Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning

<p>Welcome back to Season 13 of the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast. In this episode, join Andrea Samadi as we delve into practical neuroscience applications for self-leadership in 2025. Discover how to balance various aspects of life through insights from Grant "Upbeat" Bosnick's book, 'Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership.'</p> <p>We explore strategies from four key chapters, focusing on leveraging neuroscience to level up your goals, the inspiration behind motivation, the benefits of mindfulness, and the art of achieving flow states. Learn actionable steps for overcoming obstacles and using positive forces to drive personal growth.</p> <p>Whether you're implementing new habits or seeking motivation, this episode serves as a guide to harnessing the full potential of your mind and achieving greater heights.</p> <p></p> <p>Welcome back to SEASON 13 of <em>The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast</em>, where we connect the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning and emotional intelligence training for improved well-being, achievement, productivity and results—using what I saw as the missing link (since we weren’t taught this when we were growing up in school), the application of practical neuroscience. I’m Andrea Samadi, an author, and an educator with a passion for learning and launched this podcast 6 years ago with the goal of bringing ALL the leading experts together (in one place) to help us to APPLY this research in our daily lives.</p> <p>Now, we are well into 2025, and if you are listening today, I want to congratulate you. Not everyone chooses to do the work that is needed for self-improvement. It’s something I’m dedicated to working on each year, and like you, those who tune in each week, implementing the ideas we write down in our notebooks, and even the ones we highlight in yellow, this is the hardest work in the room. I just want to recognize you for showing up here, and tuning in to grab some ideas, do this difficult work, and take the ideas that you learn from the research, and put them into action.</p> <p>Like you, I am doing this as well. We interviewed Kristen Holmes, the VP of Performance Science from Whoop.com back in May 2021, on EP134<a href='#_edn1'>[i]</a> when I had first started using the wearable device to measure my sleep, strain and daily recovery. She told me something I already knew, and that was that my sleep needed work. She said it much sterner than this, but I heard it, loud and clear, especially since my brain scan from Amen Clinics, that we reviewed on EP 84<a href='#_edn2'>[ii]</a> came back and showed that I was sleep deprived. Changing behaviors, habits and daily routines, and changing the trajectory of our health is all possible, but actually sustaining the change—this is what I’m looking for. This is why I am doing these podcast episodes, and sharing what I’m learning along the way. It took me 4 years to finally improve my sleep, but to do this, I had to sacrifice something else important to me, and that was my early morning workouts. I’m sure if you are listening, you would understand and know exactly what I am saying here. While making improvements with one area of our life, we tend to do this at the expense of another area. I’m determined to prove that we can have it all, and hopefully, at the end of this review, we can all find a way towards improving the balance in the important areas of our lives.</p> <p>REMEMBER: “Mastering others is strength; mastering oneself is true power” - Lao Tsu</p> <p></p> <p>Now wouldn’t it be great to have a tool (like a map) that tells us what is important to focus on each year, based on what we say is important to us in our work or personal lives?</p> <p>Now sleep is not on the map we are covering today, as we will review the 19 chapters from Grant Bosnick’s book, but I would put sleep right at the top of the list, along with the Top Health Staples that we covered back on a bonus EP we did in 2022<a href='#_edn3'>[iii]</a> where we first covered the importance of daily exercise, good quality sleep, eating a healthy diet, understanding how to balance our gut-brain axis, how to listen to our hunger cues with intermittent fasting, and the importance of stress reduction (that I think we could cover more in depth this year).</p> <p></p> <p>((If you took the leadership self-assessment<a href='#_edn4'>[iv]</a> last year, go back and take it again, and see if any of the areas have changed for you.))</p> <p> NEW ASSESSMENT LINK WILL BE HERE-Stay tuned.</p> <p></p> <p>And now we will begin PART 1 of our 4-PART review, to sum up last year, 2024, and our entire year studying one book, Grant Bosnick’s “Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership: A Bite Size Approach Using Psychology and Neuroscience” that we first dove into with our interview on EP #321<a href='#_edn5'>[v]</a> the end of January 2024. The goal was that each week, we focused on learning something new, (from Grant’s book) tied to the most current neuroscience research, that builds off the prior week, to help take us to greater heights this year. It honestly shocked me that this series took the entire year.