Written By Ellen Weber, PhD and Robyn McMaster, PhD
Higher Education and Brain Based Benefits
Challenges of Change
Renewal is to the university community today what Renaissance was to the Middle Ages. Both encompass a resurgence of learning. Both tap into more potential from the human brain. To reconfigure university teaching for a rebirth [...]
When you rev up mental equipment daily to either sink or swim, you discover how creativity and curiosity will trump criticism and intimidation. How then can you experience mental power in settings where no brain is left behind?
One friend and fellow leader Dave Caiazza, put it this way:
Work against the dangerous twins of jealousy and [...]
On each new day your brain offers equipment to lose or win. The choice is yours, and brain activity can now be observed to show how winning or losing selections work, in spite of external conditions.
So why do some people pick winning equipment while others settle for the loser’s pick where the chips go down?
Here [...]
How’d you sleep last night? Reasons for sleeplessness may differ yet strategies for successful sleep often bear remarkable similarities. Before you hire a sleep specialist though, why not try tactics that calm the brain and come without side effects of medicine.
You’ll likely sleep better and enhance REM if you:
Remain upbeat and use sleepless spaces to [...]
Broken systems all around us, offer unprecedented opportunities to learn and lead transformational innovations for a new era. Science shows how even a small band of like minded birds can create a revolution and sway the direction of an entire flock. Why then do some people cling to tiny places on sinking ships?
If you find [...]
New York burns while Albany fiddles. News of political infighting, stalemates, accusations and posturing flood us daily, while opportunities for greatness fade for NY. A closer look, though, shows bureaucracy working against ethical brainpower. How so?
Neuro discoveries uncover organizational problems and possibilities.
1. Secondary schools and universities in crisis continue to downsize rather than reconfigure [...]
Have you experienced mental power that bubbles over in circles where no brain is left behind? Interactive sessions where creativity trumps criticism, and diversity’s the handmaiden of dignity and innovative virtue?
If so, would you agree that brilliant solutions tend to flow from pools just outside of the prevailing thought – where:
1. No Brain Left [...]
Take advantage of recent neuro-discoveries and that illusive growth you’re looking for tends to follow far faster. Have you seen it happen?
Brainpower-tools create new landscapes -from mental resources immune to recession:
With a little help from you – an amygdala offers calm under pressure, even when old socks buck change or when few folks tend to [...]
Read vision statements that affirm secondary and university renewal, and you’ll spot innovative learning opportunities for all. Observe classes in these same schools, though, and practical results appear far less impressive. Have you noticed that a school’s intent, and its classroom practices too often differ when it comes to renewed learning and assessment opportunities for [...]
It’s now believed that you have both angel and devil brain parts and these two forces stay in consistent battle for your actions. Do you agree? Researchers looked at activity in the brain for healthy and unhealthy food choices and what they found may surprise you.
Angel brain parts help people to consider abstract decisions such [...]
Have you every compared the differences between brains honed to disagree well, and those who generate cynicism when they differ. Contrast the difference between an olive branch offered to enemies, and a weapon poised for war? Cynicis criticized President Obama’s reach of peace to Chavez, while peacemakers saw an olive branch like a US charm’s [...]
In Rochester, New York, where I work – we’re ripe for a new run at old runways, the kind that Captain Sully grew ready for before a crisis changed his flight. Been there?
That touchdown where carriers cruise into place, brimming over in lessons learned from former mistakes – and refueled by sheer curiosity. That landing [...]
Conflict grows perilous for those who lack brainpowered tools, yet disagreement’s add linchpins of growth for those equipped with sharp mental tactics.
Watch warfare where you work and you’ll likely see 1 of 10 instigators:
1. Angry folks show few skills to tame their amygdala.
2. Stubborn people often lack mental ability to let it go.
3. Fearful [...]
Spot any gap where you live or work, regardless of how small, and you may well be staring into the eyeballs of your own destiny. How so?
Even though I taught university classes and facilitated top leaders around the world for many years, it still surprises me how few people ever discuss the proven wonder of [...]
Well known savant, Daniel Tammet who easily recites 22,514 numbers in order, also reminds readers in Wide Sky, that he struggled to do simple sums in math class. If that failure to fit math methods favored in school speaks to you, you likely find yourself among those of us who are most stressed at tax [...]
It’s no surprise that intelligences grow with use. Yet few people use their potential in any area. Take ethical development in the brain, for instance.
Or imagine fitness or movement as a way to raise intelligence. Ever set out to pass your personal best in a day to see how your brain stretches to move you [...]
Ever notice, the phone rings with new demands when you’re most vulnerable, just days after you let a family member down, and avoided a neighbor who’d been looking for friendship. The caller’s neither friend nor family but lets you know that everybody else in your club signed up to volunteer for Pancake Saturday and they [...]
Slavery works, cried dominant voices, while for centuries brilliant minority voices, with finer insights at times, could have led a richer way. Had they been engaged, silenced voices could have broken chains that still bind most of us today. Did you know human brains build new neuron pathways with every jaded act, ruts for more [...]
If you believe violent videos don’t create violent cultures, or constant terrorism talk doesn’t chill human brains, you’d likely also deny that fear creates frantic financial failures too. Fact is, it’s doing just that.
In reality, financial experts increasingly warn us that fear can drain an economy, and it makes sense if you consider the mental [...]
Only after you hit unethical walls raised by scorn from the cynic, do you value freedom flights toward its opposite – the curious mind. I’m speaking of that chronically negative person, who expresses disdain for innovative ideas, where stressed brains rely on habit and distrust reigns.
For Russel Lynes, cynicism’s the pseudo-intellectual’s substitute for intelligence. For [...]
