Wake Up Eager Workforce 
Episode 129 Transcript

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In this episode of the Wake Up Eager Workforce podcast, host Suzie Price dives into the cutting-edge neuroscience behind high-performance leadership. Joined by Carissa Collazo and Dr. Ron Bonnstetter from the Mind Science Center, they explore how brain scans, emotional regulation, and self-awareness can radically improve decision-making and stress management.

Through engaging discussion and real-world examples, Suzie, Carissa, and Dr. Ron unpack how leaders can literally see their brain in action, and retrain it to respond with clarity rather than chaos. From building mental resilience to becoming the CEO of your own brain, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help leaders at every level transform from reactive to intentional.

Whether you're leading a team or simply aiming to lead yourself better, this conversation will help you train your brain and elevate your game.

Read the transcript for Episode 129 below to discover how science-backed coaching can help you master your mindset and lead with purpose.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Suzie: today we're exploring how brain imaging along with our science backed assessments and personalized mindset coaching are coming together to help professionals quiet the noise manage stress and make clear decisions we're going to look at how all this works whether you're leading a team a company or just trying to lead yourself better this conversation is going to give you practical insights on how to train your brain transform your game and become the CEO of your own brain so that we can all be the wake up eager leader that we're meant to be and live the wake up eager lives that we want to live can't wait to share it with you Michael

[00:00:40] Intro: welcome to the wake up Eager Workforce podcast a show designed for leaders trainers and consultants who are for employee selection and professional development each episode is packed full with insider tips best practices expert interviews and inspiration please welcome the host who is helping leaders trainers and consultants everywhere Suzie Price

[00:01:06] Suzie: welcome to the wake up Eager Workforce podcast where we help leaders build a wake up eager life and high commitment low drama wake up eager workforce this episode is sponsored by my company Priceless Professional Development and I'm your host Suzie Price in today's episode we're diving into the neuroscience of leadership with two brilliant minds Carissa Colazzo and Doctor Ron Bonstetter from the Mind Science Center out of Scottsdale Arizona this is episode No. 1 29 of the Wake up Eager Workforce podcast the title is Train Your Brain Transform Your Game The Neuroscience of wake up Eager Leadership you can get the show notes and links to everything we talk about today at Priceless professional.com forward slash train your brain priceless professional dot com forward slash train your brain and make sure that's all one word lowercase so here's what we're gonna talk about today we're exploring a groundbreaking approach to personal growth and emotional mastery and there's a powerful combination it's the TTI assessments that you all are so familiar with and that I use everyday EEG brain imaging and customized coaching from the Mind Science Center and it's literally helping people see how their brains respond to stress and helping them retrain their brain to respond better so you we're going to talk about and you'll learn about how brain scans reveal emotional patterns and help Taylor coaching coaching why emotional regulation is essential for confident clear decision making and the power of self awareness self regulation and reflection in creating lasting behavioral change this episode is a must listen for leaders ready to shift from reactive to intentional from burnout to balance I'm gonna give you a quick overview of the background of our two speakers today they're both from TTI Performance Systems which is TTI Success Insights which is my partner company first is Carissa Colazzo Ms she is a leader in the crossroads of neuroscience and organizational behavior she is using cognitive science to improve workplace dynamics and personal development and of course using it through TTI Success Insights she specializes in decision making emotional intelligence and team cohesion and she applies this cutting edge neuroscience that we're going to talk about today to enhance organizational outcomes she is also a mentor and advocate for integrating brain science into everyday business practices and aiming to boost well being and performance in the workplace and she lives in Arizona which is where the mind Science Center is and that of course the mind Science Center is in Scottsdale she enjoys hiking and baking in her free time and Ron Bonstetter he is a PhD and he's certified in the assessments and he's also an Emeritus professor of secondary science uh from the university of Nebraska senior vice president of research and development at TTI Success Insights and the executive director of the mind Science Center he was the first recipient of the National Senior Outstanding Science Educator of the Year Award he's he's won some interesting award and has spoken all over the world 17 different countries he talks about his EEG research that's a brain science let's see if I can tell you what EEG stands for it's electroencephalogram so I know I didn't say that exactly right even though I've got the phonetics in front of me but he has received patents make create gotten two patents through his research and he has two more pending and has numerous peer reviewed articles and publications he's also been honored by another first person science award during the annual conference of the International Society of neurofeedback and research so that's pretty cool cause that's right in this field of what we're talking about today neuroscience and in his spare time he is currently pursuing a certification in clinical musical therapy using Native American style flutes and singing bowls to help others so we have two interesting and informative people today and we have a very interesting topic let's go to it now all right Doctor Ron and Carissa it's so great to have you here thank you for taking the time to share with us today

[00:05:26] Carissa: of course thank you for having us

[00:05:28] Suzie: I'm glad you're here we're talking today about becoming the CEO of your brain and what we're gonna do is kick off with you telling us about the Mind Science Center and tell us about the three steps that you take executives through um I've got the the short version of it see your brain train your brain and change your life so we want to hear more about that we want to hear more about your center we want to hear some examples about what's happening over there on the great work you're doing and then lastly we'll as we talk about this talk a little bit about how the emotional component plays a part is probably threaded throughout so tell us a little bit about what you're doing