</p> <p>Today we will review chapters 2-5 (the first chapter was an introduction to the book).</p> <p>((On today's EPISODE #355 PART 1 of our review of Grant Bosnick’s Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership, we will cover)):</p> <p>✔ EP 323 Chapter 2<a href='#_edn6'>[vi]</a> “Using Neuroscience to Level Up Your Goals”</p> <p>✔ EP 324 Chapter 3<a href='#_edn7'>[vii]</a> “The Neuroscience of Inspiration”</p> <p>✔ EP 325 Chapter 4<a href='#_edn8'>[viii]</a> “The Neuroscience of Mindfulness”</p> <p>✔ EP 326 Chapter 5<a href='#_edn9'>[ix]</a> “The Neuroscience of Flow”</p> <p>We will go through each of the 19 chapters, and cover the action steps in this review.</p> EP 323 Chapter 2<a href='#_edn10'>[x]</a> “Using Neuroscience to Level Up Your Goals” <p></p> <p>What I loved the most about this chapter on goals, was learning about Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory that says “there is a force that drives us towards our goals.” (Chapter 2 on goals). The idea is that we learn to use this force to push us towards whatever it is that we want.</p> <p>Here’s a REVIEW of 3 steps to implement Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory to push us towards our goals this year.</p> <p>STEP 1 RECOGNIZE THE NEGATIVE FORCES THAT PUSH US AWAY FROM OUR GOALS: Know that whenever we are moving towards a goal, there will be a force that pushes us down from our current state of attaining that goal, (a negative force) and there’s also a force that helps us to change (a positive force). Identify the forces that are pushing you down as you move towards your desired end result.</p> <p>In our schools: it could be limited time to study for a test. (as a negative force).</p> <p>In our sports environments: it could be our competition, or whoever is at the top of the league.</p> <p>Finally, in our workplaces: it could be a competitor charging lower pricing, and taking all the business in your area.</p> <p>STEP 2 RECOGNIZE THE POSITIVE FORCES THAT PUSH US TOWARDS OUR GOALS: Recognize that just as there is a negative force pushing us down, there are also positive forces that pushes us up, and can assist us to change. It’s this force pushing us up that Grant talks about in his chapter on goals. He says that “the closer we get to our target (or perception of being closer to the target) the strength of the force increases.” (Page 20, Grant Bosnick, Tailored Approaches to Leadership).</p> <p>STEP 3 FIND THE MOMENTUM THAT TAKES YOU TO A NEW LEVEL OF PERFORMANCE:  </p> <p>It’s here in the diagram where I drew a RED arrow, showing a person moving from their current state, leveling up to a new, heightened level of performance, when there are MORE positive forces pushing us up, than negative pushing us down.</p> <p>BEFORE we can get to our new heightened level of performance, we must overcome the forces against whatever it is we are moving towards, (like by overcoming our competition) and create as many positive forces to help us to move towards our NEW end result.</p> <p>Revisiting this concept this year, I suggest we all create a plan for how we will overcome our resistances, while building up positive forces for change (like through study, identifying ways to improve our mental and physical health so we can use these forces to push up against the negatives, or from understanding our “why” so this internal force drives us forward when times are difficult.     </p> <p>Another thought here, is to find ways to increase our capacity to handle stress. I recommend listening to EP 228<a href='#_edn11'>[xi]</a> where we reviewed “HRV (heart rate variability) The Most Important Biomarker for Tracking Health, Recovery and Resilience” as this episode gives examples of how to build more capacity to handle these day to day negative forces, and create healthy ways to push us towards our goals.         </p> <p><a href='https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/insights-from-season-11-of-the-neuroscience-meets-sel-podcast/'>REVISIT THIS EPISODE TO REVIEW THIS CONCEPT IN DEPTH </a></p> EP 324 Chapter 3<a href='#_edn12'>[xii]</a> “The Neuroscience of Inspiration” <p></p> <p>This chapter on inspiration and motivation came up as a high level of importance for me last year, and I’m always looking to deepen my understanding on where I find inspiration from, and why, with the idea that “what we find inspiring (people or things) produces oxytocin (that facilitates trust)in the brain while also producing dopamine the neurotransmitter that’s associated with motivation and reward.” There’s a lot at play when we find what motivates and inspires us day to day.</p> <p>PUTTING THE NEUROSCIENCE OF INSPIRATION INTO PRACTICE:</p> <ol> WRITE: </ol> <p>Write a list of:</p> <ul> Who inspires you, and why? Do you feel trust with this person that could be a performance multiplier? Think about this. Why, or why not? What inspires you, a