.
Hierarchies are best able to serve the system when there is efficient signal flow from subsystems to the higher levels and vice versa.
We can see dysfunction happen when the highest levels of a hierarchy are
-not serving the goals of the entire system
-have communication channels dominated by a specific subgroup/subsystem
-are blocking or suppressing efficient communication and signal flow from the subsystems
Optimal functioning of a system requires a state of signal flow where all members or nodes feel ‘understood’.
This experience of being understood is at the core of optimal system functioning within human systems. When we don’t feel understood, it means there is a block of signal flow.
This episode covers the idea of hierarchies and signal flow – and what happens when hierarchies don’t serve the goals of the entire system.
In upcoming articles, I’ll be bringing this concept back down to more personal and interpersonal levels.
Many of our patterns – whether we want to admit it or not – come from our childhood. It’s hard to get around this fact. This is because when we are young, our brain is specializing its algorithms and…
Something i see happen quite a bit in the mental health field is that a lot of people are seeking a quick fix and a way to alleviate their symptoms. This is completely understandable, and might be needed in…
Do you find yourself in a state of mental fog, or not being clear-minded, ‘out of it’? This is something that i hear a lot of people reporting issues with. In the brain maps that I do, i see…
Growth happens in increments and happens in ways that are often way below the surface
If our sense of success comes from a very specific outcome, then the only chance we have for that neurochemical reward is at the ‘finish line’ so to speak. That means we won’t get hits of it along the way, which can mean we are more likely to give up.
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In this podcast episode, I talk about something called ‘shifting the burden’. It’s about the topic of what we depend on ourselves for, and what we look to others to help us with. The balance of our dependence on ourselves and others – whether in adaptive maladaptive ways – is based on our first experiences with depending on someone.
Many of us simply don’t know how deeply emotional of a subject this is. It is one of our most primitive, primal CORE-to-the-CORE experiences of being human… a battle between wanting to be independent and self-sufficient, and yet also knowing that one of our deepest desires is to connect in authentic ways with others.
My reflection questions at the end of the episode are about your doubts, desires and dependencies – how they interplay on each other and how they’ve been formed over time – through your experiences with others.. and what they’ve doubted, desired and depended on in their own lives.
I hope you find something in this episode helpful.
Our families are complex adaptive systems. Our relationships are complex adaptive systems. A complex adaptive system is a system where the behavior and trajectories of the nodes/parts/subsystems/people are nonlinear and may not be predictable. This is because the interactions…
‘Can you fix my kid’s brain?’ asked a woman who ran into me as I was leaving one of my workshops. she was referring to her son’s strong emotional outbursts, especially with his family. And she was also referring to…
In brainwave patterns that correlate with the experience of anxiety and anxious thinking, we see a higher amount of a very fast brainwave frequency range called high beta (or hibeta, which is about 20-35 hz). Clients and patients…
There are certain patterns i see in brainwave profiles (that are obtained through quantitative EEG analysis) that are often linked with people who report challenges such as depression and anxiety One of those patterns is asymmetry. What…
What’s the difference between ‘normal’ and ‘natural’ behavior? As children, we don’t get to choose what our environment is or what kind of system we are a part of. Since we don’t get to choose, we must…
We sometimes get too caught up in words, ideas, opinions. These are all ‘concepts’… and they depend so much on our history and what we’ve learned. But the basic signals of human interaction that we use to express…
Self-directed neuroplasticity is one of the first topics that drew me in to study neuroscience. One of the most important aspects of it is ‘self-directed’. We can’t help that our brains get built through our experiences and relationships. …
We can’t change our reactions or behaviors if we don’t realize they are being driven by our mindset. We can’t change our mindset if we don’t realize we have one. A mindset is a ‘setting’ of our mind. It’s…
When we leave the womb, the first moment of feeling ‘disconnected’ from our place of safety is the loss of all-encompassing warmth. We emerge into a world with air and light and un-muffled sounds. Our main reassurance that we are…
https://youtu.be/zNWORt7vW3o Every mood, intention and internal state you experience transmits audible and visible signals to others – whether you know it or not. Brain imaging is interesting, but you don’t actually ever know what part of your brain is activating…
I just wanted to send you an update of what’s going on behind the scenes here… First – thank you to all of you for sending beautiful messages of understanding and encouragement. The insights I’ve had over the past…
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Normal is based on historical data. It’s based on what has happened the most often in the past. Our past ‘normal’ can make it easy to not question if there is more that’s possible in terms of wellbeing and a deeper sense of meaning for our life. But what we really, truly, deeply need to understand is that the ‘normal mode’ of consuming and doing the same combination of movements day after day without challenging our brain-body to higher and higher levels of creation and exploration is not NATURAL.