[00:06:05] Carissa: absolutely so over at the Mind Science Center right now we're offering a program where the goal is to essentially increase awareness of your stressors what triggers you what kind of effect does it have on you we want the clients to be able to clear their mind quickly and be able to calm your body and focus your thoughts so the whole idea is to kind of get more of an influence over your mindset and your brain states throughout the day so the first thing that a client would do with us is take a series of TTI assessments so we have them take a TriMetrix HD we have them take a stress quotient so we get an idea of what's stressing them throughout the day or currently in their lives we have them take an emotional quotient so they get an idea of what their level of self awareness is are they able to self regulate very well so it's all about gaining insights for the client and then also for us and then after the client takes those assessments then they meet with their mindset coach to talk about what their brain states are like on a day to day basis so we're asking questions like do you experience a number of emotional highs and lows throughout the day or you relatively steady um when you do recognize stress in yourself what are you typically doing to cope with it if anything do you recognize that it's happening to you so it's to give us an understanding of how we're then going to coach this person through the different training practices that will implement with them then the last component of that first step is to come into the TCI Brain Lab in Scottsdale and get an EEG brain scan done so we actually help the client see their own brain so we take them through a series of exercises where we analyze their brain data and see what is the brain doing when this person is just at rest what is their brain doing when they're asked to concentrate on an activity what is their brain doing when we ask them to try to rest and relax so we get an understanding of where they're at before they go through the coaching and then the client is always very excited because it's sort of rare to get to see what your brain is doing when you're asked to do different things and you're under different stimuli so that's a really fun part is just to see your brain get a baseline get an understanding of kind of how you operate through your day to day life

[00:08:16] Suzie: just ask about the see your brain it's also you know the assessment is kind of them seeing their brain but it's not the same thing as having a and I don't know if you use neural nets or how you check the brain scan but whatever that they see their brain kind of the end result the assessment and then they actually can look on a screen so it's a screen that shows where their brain is lighting up and not lighting up is that what it's doing yes

[00:08:39] Carissa: so we do use our neural net and we attach it to the head and we get to see brain images to see what what's kicking up for them during different activities or when they're under different stimuli so we get to see what their brain is reacting towards is it really negative is it really positive is it something where they try to rest and relax but their brain isn't relaxing you know they can't center or calm their thoughts so yes it's a really comprehensive experience because you get your assessment results and of course you can identify with your results you can say yeah that's me but then adding on top of it with the brain imaging and they say wow that's what my brain is doing when I'm under stress or that's what my brain is doing when I'm you know in this specific scenario or environment so it's really rewarding to get to see where you're at before you go into the coaching

[00:09:30] Suzie: how long is the brain scan is it 30 minutes or is it an hour I'm just curious like yeah so the brain scan appointment itself

[00:09:36] Carissa: probably lasts about two hours the actual scanning itself probably lasts about 30 minutes we have five or six different exercises that we take the client through so we get those different touch points like I said concentration at rest baseline and then if they have any influence or ability to already center their mind or clear their thoughts and do you often find

[00:09:58] Suzie: or do they find that they said they clear their thoughts really well or they say they concentrate and then they can see on the brain scan maybe not doing that quite as much yeah

[00:10:09] Carissa: that is what we see sometimes yeah it's interesting cause everybody's so different everybody's internal experiences is different and what we notice is that most people don't really have those neural pathways carved in their brains to actually clear their minds what people notice is actually how busy our brains truly are when you sit and try to clear your thoughts immediately you're gonna start running through you know the list in your brain you're gonna try and sit there and say I'm not gonna think of anything or I'm just gonna clear and center right now but then your brain just immediately starts ping ponging around filling it with more thoughts because that's what you're so used to it's the same as when you would like go to the gym for example if you have never lifted weights you can't go pick up the heaviest weights easily so with the brain if you've never focused on training your brain the clear thoughts or to focus it doesn't really have a lot to rely on in order to do that on command and that's what we're seeking to do with the program

[00:11:08] Suzie: all right we'll keep going okay so step one is see your brain we got a good starter how it get kicks off and I love the idea that you're tying the assessments with it and the brain with it and we need a test we need a test to see where we are a big fitness nut and I just did a big dexascan I could see my v 0 2 max and you know I could it's like okay here's where I am I didn't know where I was and we need it with the assessment so this is like added superpower that you're bringing right that's amazing absolutely that's amazing okay so now what are we doing when we're now we've seen the results what happens with the second step train your brain yes

[00:11:44] Carissa: so that one is kind of training your mind to build in those neural networks that we just focused on so like I said the brain typically doesn't really have an awareness or an ability to do that if you haven't gone through some kind of coaching or training so the mindset coach will help bring these neural entrainment practices on board with the client and a lot of them are focused on things like progressive muscle relaxation so for example you're gonna notice stress in your body probably before you notice it in your brain so building an awareness of how you're experiencing those different emotional states for example I went through the program myself when we were just piloting and researching and when I was getting coached I realized that all of my tension is in my shoulders I'm basically carrying my shoulders in my ears unless I consciously relax and that's where I would feel the release and that's then what helps tell the brain we're gonna relax now so if you just try to focus on the brain first and say oh I'm gonna center my thoughts but you're not relaxing your body it's probably not gonna work so those are the types of things that we're coaching on

[00:12:50] Suzie: that would require some awareness of your body and paying attention how you're feeling I guess too I guess it's building all of that

[00:12:56] Carissa: exactly so the coaching it's it's kind of two fold where you're building the awareness first that's what you have to do and then we have these different techniques and practices that are customized to the person they're very individualized so that they can then have some tools on board to lean on to then calm themselves focus their thoughts or really help hone their attention in on something we all know what it feels like to be really stressed you've got 80 different things you want to complete but you can't really focus on any one of them very well because the others are continually pulling on your brain so we have techniques in place where the person can learn how to truly dial it and focus on command and so it's weekly coaching about one hour with the mindset coach the client gets to say hey this is what I'm struggling with or this is what seems to be working for me the client would implement these practices multiple times every day and if they're consistent we hope to see pretty positive results where they are training their brain to be able to focus and center when they want to

[00:13:56] Suzie: in training your brain to take a different path it takes a lot of repetition right a lot of repetition specific focus right I'm no expert at all but I do know learning and I know that you got to hear it a bunch of different ways a bunch of different times to change patterns lifelong patterns from childhood and what we saw who are our role models how successful are people in actually doing it I guess they're pretty committed if they signed up for this program

