Welcome back to Season 11 of the "Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning" podcast. Our host, Andrea Samadi, an author and an educator, introduces a compelling 18-week series devoted to self-leadership, drawing on insights from Grant Bosnick's book on the subject. The series, framed through the lens of neuroscience and psychology, aims to empower listeners onto individual pathways of self-discovery. By building stronger and more resilient versions of oneself, we anticipate a transformation in well-being, achievement, productivity, and success. We lay the foundation of this self-discovery journey by looking within – nurturing self-awareness. It is a revisiting of ancient wisdom, as we echo Aristotle's words, "Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."

In conversation with Grant Bosnick, we ponder upon multiple facets of neuroscience and self-leadership. We hope this series evokes new revelations about our neural circuits, catalyzed by the application of neuroscience embedded in each lesson. Being self-aware, acknowledging and overcoming obstacles, and utilizing the forces that propel us, can transform our performance towards our goals in 2024. To fully grasp these concepts and apply them meaningfully, we highly recommend taking your own leadership self-assessment. Equipped with a nuanced understanding of personal strengths and areas of improvement, we hope to inspire a fresh, empowered approach to thinking and leading in 2024. Concluding with a powerful sentiment from Peter Drucker, "Being a self-leader is to serve as chief, captain, president, or CEO of one's own life"—we welcome you to join us in this journey of self-discovery and self-leadership, underpinned by the magnificent world of neuroscience.

On today's episode #323 we will begin our Self-Leadership Series based on Grant ‘Upbeat’ Bosnick’s “Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership: A Bite Size Approach Using Psychology and Neuroscience” that we first dove into with our interview on EP #321.[i] During this interview, I told Grant that his book contained a thorough and deep overview of the Neuroscience of Self-Leadership, that I felt like each of the 18 chapters could be covered in 18 weeks, so I decided to set our season theme to the Neuroscience of Self-Leadership that will be our focus until June of this year.

This series will help each of us on our pathways of self-discovery….to get to know ourselves on a deeper level as we build stronger more resilient versions of ourselves in 2024. Since we know that “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom” Aristotle

This is where our podcast began back on episode #2[ii] on Self-Awareness: Know Thyself where we covered 6 Steps for Becoming More Self-Aware back in July of 2019.

Remember:

Mastering others is strength; mastering oneself is true power” - Lao Tsu

While speaking with Grant Bosnick on our recent interview, I let him know that I took his Self-Assessment to leadership that I’ve linked in the resource section below, and that when I was given my results, I scored very low on some areas where I think I might have answered the questions thinking “I’ve got this” (in my head) until I actually read his book, and realized there was much more to some of these areas than I thought. So, for the next 18 weeks, we are going to work through the science in Grant’s book, and see if we can together, apply the research he’s uncovered in his timeless self-leadership principles, to learn something NEW with ourselves, building stronger, more improved 2.0 versions of ourselves with whatever it is we are working on this year.

I’m hoping that the science reveals something NEW that you might not have thought of in the past, like we mentioned on PART 4[iii] of our Review of The Silva Method, Dr. Andrew Huberman’s research taught us that “when we see something that’s truly creative, it reveals something to us about the natural world and about how our brains work. It must reveal something that surprises us” for it to be truly creative.

Dr. Huberman explains that “something pops out at us…we see something, feel, or experience something...this reveals something about our brain/our auditory system, creating NEW meaning for us.” AND “when we see, hear, feel or experience something that’s truly creative, the way our neural circuits function is changed. When our neural circuits are changed simply by what comes into our eyes, ears, or the way we experience our feelings, there’s a release of chemicals like dopamine that make us feel surprised, delighted or excited in anticipation that we will see it again.” (Dr. Huberman)

This is my goal with EACH of these next episodes, covered over the next 18 weeks, with the goal that the application of the neuroscience in each lesson, will change us in some way, create new meaning, giving us NEW AHA Moments, that we can use to accelerate our results in 2024.

Before we do this, I highly encourage you to take your own Leadership Self-Assessment so you can see which chapters of Grant’s book come out for you as GREEN or important to focus on now, which chapters are ORANGE and not as important, and which ones for you, came out as RED, and low priority.

Whatever concepts we learn with each chapter, I hope that the science gives you something NEW to help you to THINK DIFFERENTLY in 2024, and move you to greater heights this year. I’m currently in the middle of studying Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich book, with Paul Martinelli who I’ve be studying this book every year with since 2019, and he is reminding us on a daily basis that in order to change our results, we must learn to think differently. We opened up our review of our 6 PART Series on Think and Grow Rich back in 2022[iv] with a quote from author Grant Cardone that said:

 “In order to get to the next level of whatever you’re doing, you must think and act in a wildly different way than you previously have been. You cannot get to the next phase of a project without a grander mind-set, more acceleration, and extra horsepower.” Grant Cardone, author of the 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure[v]

This reminds me of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, the World’s #1 Leadership Thinker, who wrote the foreword to Grant’s book, of his best-selling book, What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There.[vi]  I hope this 18-week series will help us to all THINK and ACT differently in 2024, so we can all break through to new heights this year.

In this 18-week Series, we will cover:

✔ Powerful tactics from this NEW award-winning book that illustrates how change and achievement are truly achievable both from internal ('inside out') and external ('outside in') perspectives.

✔Listeners will grasp the immense power of self-leadership and its transformative effect on personal growth and success.

✔Explore practical strategies for habit formation and the impact of a self-assessment system.

✔Gain insights from Grant's expert advice on maintaining a balance between strengths and weaknesses while chasing after your goals

✔Embark on an intellectual journey that has the power to elevate personal achievement and self-awareness to uncharted levels.

For today’s episode #323, we will be looking at Chapter 2, “Using Neuroscience to Level Up Your 2024 Goals”

✔ What is Kurt Lewin’s “Field Theory” and how can we use it to improve our performance towards our goals in 2024?

✔ 3 STEPS for Applying Field Theory into our Daily Life to Reach Heightened Levels of Achievement in 2024.

DID YOU KNOW: there is a force that drives us towards our goals?

On page 20 of Grant’s book, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership, he mentions that “according to Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory[vii], a goal is embedded not only in the individual but also exists within the field around the individual. Between us and the target, there is a “drive force” or “drive field” and as we get closer to the target (or the perception of being closer), the strength of the force increases.”

When I read this part of the book, I almost fell off my chair. I’m always looking for ways to connect science to age-old principles, and Grant explained something we’ve been looking at the past year. 

We know that our energy field matters whether by the thoughts we are thinking, or the actions that we are taking. We covered this in depth with Dr. Konstantin Korotkov’s EP 307[viii] where we bridged the spiritual world with rigorous scientific method.

So how can we improve our performance towards a goal, using German-born American social psychologist, Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory[ix] that Grant Boswick wrote about in his chapter on Goals?

IMAGE: Hand drawn from Kurt Lewin’s Force Field Change Explanation[x]

I’ve got 3 STEPS to do this, that go along with an image I hand drew in the show notes.

STEP 1 RECOGNIZE THE NEGATIVE FORCES THAT PUSH US AWAY FROM OUR GOALS: Know that whenever we are moving towards a goal, there will be a force that pushes us down from our current state of attaining our goal, (a negative force) and there’s also a force that helps us to change (a positive force). Identify the forces that are pushing you down as you move towards your desired end result.

In our schools: it could be limited time to study for a test.

In our sports environments: it could be our competition, or whoever is at the top of the league.

Finally, in our workplaces: it could be a competitor charging lower pricing, and taking all the business in your area.

STEP 2 RECOGNIZE THE POSITIVE FORCES THAT PUSH US TOWARDS OUR GOALS