We are: COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS. Our NATURE is to adapt to ever-changing, increasingly difficult and complex situations that involve other complex systems so that our adaptive problem-solving faculties become more honed and finely tuned. Many of our behaviors and patterns are blocking us from tapping into our most natural abilities.
One of my favorite music artists of all time is a French singer named Francis Cabrel. Acoustic guitar* is to me one of the most soothing sounds and the French language does something to me 🙂 One of my favorite…
The most dangerous form of human interaction is shame. If some of your past experiences involve feeling shame, it’s quite possible that you do not have conscious awareness of where those feelings come from. This is because shame…
Season 2 Ep 5 Feb 7.mp3 [00:00:00] Hi, this is Stefanie Faye, and this is season two. Thanks for joining. Welcome to season two, Episode five, Happy 2021. In this episode and the following few episodes, we’re going to…
A mindset shift is a visceral, sensorimotor experience. What does ‘visceral’ mean? Viscera refers to the soft internal organs of the body, including the lungs, the heart, and the organs of the digestive, excretory, reproductive, and circulatory systems. …
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When we focus on trying to ‘fix’ dysregulation without acknowledging how it emerged, we are conveying a message that somehow the anxiety or overreaction just ‘appeared’ because of an imbalance in their brain and that distress, dysregulation and anxiety are…
Being trauma-informed is an act of science-based compassion. When we understand the neurobiological impacts of trauma, violence and what I call ‘sociobiological insults’ to our psychological safety – we naturally become more understanding of human pain. We need to discover…
“We don’t passively forget that something is scary. We must actively learn that it isn’t anymore.” – Stanford Neurology professor, Dr. Robert Sapolsky The day a young man I had been counseling told me that, for the first time…
As humans, we make ‘reasonable’ decisions based on the information we have. But we don’t have perfect or complete information. Nobel-prize winning economist Herbert Simon calls this Bounded Rationality. And even the information we do have is filtered through our experience-dependent predictions and…
Freud called it repetition compulsion. Psychotherapists call it ‘trauma retention’. It’s a tendency we have as humans to ‘re-enact’ a situation from our past – something that is unresolved within us, like a puzzle. We re-enact it in…
“You can’t navigate well in an interconnected, feedback-dominated world unless you take your eyes off short-term events and look for long-term behavior and structure” – Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems Systems change, bounded rationality, burden-shifting, systems traps, intergenerational transmission and…
Season 2 Ep1 Systems [00:00:23] Imagine that there are 20 desks in a classroom and nothing else. Nobody else, no person. And you close the door to this classroom and nothing is going to enter or leave it. You leave…
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The formation of self-identity and group identity through the lens of hyper-coherent networks, key features of what makes a system resilient. (remember – your brain, your relationships and human society are all systems).
To help systems become more flexible and innovative, we need to understand the mechanisms of change.
A mindset or paradigm shift is one of those mechanisms.
A level higher than that: being able to rise above paradigms altogether*.
This is what can free our mind to experiment with perspectives that are guided by our values – rather than only confirming a narrow field of vision based on our past, which is largely driven by our tribal identity.
What seems to be emerging in our understanding of the nature of intelligence is that it is related to collective networks of ‘nodes’ that share information, more than a single cell or node. Here’s a perspective I also see…
Hello! Just wanted to update you that season 2 of the podcast will continue in 2021. I hope you’ve had a chance to enjoy Episodes 1-4! I’ll be doing some webcasts with the Institute for Organizational Mindfulness in 2021 (where…
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The human species has some pretty spectacular systems built into us to achieve mental, emotional and physiological states that most of us are not even really aware of.