[00:14:23] Carissa: so we see that when people are really focused and they want to see success they're gonna be committed and the folks who are the most committed are going to have the most results it's the same with any other way you're training your body or you know deciding to pursue a goal you're consistent you're going to be more successful but it does take a lot of repetition and the techniques that we have on board you know they're customized to the person cause what works for one person isn't gonna work for another and so that's one part of the coaching is you know you might try to implement a practice and you come back and say hey I tried this every single day and I just it's not working for me and then the coach will customize it or maybe pivot to something else that will then help them so the whole idea is to make sure it's something that the client feels like they can lean into and apply to their lives I think it's important for them to be able to implement it because if it feels too difficult for their schedule or for whatever they're experiencing they're not going to have the consistency they want because it feels like a barrier so that's not to say that there aren't frustrating moments when you learn to do anything it can be hard so these techniques and practices sometimes feel difficult at the beginning but the more you do them the easier they get oh

[00:15:29] Suzie: an old adage we used to say and probably still relevant I think is train to ingrain yeah yeah so yeah ingrain a habit and this is that too and what's another example you talked about relax the body what's another exercise that you use that is meaningful to participants yeah

[00:15:48] Carissa: a bunch of different exercises that we have that are rooted in coordinated and rhythmic breathing patterns the breath really controls a lot about what's happening in the body and the brain so we have some practices that we again tailor to different people but focusing on the breath and being able to to use it intentionally is another technique that we have on board for our clients

[00:16:09] Suzie: and is it that most people are trying to with their mindset is it most of the objective on how to handle stress or is that always kind of the start point because stress hijacks our brain is that kind of where we're going with this or most people who are struggling it's because their pathways are all clogged up with attention probably not literally but they can't think clearly right what would you say how could you say it in your educated verbage and not mine

[00:16:37] Carissa: no I mean that's essentially it I would say the overall goal is to be able to recognize when you're in an emotionally elevated state so when you're emotionally elevated it can be from anger it can be from stress need her be when you're really overexcited any of those emotionally elevated states that you get into and then you might make impulsive decisions you might say something that you later wish you didn't say it's those kinds of things or an emotional state that causes you to be really spun up for a long period of time and then it impacts you throughout the day so we say stress a lot because that's what most people identify with but and it can be anything like sitting in a board meeting and somebody says something that surprises you and then you're angry about it for three hours because you have no way to grab that emotion and arrest it halt it and then manage it in a more healthy way

[00:17:26] Suzie: it's interesting so lately I've noticed this we actually have somebody that's all doing segments on our show now too about emotional well being and just the idea of really accepting the fact that there are emotions in everything we do and in every decision and if somehow we're trying to act like they don't they don't play a part I mean the world is so much more accepting now than they were even 10 years ago but you know that emotions are in the mix so you gotta figure out how to manage them and understand your own or you're gonna get hijacked and exactly yes I have

[00:18:01] Carissa: right and it's difficult because often times that emotion is going to grab you and take you in a certain direction before you even realize that's happening so that's part of the coaching process is to recognize what it feels like in the body so that way you can train your brain to manage it we're not asking you to stuff your emotions down and not deal with them we're just asking for a recognition and then a management practice that helps you have just more steady emotional experiences throughout the day and you can make some more sound decisions depending on what it is so that's the overall goal

[00:18:34] Suzie: that's awesome and what do you say to the executives who say you know I don't have a problem with emotions yeah

[00:18:39] Carissa: that's a tough one I think the biggest thing again coming back to the awareness piece because that's somebody who's choosing to ignore probably rather than step into the mindset management piece so through the conversations we would have with them on the front end it would be okay well what causes you stress because sometimes we don't feel like stress is an emotion it feels a little bit more like an experience so you might say oh what frustrates you or what stresses you rather than how do you feel about this certain thing for people who don't like to talk about feelings we might not craft it that way we'll kind of take them in the in a more productivity route so that they can relate to it a little bit better

[00:19:14] Suzie: I love that it's called Mind Science Center and that it's all about feelings not really it's not just about feelings but it kind of is in a way and so it allows us to understand that we can learn to own our feelings manage our feelings they don't have to hijack us

[00:19:31] Carissa: that's exciting for me when I experienced it firsthand I thought that the way my thought process was operating was truly just part of my character it felt like oh Carissa is somebody who's thinking about 1,000 things per day all the time cause that's just who she is she's trying to get everything done but I realized that it was just me having a lack of awareness first and then I didn't really have an ability to to manage those things so now I recognize that's not just who I am it's just something I've never Learned to to direct or to you know to manage so that's been a pretty big breakthrough at least for me and we hope to see that with many of our clients oh

[00:20:08] Suzie: that's amazing yeah so you know if you're not managing this it will take over whether we're aware of it or not I think that's interesting so the last step I guess they go through how long is usually the coaching is it does it depend on the individuals at six months or is it yeah

[00:20:23] Carissa: we typically say that it's eight to 10 weeks everybody progresses at a different rate some people really speed through it because they're super committed and they can progress through everything or other people have a little bit of harder time being consistent and so we say eight to 10 weeks so generally is when we can see results okay

[00:20:39] Suzie: and then the final step is change your life because now they get to go through the the neural net EEG what does EEG stand for Doctor Ron just tell us some more about that EEG

[00:20:51] Ron: what is it electroencephalograph and all it is is picking up on the neural networks or the electrical chargers that are coming out of your brain at different frequencies and each of those frequencies are telling us something about how you're processing information

[00:21:04] Suzie: and you've been recognized Doctor Ron for your work in this field and if I remember and I am really illiterate so I'm gonna mess this up you correct me but gamma rays and yes all the work that you have done around this that's probably old school

