Summary

Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, with appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Psychiatry and Radiology. She received an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award for her research on emotion in the brain, and the 2018 APS Mentor Award For Lifetime Achievement.

In this episode, we discuss her new book, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, a book on how the brain constructs emotions — one that could revolutionize psychology, health care, the legal system, and our understanding of the human mind. (more…)

The Lady with The Hairy Legs – Challenge Conditioned Perspectives & Be Authentic

In this episode I wish to share with you an experience I had that, yes, believe it all not involved a lady with hairy legs. There are two thoughts that I hope you take away from this talk and they are why we must challenge our perspectives and be authentic.

The first is that it’s good to be authentic. We are so pretentious and consumed by pleasing and externally created definition of the Self. I think women and men both succumb to these pressures just in differing ways. The expectations we place on ourselves rob us of our authentic beauty. There is an attachment to an expectation that such behaviors will raise our level of self-worth yet when it doesn’t this causes dissatisfaction in life.

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Summary

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

Dr. Tasha Eurich is an organizational psychologist, researcher, and New York Times bestselling author. With a PhD in organizational psychology, she is also the founder of The Eurich Group, where she’s helped thousands of leaders and teams improve their effectiveness through greater self-awareness.

In her second book, Insight, Tasha delves into the connection between our self-awareness—what she calls the meta-skill of the twenty-first century—and our performance and success, both in and out of the workplace. Fortune calls it a “sprawling exploration of the psychic frailty that leads to self-delusion and self-aggrandizement, and—importantly—a compassionate, helpful guide for avoiding that path (or reversing it).” This forms the basis of our discussion in my interview with Tasha Eurich. (more…)

Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity By Charles Duhigg

“The choices that are most powerful in generating motivation, in other words, are decisions that do two things: They convince us we’re in control and they endow our actions with larger meaning.”

In Charles Duhigg’s previous book, The Power of Habit, he researched into the reasons why we do what we do through the study of habits. It is brilliantly insightful and provides a framework to better understanding habits and how to form habits in life that are more purposeful.

You can review my full review here episode 313. 

I believe this book has set the benchmark for his work including his newest book Smarter Faster Better. His approach this time was to research the universal concepts that can help us improve our effectiveness, and in the process becoming smarter, faster and better and everything we do. (more…)

Dare to Disagree – Challenge Thought, Beliefs & Behaviours

“For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.” Margaret Heffernan 

Are we all “yes” men? Do we agree with almost everything? The news we watch, the stories we hear from friends, the new direction our company is taking, the images we see, the lives we perceive people live, the politicians, our thoughts, conditioned perspectives, and beliefs. What happens if we challenged ourselves more to disagree? (more…)

Summary

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Self-Importance, Expression, & Creating Positive Change

“A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small parcel.” John Ruskin

Most of us believe so strongly in our self-importance, including me, that we often become disillusioned by it. We can find ourselves thinking, saying and doing all that is not really necessary nor important as it comes to living a life with passion and purpose.

We try to create a sense of self-importance by validating our beliefs in behaviors through external recognition. This can pull us away from living with integrity and congruently with we value and our why.

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Summary

This is a replay of an interview I did with Dana Lamon. We discuss skills on listening and speaking, how to find inspiration and motivation, finding passion, experimenting with life and why taking a chance on yourself is a good idea.

You can view the full show notes here.  (more…)

Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong by Eric Barker

“Fundamentally, your brain doesn’t like or want to believe in randomness. It always believes you have some control, even when you don’t. It may be delusional but we’re happier deluded. And delusion ironically makes us perform better on average.” Eric Barker

Eric Barker is an interesting dude. Why? It’s because of his fascination and curiosity for learning and teaching others how to create and live an awesome life. He asks questions that relate to success that many of us don’t. He seeks to find insight to the flip side of everything we’ve been told and everything most of us believe about what determines success. (more…)

Andon – “Pull the Cord.”

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).” Mark Twain

Andon is a Japanese manufacturing term referring to a system to notify management, maintenance, and other workers of a quality or process problem.

It is a quality control system pioneered by Toyota. I heard about this term in Charles Duhigg’s newest book – Faster, Smarter, Better. (more…)