Neuroscientist Caroline Leaf on What's Possible for the Mind

Michael Gervais (0:09)

All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast by Michael Gervais. And the idea behind these conversations is to sit down with people who are on the path of mastery, who have a deep understanding and are deeply engaged in the trenches of their craft.

I wanna take a minute here to announce a really exciting event that we have coming up. As you continue to navigate the challenges and opportunities of 2024, I wanna pose a question. What are you doing right now to be great with stress? How are you working with stress on your pursuit towards your most important ambitions and goals? And I just wanna get right to the heart of the key elements, one in particular, for what it takes to excel in today's high heat, high stakes world. Because stress is not the problem that we think it is. Stress is a synonym for change. And our ability to be agile with change, that is the real opportunity at hand. So if you're wanting to unlock extraordinary results and sustainable performance in your life, it's not about avoiding or reducing stress. And as simple as that sounds, it's very tricky to do, but it is about fundamentally changing your relationship with it.

And that's why I'm so thrilled to invite you to a special event, it's a free virtual event that we're offering and it's called The Power of Embracing Stress. It's on Wednesday, March 6th at 2 p.m. Pacific. So to sign up, just head over to findingmastery.com/training, whether it's advancing in your career or improving your health or cultivating stronger relationships, I think a new approach to stress can be one of the most powerful unlocks for you in your life. So join us for this free virtual training, The Power of Embracing Stress, on Wednesday, March 6th, at 2 p.m. Pacific. Go to findingmastery.com/training to sign up once again, that's findingmastery.com/training. And I'm really excited to see you there.

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Subscription required. Price varies based on product and subscription plan. And in this conversation, we connect with Dr. Caroline Leaf. She's a cognitive neuroscientist. And over the past few podcast conversations, we've been on this theme about learning, and we're going to extend it here. So Dr. Leaf studies and researches the mind-brain connection, and it's the connection between the two that is elusive, and it's difficult to research and study that. It's difficult enough to try to understand what the brain is, and the community of brain and neuroscientists is still wrestling with what exactly the brain does, as well as the invisible nature of the mind. So we get into it about the mind and the brain and the connection between those two, and how she's been able to develop tools and processes to help people become better in their thinking and their behaviors. And it's that increasing thoughts, the quality of thoughts, and increasing the quality of behavior that ultimately impacts the output, which is performance.

So great conversation. We talk about the difference between mind and brain. We talk about why it mattered for her early on that people believed in her, and how that was and has been an accelerant to her growth and her gifts.

And we also talk about how to increase awareness of thoughts. And that's not new to anyone on this podcast, the science and the art of mindfulness, and how and why that's so important. So there will be some nice applied takeaways on mindfulness here.