[00:21:19] Ron: isn't it yeah let's back up and fill in a couple holes first of all I am smiling unbelievably I wish this was a audio tape because listening to Carissa she has captured exactly what we're doing and is so articulate with all of the information I just appreciate laying all that groundwork let's back up to where this came from I came here over a decade ago and I had been using my brother's assessments of the assessments made by Dave and Bill Bonstutter for a number of years in academia and academia you know require proof of everything they do and I and I was criticized because I was using assessments that by definition are called self reports and so it became part of my uh desire to figure out if I could prove that the assessments worked this LED me then to changing my research and studying electroencephalograph and learning how to read brain wave activity and brain maps and what we ended up doing then is having people take our assessments while they are in the neuronet and we're literally able to then fill out the assessment from the brain activity and match that to what they said on paper and it's a beautiful process that has helped us identify problem questions and improve our assessments no one else in the world does it's called response processing and as a result of response processing we have two patents on the process and we're able to literally improve our assessments in ways that no one else can we still do all of the typical quantitative analysis but this one also really gives us some insights into various questions and how people are responding to the question including sometimes uh what we call um socially acceptable answers in other words their brain says one thing and then they put down the opposite cause they think that's what they should be and so we're able to correct those questions and make them more difficult so they're not obvious answers so that's how it started as a result though we started to realize we literally can read emotions and we can identify things that are going on and it became so straightforward that in fact we're able to see a brain scan I right now Carissa could bring up a picture of the prefrontal cortex the front of the brain and look at gamma activity which is a fast wave and she would be able to tell you whether you liked that answer you disliked that answer you agreed with it you disagreed with it it's like reading a blueprint it's all there or an X ray it's all there and it's very exciting to have that so when we move to this new program of the mind Science Center we're able to apply all that we learn from response processing and we're able then to have people not only ask them questions and collect data but as Carissa said we've got four or five protocols that allow us to see how active their brain is and how they have the ability to regulate that activity so we're correct we're really collecting not only directionality that tells us yes no on how people respond to an item we're looking at intensity and so the intensity becomes a major issue because yes many people simply do not have the ability to alter intensity it's like an on off switch they're triggered and they go crazy and they have no ability to control that so we want to move from self awareness to self regulation and that's what that program on Phase 2 allows us to do is to help people gain control over their brain that they've never had

[00:24:55] Suzie: what difference does it make and y'all to share some stories where Chris you talked a little bit about what you Learned what you became aware of if your emotions more and what was bothering you and what can you say about any others that have been involved in it what you've seen in regard to improve regulation of self and anything else you can share be very interesting to hear Kristen do you have one that comes to mind I have one

[00:25:17] Carissa: but I was thinking Ron you probably have one we might be on the same page go ahead though and share

[00:25:21] Ron: well yeah and then elaborate I just thought it was really exciting when we interviewed a few of the original pilots on this and by the way so far it's almost like magic this is working our protocols pre post collecting real data on the brain these people have controls that they simply did not have when they started the program they did not have them that's not happening as a researcher I'm very excited about one gentleman who actually did not have the time to follow protocols his life just didn't allow him to do phase 2 correctly guess what the prepost was virtually identical haha so in other words he didn't pick up any work

[00:26:00] Suzie: you have to work on the system it doesn't just work by itself

[00:26:03] Ron: it does take effort and you know we were talking about the activities this is not requiring you to set aside hours a day but it is requiring you to do things systematically regularly and probably several short periods of time during the day that you initiate this to the point where it becomes a habit

[00:26:21] Suzie: since I'm a fitness nut many workouts gotta have many workouts yes yes not many necessarily but many throughout the day

[00:26:29] Ron: one story that comes to mind I said tell me you know real concisely what this has done for you as a result of this program he said I now have mental armor that I never had I thought that was a cool concept of mental armor that he had a tool that he hadn't possessed before that when things happened in his life he now could deal with those and had a concrete approach and it was not just he could be proactive instead of reactive

[00:26:58] Suzie: well there you go that's called regulation self regulation how great is that yes and that is in this day and time people are so trigger fast on their emotions and yeah that's amazing

[00:27:10] Ron: well you know early on Suzie you said that everything had a feelings associated with it and I I probably replace the word feelings with emotions but basically we're talking about the same thing and what you need to realize is that most of us if we really don't have conscious thought about it we are controlled by our emotions our emotions as much as 95% of the time dictate the final outcome let's say we really think about a decision in most cases what you're doing really is rationalizing and justifying what you made at the emotional level rather than the cognitive level and so along with this program frankly is a massive process of education so I I don't know if people realize that but yesterday we spent over a couple hours with Dustin our other colleague in this program and he was elaborating on all of the educational components that are built into this training you see we're we're not about just changing a behavior willy nilly or without a rationale and Dustin has created a beautiful background of education so that everything you do is based on science and an explanation and an understanding I am convinced as an educator that you never get people to really follow through by simply telling them what to do without telling them why we built everything we do on why this is built on science period yes

[00:28:39] Suzie: I love that yeah the y and they build it on the y have something that is credible but then they have to be committed to you know so that's that the other big piece that's always two pieces of the puzzle they got to bring their part to it Carissa do you have any thoughts to share on examples or anything else we've been talking about that you want to add to yeah

[00:28:56] Carissa: I mean those are some of the ones that popped into my head as well I also remember one client who came in who was very dedicated to the process and before he even got his second brain scan he said I already know that I'm different from having gone through this program so you can truly feel the effects because you're going to start navigating your day to day much differently than you were before so that's why we say it changes your life because you have these practices on board that now the brain is so used to going to them that it's going to become more natural rather than it's something assigned to you by the mindset coach it's something that you're going to start to lean on quickly and so we just see a lot of change in folks which is the most rewarding part