We also have systems and features within us that make us very vulnerable to being influenced and ‘programmed’ into behavior that is not reflective of our most evolved neural circuitry.
Technology is interfering with and manipulating those systems.
And the more we get to know how technology is interfering with those systems, the more we can get control over our internal state rather than let the tech companies (who do not have the best interests of the human brain and nervous system in mind) hack into our vulnerabilities.
How can we understand our brain in a way that helps us be more patient with the people in our lives? One way is to engage what is called ‘the high road’ of our brain -the more sophisticated, and generally…
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What do a viral video and a stampede of animals have in common? It’s a mechanism that is also related to ‘self-fulfilling prophecies’, self-beliefs, anxiety and negative thinking in general. It has to do with something called ‘positive feedback’….
One of the most powerful ways we can convey our internal state and our intentions to another is through our eyes. Specifically the muscles around our eyes. When we are comfortable and happy, this relaxes the orbital muscles,…
Our Mind-Brain-Body is a Signal Seeking System We all want to understand how to better navigate our world. The more ‘information’ we get, the more data our brain has to work with. This gives the mind-brain-body system…
YOUR PRESENCE MATTERS. I can see it in your eyes. I can see it in how you move and walk. Sometimes you’re ‘here’. Sometimes you’re not. I know when you ‘come back’ into the present…
https://youtu.be/0IbuB3xsgxU What does your hand grasp every time you want to ‘feel better’? Is it automatic or are you choosing? Think about various forms of addiction, whether it’s drinking, drugs, gambling, online shopping, eating, smoking, video games, social…
Are you ‘in your head’ a lot? In that constant, incessant thinking, chatter, noise? Isn’t it exhausting? And then… what do we do? We often try to escape our thoughts by turning to something else – our phone,…
I just finished an interview with a fantastic podcaster, Kirstin Franklin, for her Girl on Fire podcast. We talked about how to ‘get out of our heads’ and find release from anxious thinking, as well as self-regulation and Super-Regulation. I’ll…
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One of the most complex adaptive systems we know of is the brain*. When we are trying to understand a complex system, one of the most important things for us to think about is its function. …
“Stop Resisting” goes against the physiological make-up of the human nervous system Here’s why: 1) if a person says “stop resisting” or “stop fighting”, it means whoever they’re saying it to is already in a sympathetic nervous system threat…
https://youtu.be/uwYY8xVX6uw There are different types of danger that we deal with. “tissue-damage danger” and “non-tissue damage” or symbolic danger. In order to not have our immune systems go into overdrive and deplete our resources, we need to know the…
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This episode focuses on the idea of systems thinking, and how we can use this ‘lens’ or paradigm as a way of expanding our thinking so we can see new ideas for solving challenges in our life and in…
“One thing about human intelligence is absolutely certain: it is malleable, meaning it can be changed through exposure to new information or even by looking at what you already know in a new way. There is no limit to what…
Welcome to the Growth Mindset Neuroscience Video Series! In this video series, we’re going to look at the neuroscience of how our mindsets get formed, and how we can inspire others to adopt a growth mindset and sense of purpose….
“Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.” – Bessel Van Der Kolk (this is me many years ago in Ejura,…
When uncertainty and insecurity increase, these are signs that things we have turned to for stability are ending. This may seem like everything is crashing and collapsing around us. . . . When a point comes where all previous possibilities…
Your brain builds circuitry based on what you ‘feed it’. This can be healthy or unhealthy. Your brain isn’t filtering out ‘bad’ input, or judging whether something is going to help you grow or keep you stuck. It just…
The human brain depends on experiences to build its most evolved and dynamic circuitry. New experiences push the brain to light up new networks, rather than repeat old ones. The brain thrives on being challenged. It is designed to grow…
In my guest interview with Andrea Samadi, we discuss: Why applying growth mindset proving to be so difficult—whether in the classroom, workplace, or even in the field of athletics How the brain re-wires itself using myelin and why patterned…
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No two people ever experience reality in the same way: our senses and neural architecture are built up by our own lifetime of unique experiences. Our brain and senses are constantly narrowing down our world. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing: if…
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Most growth mindset interventions don’t work because they focus on: changing ‘other people’s’ attitudes rather than on the mindset of the person who is teaching or leading catchphrases & posters rather than relationship & trust specific results, like improving standardized test scores* *this is literally the…
https://youtu.be/Ix8o9EiDD3E Humans are the most experience-dependent species that has ever existed on the planet. Our brain depends on its experiences to build itself. Our genes lay a blueprint, but they actually only contain a microscopic amount of…
“Everyone needs to hear this. Period.” -Mikkel, YouTube subscriber “One of the best TedX talks I have ever seen, practical & intellectual, there are even references at the end. Thank you Stefanie!” -Munir Rashid, Leadership Facilitator & Executive…
“We don’t passively forget that something is scary. We actively learn that it isn’t anymore.” -Robert Sapolsky, Stanford neurobiologist and primatologist https://youtu.be/oRP-HLyyJkU This video is definitely an over-simplification of the concept of stress and fear… it’s not meant to…
“In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them.” – Bessel Van Der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score A couple of years ago, I spoke…
There are different types of danger that we deal with. “tissue-damage danger” and “non-tissue damage” or symbolic danger. In order to not have our immune systems go into overdrive and deplete our resources, we need to know the difference….
“In order for there to be courage, there needs to be risk. It doesn’t take courage to open up the refrigerator.” – Seth Godin Can we teach people how to be brave? Can we learn how to be brave?…
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In order to teach growth mindset, we need to be sure it’s coming from an authentic place. It seems that much growth mindset teaching is focused on changing the attitudes of others’, rather than looking at how we internalize and…
We are the most nurture and experience-dependent species that has ever existed on the planet. This means that our brains are not just hardwired from birth. They are literally, physically, neurologically, moment-by-moment, formed and built by our experiences. …
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Have you ever had a misunderstanding over text? Maybe you texted someone and they didn’t reply right away.. or their answer left you feeling rejected or frustrated? Do you know why you feel the urge to put an exclamation mark…
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Earlier studies on fixed vs growth mindset reveal how we build bias and stereotypes. The original wording used by Carol Dweck and colleagues before they popularized ‘fixed versus growth mindset’ was ‘entity’ versus ‘incremental’ mindsets. Dweck’s research (included the idea…
Humans are the only species that can imagine a reality for themselves that does not yet exist – and then create new circuits to achieve that future reality. We can create a future version of us that is more ideal…
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Sound may be the most important sense we have for learning as well as for detecting others emotions. The human ability to hear ‘just noticeable differences’ is significantly more powerful than what our eyes are able to detect…
In part 2 of my interview with Maria, we do a deep dive on the four essential elements of growth mindset development. We also discuss the 3-step process we can follow daily to develop a growth mindset at any age….
