Posts under ‘serotonin’

Did Tiger Woods refuse questions yesterday for the same reason others run from poisonous darts? Fact is, questions alter brainpower up or down.
Ask one question, and stir brain chemicals for innovation. Ask another and  short-circuit electrical wiring for mental blackouts. We rewire our collective brainpower through questions that stir curiosity or stomp out intelligence and [...]

Hello friends and colleagues!

Please join me over at wonderfully motivating community led by Huffington Post writer, Gail Goodwin, on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at InspireMeToday.com!
On Monday, the 18th I’ll share invited insights from my experiences in an exclusive 500-word article – Act Like a Genius – on the best things learned in life full [...]

The human brain comes with unique equipment to build and sustain innovative cultures, where design leads to profitability. How so?
1.  Kindle and design an idea. Just as the iPod started with an innovative  idea,  Steve Jobs and others continue to design Apple products that revolutionize communication. Fast Company celebrated the last decade’s 14 biggest such [...]

Canadian Alanna Mitchell, this year’s winner of the Atkinson Fellowship in public policy named brains as the secret to better schools. Not all agree.
Mitchell recalled a Minister of Education who asked a neuroscientist: “The brain? What does the brain have to do with education?” In my renewal work across many countries I heard similar [...]

Government Funds Promote Failing Secondary Schools
People say stimulus money simply creates new layers of bureaucracy that prolong broken secondary school programs. My question is: How will the White House Campaign to Promote Science and Math Education support teens to climb new mental  peaks?  Will successful schools proliferate through fast growing charters?
President [...]

Ever notice how Thanksgiving and Christmas tend to bring out blues in some and blessings in others? Or how lonely people see vast spaces between themselves and others – even at festive  holiday tables?
First glances  show people blessed with close family and  friends feel blessed over holidays while those alone feel abandoned. Not so. Loneliness [...]

Brain based skills transform online communities in much the same way an afternoon sun shores up  outdoor adventures.
What wonderful strengths enrich any circle with communication and a sense of well being at its center. While many people admit that it’s electric to belong to such an online  group, far fewer spot the brain’s ability to [...]

BLOKES and BABES for Workplace Well-being:
A customer crowd of 40 was predicted, then revised to 200. It all raised the specter of swarms jammed into the little Greedy Spoon Diner.
Determined to open the first day of his massive new pizza oven celebration,  Sam Serotonin, spotted the mob, hired an additional  crew of ten intelligent [...]

Great news from GE leaders today,  according to WSJ’s Paul Glader.  Any organization willing to change and grow, after a fall,  also holds potential to create a prototype for global change and growth.  Both qualities urgently needed in the broader business community. Bravo!
Let’s get behind GE’s  initiative and begin to move in new directions as [...]

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 [...]

Sam Serotonin is a bit like watching a miracle drug at work, when situations blow up and he creates calm.   At times called a molecule of happiness, serotonin is far more than that in any workplace when even one person engages its power.
Sam’s mental chemicals often add focus and higher problem solving skills [...]

Long before our cortisol gal – let’s call her Carol Cortisol, arrives at work, she’s fed up and already well into anxiety. She fears taking any risks herself at work, and lambastes others who seek adventure when her down moods crank up her intolerance.
It doesn’t take much for Carol’s brain to stir up chemical [...]

Heaven or Havoc?

Which of these characters work with or in you?

Serotonin Sam:

“Feelin’ good – hey guys you’re welcome to share, anytime.”

Cortisol Carol
“Touch my stuff and you die!”

Plasticity Patty:
“Glad to know I can still nail this new knack at any age.”

Amygdala Arnie:
“They keep changing the freakin’ formulas so I it [...]

What makes MITA renewal so different from other top leadership and learning improvement models?

Thanks to Dr. Robyn McMaster’s masterful handiwork with cameras and talented online solutions, we’re able to carry on the MITA renewal conversation I’d been looking forward to for some time. Hope you’ll jump in to share your renewal stories, so we can [...]

Daily you see snippets of courage from leaders you admire – through questions asked and stories shared. Courage to embrace mental confidence, and face danger bravely,  remains the last virtue on center stage after you sacrifice who you are now, to embrace who you can become. Have you seen it?
Special thanks for this [...]

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 [...]

Few people refuse tangible offerings for higher brainpower, yet far fewer see themselves building brainpower through serotonin taps given. You?
Check out common serotonin brain builders below and then add one or two to your circle in the coming week. Do stop back to tell us brainpower benefits you noticed.
1. To a golfer, a serotonin [...]

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 [...]