[00:29:40] Ron: as I think about the program people would say well isn't this just coaching basic coaching I I don't dismiss that comment because coaching becomes an important component of what we do first of all it's it's it's really customized coaching but I think it's one of the factors that really differentiates this is the brain imaging there are two things that I think are really crucial No. 1 we start with a foundation of understanding self based on a whole battery of assessments that allow you to start to experience who you really are what are your behaviors what are your motivators what really triggers you what are the things that you either are really good at or potentially not as good at that foundation has to be laid and once it's laid now we come in with something that is very concrete I am convinced that most therapy is by definition subjective and abstract we attempt to get rid of that by doing pre post brain scanning yeah so I can tell you whether you did your work that's amazing and that becomes very very important because now you've seen your brain so when you actually get triggered in a situation I'm convinced that you mentally are picturing what your brain just did and how you might change it

[00:30:56] Suzie: well it's it's you're giving people specific direction because of the brain imaging and so that focus is just like my VO2 backs I scored really high on that so it's like oh I don't need to continue to work on that I mean I will continue to keep it up but you know uh my body fat could go down some so I'm working on that you know it's the same thing if you tie it to fitness or other things but you know much more complex and hard to get to when you're talking about what you all are doing that's amazing

[00:31:23] Ron: maybe going a little bit deeper in terms of examples cause I've been doing this for a number of years ha the probably over 200 examples but I would say that there is another category that we uncover that's sort of scary for some people because we're looking at the emotional load of your decisions which means that we're actually getting a picture of your brain before you've had a cognitive thought I'm looking at your subconscious I'm looking at bias behind thoughts and we have had scenarios where your actions don't match your perception or your verbalization or what you acknowledge even to yourself and we're able to have some pretty deep conversations about some of these issues and not to tell you what to do but to start exposing the fact that we have some bias that maybe we need to at least acknowledge and address in our lives be aware of it yes

[00:32:19] Suzie: yeah so question for you I am a big proponent of the Hartman work and have been very involved in axiology and the dimensional balance page graph and I guess it started with myself you know so Chris you were saying your impact for you and I know Doctor Brown I'm sure you've had an impact just by being in this in the EEGs and seeing other people it impacts us cause we learn and grow but the Hartman profile when I saw my scores initially back at 20 years ago sense of self was just kind of middley to low role awareness that you know so how I valued myself my role awareness was lowish with a negative bias so it was a I'm telling you all this to say and self direction was eh midly and you know so I was very serious cause I'm very much a learner and you know and I was like I wanted to understand this and immediately I could see as I grew and I started with self direction I need to feel a little bit more hopeful about my future as a consultant I'm confused obviously about what I'm doing and then role awareness like okay I need to grow my skill set so I have more confidence as soon as I did all of that I could feel the difference so I'm getting a mini version I could cause I'm such a nerd and I was so dig dug into all of it and I took it so seriously you know so I was like I could feel like I was less less defensive I was more relaxed I lose sleep the night before I was gonna teach something you know so I had the the visual look like I was just spot on cause I'm a high d and you know and and I know a bunch of stuff cause I study it cause I'm so worried I don't know it but then I could feel better and so over the years you know I've seen that grow and so I just I'm I'm wondering how you I know you don't look at just the Hartman cause there's so many things and I know you look at all of them and I do too I'd be curious if you can see you know when somebody's having a lot of scramble if it's related to lower sense of self or you know if you see any correlations or would you even comment on that

[00:34:11] Ron: you know I want to comment on that because oh good as a researcher I get excited about anytime I want data you know more data I I've just want data so we do take the assessments at the beginning and we're also embedding then several of the assessments are pre post all right and the Hartman is one of them because I really want oh good sense of self and the world view and the role awareness I would say that we are definitely impacting those now when you think about the assessments that TTI provides some are pretty stable they're foundational they can alter over time but I would say all your motivators can change on it might reorder a little bit yeah but when there are two that I'm looking at that I get excited to repost and one is Hartman with those things that you've mentioned the other one yeah it's your emotional quotient yeah and so those two were matching up along with the pre post brain scanning yeah to see that changes I love that yeah yeah and and again for the most part people are not surprised because they actually have sensed it they've felt it they've yeah lived it and they know that they've changed yeah

[00:35:21] Suzie: you're getting that extra element of because I was teaching it and I'm so into Hartman and I you know really dug into it I I could treat it almost like a little EEG for myself but the average person's not gonna get that deep into it and so when you have the assessment and you see that and then you see the EEG it speeds up it does awareness like oh that's really true and the other one was for me practical thinking I was kind of a mess you know practical thinking was okay but a lot of negative bias you know so I was totally stressed out about all the things I need to do and as soon as I changed the bias and the clarity I mean it's like I'm so much more calm so I found a way to manage it so if I'd had the EEG it might not have taken as long but at least I had something haha it was a start years ago tell me who shows up for these the at the mind center is it usually executive level or you know

[00:36:11] Ron: it's interesting when you say executive level then you might think that they'd be a little bit older I think we're still working to figure out the exact audience so it's somewhat flexible as to what audience we originally thought that it would be just Ceos but I have to tell you the CEOs by definition are a little bit older and we've had a group of people we're doing much better job of identifying who's a fit for us because we have had some people that are just excited to learn what we do but they don't want anything to touch them

[00:36:43] Suzie: in other words they don't want to be vulnerable they don't want to be no no they just want to learn about that subconscious thought I have or that you know oh yeah you're really not too good in this yeah I see yeah

[00:36:53] Ron: we're trying to make sure that we don't waste our time and theirs yeah just educating somebody we're really about transformation not just information yeah and so we're really working with clients that are willing to deal with transformation in their lives and grow both personally and professionally

[00:37:11] Suzie: and would somebody only come to you if they're having problems or what if they're already pretty successful that's what I'm thinking I mean I was doing pretty good and you know just think about how much better my life is from same thing I would think that it's just the people who wanna really give it all like I want I want this life to be my the best life I can make it those people are those the people maybe

[00:37:33] Ron: I don't know they may be even the best audience because they've already been successful but what could they accomplish if they got rid of just one or two other little issues that going on

[00:37:42] Suzie: yeah that's amazing Christina you have any thoughts on anything