In this first part of our discussion, we explore my learning journey and why I decided to study psychology and neuroscience. We also talk about how experience-dependent learning helps us adopt a growth mindset. Later, we discuss why even identical…
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“Feelings can annoy or delight us, but that is not what they are for […]. Feelings are for life regulation, providers of information concerning basic homeostasis or the social condition of our lives.” -Antonio Damasio, The Strange Order of…
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Summary: In this episode, we look at how neuroscience can help us explain: why so many people react to life unconsciously (not ‘on purpose’). Understanding this helps us get to the root of our issues, instead of repeating our reactions…
Fear is necessary for keeping us alive. Unfortunately, because humans live in a very metaphorical and symbol-based reality (using ‘sophisticated grunting’ as language, and words as symbols), our fear system can sometimes make us act as though our life is…
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There’s a lot of ‘old science’ out there. Stuff we humans used to believe that has been de-bunked. Things like… ‘humans are more complex than other species, which means we have more genes.’ Before the Human Genome Project was completed…
The Mindset Neuroscience 2019 Reading List for Enhancing Human Potential These books and articles changed me. Everything listed here has had a profound effect on my understanding of the world and my role in it. These authors, researchers and scientists…
Are we better at ‘hearing emotions’ than seeing them? With society’s current amount of time spent looking at screens, we are using our eyes to a degree that is out of proportion from our other senses. The other issue is…
Understanding Neuroplasticity is Today’s Moral Imperative: 5 MUST-Read Books for 2019 We are the most nurture-dependent species that has ever existed on the planet. This means that our brains are not just hardwired from birth. They are literally, physically,…
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“It’s not merely that we can’t be loving or creative when we’re scared; we can’t heal.” -Stephen Porges In order for us to access our most evolved neural and behavioral resources, we must be in a state of physiological…
Did you know that if you condensed all of the matter of the universe, it would fill less than a teacup? The deeper into matter we go, the more space we find. That means even you. Your body is…
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Listen on iTunes Old, outdated science said that the human brain basically stopped developing in childhood and there wasn’t much we could do to change it. What we got was what we got. But we now know that that…
“Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.” – Bessel Van Der Kolk (this is me many years ago in Ejura,…
How do you help someone learn and perform at their highest level? First they must be WILLING to learn. How does that happen? It starts with trust and connection. Find out the science behind why humans MUST feel a…
Had a great interview with Your Brand Marketing expert then Ben Baker! We talked about some of the problems we see in education that holds learners back from understanding their true potential. We also discussed some of the danger…
Comment about this episode from Better Leaders Better Schools: One of my favorite podcasts so far! So much wisdom and like you said it is comforting that she affirmed and confirmed things I was already thinking and implementing! I…
As amazing as it is in encouraging strong learning habits and perseverance… yes, there is a dark side of growth mindset. Many growth mindset interventions lose sight of the need for safety (both psychological and physiological). In order for certain…
Growth mindset is a concept. A concept is something abstract, like ‘passion or perseverance’. You can’t ‘teach passion’ because a person has to experinece it themselves to know it. It’s the same with ‘growth mindset’. But there is something you…
This article has been revised and is now at this link
“In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them.” – Bessel Van Der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score I recently spoke at a symposium in…
Download this poster as a pdf and make sure to share it!! 1. Ask not what to do differently, but how to see differently ALL human behavior starts with how we ‘see’ (perceive) a person or situation. If we want…
Comment about this episode from Better Leaders Better Schools: One of my favorite podcasts so far! So much wisdom and like you said it is comforting that she affirmed and confirmed things I was already thinking and implementing! I…
This podcast episode has been updated! Go to this link to listen: stefaniefaye.com/podcast/importance-of-sound-mnt-006
Although childhood trauma is shown to negatively impact brain development, learning, memory and behaviors in ways similar to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), if you look up ‘PTSD’, you’ll find many articles that only talk about it as a ‘disorder…
“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” – Pablo Picasso If you’ve looked at the Growth Mindset Goal Setting Booklet, you’ve seen that ‘sparking self-transcendent purpose’ is the final step in cultivating resilient,…
Psychological safety’ is a biological requirement for learning and creativity. Period. The Podcast Episode for this topic is here: Episode 2: Psychological Safety, Resilience & the Vagus Nerve. Learning environments that emphasize psychological safety and relationship build better brains. Simply…
This Episode has been updated. Go here to listen to the newest version of Episode 2
This episode has been edited – the new version can be found here.
I’m excited to share this updated 2018 Growth Mindset Goal Setting Booklet! I’ve added new pages, descriptions, and research articles! I also added the most important step to building growth mindset: Learn and Talk About Neuroplasticity. Why should we?…
PLEASE NOTE: THE LINK TO THIS PODCAST HAS CHANGED! GO TO THIS PAGE TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD THE AUDIO! ……………………………………….. Growth mindset is at risk of being yet another hyped up buzz word that gets killed off by bad explanations,…
This podcast episode has moved! The original episode has been edited into two separate episodes: Episode 3: The neurobiology of trauma and psychological safety (will be re-posted May 1, 2018) Episode 8: How to avoid the divisiveness and damage…
Click on image above or on this link to view the Neuroscience for Empowered Mindsets Slide Presentation
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