The Balanced Life

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The Balanced Life
You Can Change!
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Topsy Turvy Living
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The Balanced Life

• Creating an Environment
• Creating a Lifestyle
• Creating Connections
• Managing Time

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Building a Better Brain

• Experiences, thoughts, actions, and emotions
  actually change the structure of our brains.

Users Guide to the Brain, p. 17.
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Its About Freedom

• By viewing the brain as a muscle that can be
  weakened or strengthened, we can exercise our
  ability to determine who we become.

Users Guide to the Brain, p. 17.
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You Can Change!

• Attention is a mental state that allows us,
  moment by moment to choose and sculpt how our
  ever-changing minds will work

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You Can Change!

• To choose who we will be the next moment in a
  very real sense. These choices are left embossed
  in physical form on our material selves.

William James
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You Can Change!

• Genes and environment interact to continually
  change the brain, from the time we are conceived
  until the moment we die

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You Can Change!

• And we, the ownersto the extent that our
  genes allow itcan actively shape the way our
  brains develop throughout the course of our
  lives.

Ratey, p. 17
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You Can Change!

• With the ability to shape our brains comes
  the ability to shape our destiny.

Jeffrey Schwartz, Mind and Brain
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You Can Change!

• We used to think you were born with all the
  brain cells you were ever going to have, and all
  you could do was lose them

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You Can Change!

• Well, that is wrong. You do make new nerve
  cells.

Guy McKann, MD. Mind/Brain Institute, Johns
Hopkins
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You Can Change!

• It has become obvious that we can actually
  change our brainsThe possibilities for change
  are bounded only by our imagination

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You Can Change!

• our willingness to assess our brains
  accurately through self-reflection, and our
  commitment to do some hard work.

Ratey, p. 356
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You Can Change!

• Genes do not make a man violent, or fat, or a
  leader. Genes merely make proteinsGenes and the
  environment work together to shape our brains,
  and we can manage them both if we want to

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You Can Change!

• It may be harder for people with certain
  genes or surroundings, but harder is a long way
  from predetermination.

Ratey, p. 34
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You Can Change!

• A major conceptual shift in neuroscience has
  been wrought by the realization that brain
  function is modulated by numerous chemicals in
  addition to classical neurotransmitters

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You Can Change!

• Many of these informational substances are
  neuropeptidesTheir numbers presently exceeds 50,
  and most, if not all, alter behavior and mood
  states.

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You Can Change!

• Neuropeptides and their receptors thus join
  the brain, glands, and immune system in a network
  of communication

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You Can Change!

• between brain and body probably representing
  the biochemical substrate of emotion.

Molecules of Emotion, p. 179-81.
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You Can Change!

• Emotions, moods, and states such as
  compassion are trainable mental states.

Richard Davidson, U. of Wisconsin, Dept. of
Neuroscience
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You Can Change!

• We must remember that genetics is not
  destiny
• Genes set boundaries for human behavior, but
  with these boundaries

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You Can Change!

• there is immense room for variation
  determined by experience, personal choice, and
  even chance...

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You Can Change!

• The point to remember is that genes can be
  active or inactive and that everything we do
  affects the activity of our genes.

Ratey, p. 32
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Its About Freedom

• It has become obvious that we can actually
  change our brains. By altering the external
  environment of our surroundings

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Its About Freedom

• or the internal environment of our bodies,
  we can take better advantage of our strengths and
  amend our weaknesses...

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Its About Freedom

• The possibilities for change are bounded
  only by our imagination, our willingness to
  assess our brains accurately through
  self-reflection, and our commitment to do some
  hard work

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One necessary precursor to change, though, is
often a change in attitude.
Users Guide to the Brain, p. 356
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Its About Choice

• The Ben Hooper Story

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Your Internal Environment
The Fixed versus Growth mindset
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Your Internal Environment

• Fixed Mind Sets

• Believe that traits such as intelligence,
  ability, personality, and competence are inborn
  and basically unchangeable.

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Your Internal Environment

• Fixed Mind Sets

• Believe that if you have to work at improving
  it means you are lacking in basic intelligence or
  innate ability.

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Mind Set Matters

• Fixed mind sets view themselves as

• Smart or dumb
• Strong or weak
• Competent or incompetent
• Winners or losers
• Good or bad

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Mind Set Matters

• Fixed results

Challenges Obstacles Effort Criticism Others
success

• Avoid them
• Give up easily
• Fruitless
• Ignore
• Threatening

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Mind Set Matters

• Fixed mindset traits

• Negative
• Self-pity
• Anxious
• Depressed
• Unforgiving

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Mind Set Matters
I dont divide the world into the weak and the
strong, or the successes and failuresI divide
the world into the learners and non-learners.

• Benjamin Barber, sociologist quoted in
  Mindset, p. 16

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Your Internal Environment

• Growth Mind Sets

• Believe that although people may differ in basic
  aptitudes, interests, and temperament, everyone
  can change, grow, and improve.

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Your Internal Environment

• Growth Mind Sets

• Have a passion for stretching and growing, even
  when they are making mistakes and facing
  challenges.

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Mind Set Matters

• Growth results

Challenges Obstacles Effort Criticism Others
success

• Embrace them
• Persist
• Path to mastery
• Learn from it
• Inspiring

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Mind Set Matters

• Growth mindset traits

• Positive
• Self-forgetful
• Trusting
• Resilient
• Forgiving

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The Learning Mind Set

• What we learn to do, we learn by doing.
  Excellence, then, is not an actbut a habit.

Aristotle
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Finding New Freedom

• We are not prisoners of our genes or our
  environment. Poverty, alienation, drugs, hormonal
  imbalances, and depression dont dictate failure

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Finding New Freedom

• Wealth, acceptance, vegetables, and exercise
  dont guarantee success

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Finding New Freedom

• Our own free will may be the strongest force
  directing the development of our brains, and
  therefore our lives.

A Users Guide to the Brain, p. 17
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