[00:37:46] Carissa: it's applicable for everybody at all levels it's really general but we have seen results in all types of different people in different positions at different stages of their career and their lives essentially what it boils down to is do they want to focus on this kind of journey are they somebody who's open to learning new tools and new tactics are they willing to be reflective because reflection is a big piece of this when you have to really think about your own thinking which most folks don't do and so when you start to reflect on that sometimes the things you uncover are going to be things that you don't really like admitting all the time or things that you might see as a weakness that you didn't even know you really had before not to say that we want to expose people in a way that makes them uncomfortable not that at all but anybody who's interested in diving into this kind of work on themselves could be successful

[00:38:41] Suzie: on themselves could be successful and I remember at 40 40 you shared some examples you Doctor Ron did a beautiful presentation at our TCI's 40th anniversary conference last year for the our listeners and you shared some examples and Dustin might have even been one if I remember right of case studies was it Dustin do you recall I think Bobby was one of our internal Bobby it was Bobby yeah can you share anything about that well that was a good example where he made some changes that were impactful Bobby is one of the leaders at company part of that we've already talked about some of the things that came out for him yeah but it was extremely powerful and positive experience for him and you know I was so pleased that we've had the opportunity to do some of our pilot work with our staff because they now understand the significance of what we're doing and by experiencing it the the buy in is there's no better way to understand this and then to experience it but I don't remember any specific things from Bobby

[00:39:41] Ron: other than what I've already said Carissa and what else comes to mind I was just going to kind of explain the third step a little bit more oh good that would be great third step change your life so that change your life component when they come in for the second EEG we take them through the same exercises that they did in the first eg and then we get to have those before and after images so the images of the brain that we gather at the beginning typically show them attempting to clear and center their mind but maybe they don't have a lot on board and then those after images typically if the person has been consistent shows their brain quieting on command with some it's something we don't see at the beginning and so some of the results like you're mentioning some of these examples are folks who maybe didn't have as much ability on the front end or they had a mind that was really really hard for them to quiet and now they have these practices on board where they know that they're quieting their brain it's one thing to learn it and think yeah I think you know this is working for me but I'm not sure even myself when I went through I felt like I was managing it okay after I had gone through all the coaching but I wasn't super sure because the journey was just so new for me I had never done anything like this but then when you actually get to see the images it gives you a lot of confidence you know for sure that your brain has a new ability that it didn't have before so what we see with our clients is that they've got these abilities on board and they're able to use them when they want it's impactful of your personal life it's impactful in your professional life it changes at least for me it changes the way that I navigate my day where before some days I would feel very scrambled I would feel very rushed I had this sense of hurry that I couldn't really quiet down and now I recognize the moment that it's happening to me I implement the techniques that I Learned and then I can direct my attention on something and be productive I can move from task to task methodically so that I'm not just getting spun up with the stress so we've seen a variety of different results with our clients but most of the time we keep coming back to these images that show the brain completely clearing out because they now have the ability to do so the brain knows what to do

[00:41:52] Suzie: well it seems like the imaging helps you connect the dots yes otherwise if you made an improvement you wouldn't be able to say I made that improvement and it feels different right

[00:42:02] Carissa: the brain imaging makes it measurable

[00:42:05] Suzie: makes it measurable yes that's awesome very good we've talked a little bit about the centering and being able to be quiet on demand are there other mental and emotional traps that hinder folks that you're seeing on a regular basis I would guess some of it might be sense of self cause I always think through the lens of Hartman I think my brain is just dialed into Hartman so you know but sense of self is that is that usually a piece of the puzzle or other mental and emotional traps you know from our early life you know what is it they say between the ages of 5 to 20 you bring kind of your past experiences kind of inform your future you know if they're not conscious about it what would you say about that other traps that people fall into

[00:42:46] Ron: you're hitting on they can be all of the above so the one of the strength of this is that the we are able to customize what we do and we help you we don't focus on an individual concern or a specific issue we want to arm you with a new tool that is more holistic yes it will actually impact the issue you may have initially brought to us but we really don't want to do one one on one or one item at a time kind of work we want to provide you with something that will work in all scenarios and that you will not be surprised by a different scenario it's got to be more holistic and we work with people to understand that yes don't worry about that issue it is being addressed but let's work at a broader level yeah I was just thinking you're more broad so then it impacts every part of who we are where we've been whatever our history has been and all of that I even shared with Dustin yesterday
[00:43:47] Ron: Suzie: that when we started this program Suzie: I was hung up on individual problems Suzie: we're gonna cure how you feel about dogs Suzie: whatever it was uh huh yeah Suzie: and then you realize that's not it Suzie: it's that's not it Suzie: that's not where we're going Suzie: and it's this way is better because Suzie: it's better Suzie: because we now are giving you ability to be proactive Suzie: in whatever scenario occurs Suzie: multiple scenarios yes Suzie: in multiple scenarios it is a holistic tool Suzie: not something that's honed in on one Suzie: aspect of your life Suzie: that may or may not have been an issue Suzie: at that point in time a point in times alter Suzie: this is a journey and we have to give you tools Suzie: that allow you to go down that road Suzie: as new detours occur and still have tools that work

[00:44:36] Suzie: that's really smart it's interesting that it's a holistic approach and yet it's very customized you've got the best of both worlds

[00:44:43] Ron: we really work at that yes I would also add that we're not clinical but on the other hand I think we're all on the spectrum so you know we could all we could all use some refinement yes

[00:44:57] Suzie: yes and that is life and I mean it's nobody's going up straight without bumps in the road it's a jiggly line I think you know up and down and all around even for the most successful among us what else would you like to share that I haven't asked about or share then I'm going to talk about ask you questions about what's next but in regard to what we've covered so far is there anything on said or something that you think our audience would really love to hear or know about what you're doing

[00:45:27] Ron: I wish we had more time to talk about the educational components in this but recognize that everything that we're talking about especially during that Phase 2 training is built on a solid understanding that is provided to the client about what happens in your brain under stress what happens when executive function is shut down and you have a reduction in the neural networks that are being used in decision making they have a clear understanding through their daily life activities of what's going on in their brain and it's a back and forth it's not just living with a blindfold anymore you literally have an understanding of what's here every time something happens

[00:46:10] Suzie: you're aware I'm getting angry okay I know what that's happening my brain is shutting down and I'm not gonna make a good decision right now that's right that's right yeah that's called uh managing ourselves right and that amazing but that's not easy to do but with the images of the difference and the and the coaching and the training you're doing that's amazing you have got the full package it's very exciting so talk about advancements what's next in neuroscience and what you're doing or what's what's coming well

[00:46:39] Ron: first of all I'm very excited thanks to Jim Driver one of our other Vaas within the network of TTI he convinced me and has helped me and I will be in the audience at Ted Talk in two weeks by the time this airs I hope to be rubbing shoulders with 57 presenters at a at the international Ted talk and I think we're going to be learning more I've already set up a network with people that have similar interests in looking at neuro nets and looking at what we can do to help people you see we have made a big mistake we keep trying to help people by telling them what to do without telling them why and the strength of what our program is taking the time for you to understand what literally is going on we start with education rather than alteration and I'm excited to rub shoulders with people internationally and figure out where that goes including the the bad word that's going around called AI I think we need to figure out what that means and where it may fit I also am excited about adding something concrete to every day of our lives now what I mean by that is right now we give training like the gentleman said I know I'm different what if he were able to actually have some tools that were with him all the time that proved to him that he was different such as heart rate variability such as having data collected at all the time so I'm still figuring out where we interface with more feedback to our clients on a day to day basis and Hurray variability may be one of them the other thing is I actually wear an Ora ring and that gives me data day and night about what I'm doing it shows my stress level it shows when the stress occurred and that kind of data I think is maybe it's because I'm a scientist I just love data but once you have data you can't hide from it and so let's try to alter it yes

[00:48:47] Suzie: I love it or ring I was thinking of the whoop and all the other other tools that's amazing Chrisa do you have any other thoughts about the future

[00:48:57] Carissa: yeah I think we just need to do it with intention you know we have all these devices we already use that measure so many different things about us our step count our sleep quality our heart rate everything so if we were to get to that point where you're measuring your brain similarly we could have a lot of breakthroughs but it's also kind of a caution you know what information is going to help you rather than further your stress levels you know for example if you if you get poor sleep quality you're looking at your device first of oh did I sleep well instead of just waking up and saying do I feel rested yeah sometimes yeah it sometimes can create a little bit of a disconnect between the body and the data okay

[00:49:43] Ron: I I resemble that comment haha

[00:49:47] Carissa: I think it's really exciting I could do what we could do yeah

[00:49:52] Suzie: yes you are on the leading edge so if someone wants to I'm gonna have links to the center to your website to your materials and the books that you recommend and and of course your 5 sciences of self which I am giving to clients or special clients I will make sure that is on my website but I'll make sure it's on the show notes but if somebody wants to come to the Mind Science Center what's a brief overview on the process do they reach out to you directly and they fill out a profile or something or a questionnaire and yeah

[00:50:24] Carissa: so they can email our general inbox I field all of those so info at mind science center. com or they can call our direct line which is 8 8 8 3 5 7 mind

[00:50:36] Suzie: all right it's it's easy to remember okay great well I'm excited about what you're doing and having I'll have a link to the show notes of the discussion I had with Doctor Ron almost what I guess 9 years ago when you were at the start of this Ron and to see where it's gone and it's exciting and then there's more to come so appreciate the work that you're doing to help people bring their best selves to their life into the world and that wake up eager leader and wake up eager workforce and wake up eager self is important so love the leading edge of you two so we're gonna go now to the learn a little bit more about the both of you and go to our wake up eager strength segment and I love looking at this because one of the things that I saw in both of your motivators is your No. 6 I stick with motivators and just talk about what you're most interested in and what you're least interested in and so your No. 6 for both of you is very strongly additional regulatory which says I don't want to spend all my time following the rules I'm going to make up new rules and make up new ways to do things you know and I was like yep they are a match to that and all of my clients and then colleagues that are on the phone listening in will will recognize that and see that where you are the people who are doing things differently and the leading the way with new ways to do things so kudos to you both and I see you both they're both smiling right now as we talk about that what if what we do in the wreck of the Ego Strength segment is have you go to your assessment and go to the section that combines communication style and your motivators and our goal is for people to just learn a little bit about the the motivators and the disc and to understand from their own report of that area and how powerful it is and I'll just do a quick overview on Carissa's style above the energy line with the disc is s C I so that it talks thinks before she speaks cautious but also can be fluid in communicating yet all three and above the energy line and then your drivers or motivators according to the assessment you're passionate about bringing harmony to the conversation or to the life and how things look and feel passionate about leading the way being the spokesperson for that harmony and you present it in such a harmonious way it's just beautiful to see and you score passionate there Doctor Ron is the d and the I above the energy line so that's being very thinking talking to think being direct and open in the communication less cautious and then his drivers are also passionate so for the for our listeners passionate means none of it's good right or wrong but what it says is they just care about it of more or higher than 68% of the population so it's very important means basically they're very passionate and Doctor Ron has said I love knowledge um and then individualistics being the spokesperson for knowledge so spokesperson for knowledge here and spokesperson for harmonious tell us a little bit about what you picked on the combined pages around I'd strengths ideal environment and motivating Kristen would you like to go first from each page and just talk a little bit about why you picked that item why does it matter to you right now and you can change the words if

[00:53:53] Carissa: if you need to change them to make them better fit I think from my strengths I mean you kind of summarized it almost already but the leads by example but in a quiet and methodical way that really does kind of pinpoint my approach to things I'm not going to be the loudest person in the room oftentimes I'm the quietest actually I'm not gonna be the most direct person in the room but I am going to try to bring my best self I hold others to a high standard as well I want them to bring their best selves and so my steadiness that s behavioral style also is the methodical piece of me which Ron and I have talked about this a number of times is that him and I are a little bit opposites in that way so we always try to make sure we're on the same page before we move towards a goal or towards a task because I'm gonna be the slower more methodical individual where he might be the more direct individual

[00:54:48] Suzie: yes I love that okay so that was your strength what's the next one ideal environment what did you pick there that stood out

[00:54:56] Carissa: yeah from ideal environment uh the one that I picked was little conflict between people so that is definitely something that I'm really in tune with that comes from my high aesthetic the high aesthetic in me the harmonious in me is really observant of how maybe chaos in the environment is impacting people or a lack of clarity is impacting people I can really tell when someone is in alignment with something versus if they're not so what I do in that scenario is I typically try to go to that person and say hey you know I kind of picked up on this how are you feeling about that and I'll try to navigate a conflict with them before it gets damaging or before it inflates and that's kind of that quiet leader piece of me conflict does make me uncomfortable so I like to address it when it's small instead of when it's big but yeah that's something that stands out

[00:55:48] Suzie: but you do address it which is amazing haha I tried good brain waves going on there so that's awesome and you know I what I always see with aesthetic is you yet you alluded to it you sense it you see it you know I can compartmentalize but you intuitively pick up on things that somebody else that compartmentalizes might miss that's awesome and then what about motivating

[00:56:11] Carissa: what'd you pick yeah so that one with the keys to motivating the instructions so I can do the job right the first time it's funny because I notice myself getting frustrated sometimes when I have a lack of framework and although my traditional is low so I don't like to follow a certain set of rules I like to know what I'm doing so that my time is worth it as well that's that utilitarian

[00:56:36] Suzie: utilitarian is third and it's above the energy line so yeah okay keep going sorry yes

[00:56:41] Carissa: no that's okay yes so I like to understand what I'm about to do so that I can just execute it and be done and pass it off to the next person I like the efficiency in that way so if I don't have instructions or I don't have a clear frame of how I'm supposed to be working on something I get a lot of discomfort internally cause I just want to complete it the right way I don't want to guess

[00:57:03] Suzie: great sharing and it just to our listeners great sharing and it just to our listeners just the beauty of it is getting a little mini EEG when you read these pages cause it's telling you things that you know but you've never seen in writing and then you're getting you know the Olympian version when you're getting the EEG cause now you're getting the next version of insight about yourself so I love what you shared and I can see I love I can't wait for Ron's because I love that y'all have some differences and I know they're gonna be good what are you gonna share Doctor Ron around strengths what's your favorite strength

[00:57:33] Ron: oh probably in terms of behavior yeah you know I I am a d and I can't get away from that yeah but I'll tell you that the assassin may not show is that many years ago when I first took this assessment Bill sat me down my brother and he said you have to make some decisions in your life and you need to recognize that you have what is typically called a d C conflict if you look at my C right now I don't remember the number but it's pretty low 25 years ago my C and my d were my two top and what was going on was I was trying to finish a doctorate at the time I had already thrown away my first two dissertations because they weren't good enough and I was starting over again for the third time on a new topic because nothing was good enough and my brother said to me at the time you need to decide if you're going to live a life with lots of experiences not necessarily make every one of them perfect or if you're just going to have one thing that you noted for and you're going to focus on it and let everything else go basically I made a decision at that point that I would have to learn how to let go at times and under stress my sea still comes back to haunt me because I do not make mistakes in the in other words that's a internal statement that under stress I went too fast I did something in a manner that was inappropriate and that c just haunts me personally it just starts to eat at me but the d is really a crucial component I I like I have a sense of urgency that I share with Carissa quite often because then she will put reality back in place for me we have an awesome team I almost wish you could have a whole podcast on what I perceive to be almost the perfect team because all four of us really are sort of different in various ways that complement each other but only if you recognize that as a strength and not a weakness and also if you recognize they have to have voice because they have a different builder and a different perception without that you're really in trouble so anyway the behavior for d

[00:59:39] Suzie: I love that I love that on the talent insights part of your assessment is there a strength statement that really stands out that maybe ties in your d do you have your assessment up I'd love to see if you see one on the strengths page

[00:59:51] Ron: I actually skipped over to the ideal environment which yeah on the ideal environment I found it interesting to reflect on one that said a forum to express ideas and viewpoints why that's important to me is that I was in education for 40 years and I was frustrated for 40 years because I didn't find a forum where people were I'm sorry education for the most part is built really really heavily on SC's and tradition and you're in it because you know what you're going to do for the next 40 years and you get a sense of security from that profession and I was a bad fit and so when I needed a forum for ideas I went outside of education I was a senior Fulbright fellow I worked in 15 different countries you know I was on a nine month contract and every summer I was in some other country because I wanted to learn and be a part of something that was stimulating yes and I wasn't finding that where I was and so yeah that one really hit home with me a forum expressing ideas and viewpoints

[01:00:56] Suzie: what I love about that is you took it by that at that point you probably didn't have the assessment you took what you needed and went and found it outside of where you currently were which is the whole point of if you have just the assessments is to how can you understand what you need and and feed fill up your tank you know with the things that help you work around things that were more regulatory the rest of the year that's amazing

[01:01:20] Ron: and I would also say the same thing is true then with motivators obviously we've hit on the fact that I'm knowledge is very important to me the intellectual component but you know what really drives me in the motivators I say this it's true and I also feel a little guilty in telling you this but I am really driven my No. 1 driver is not to be traditional yeah

[01:01:41] Suzie: it's what we don't want that's what you discovered when you first started doing this which is that's right our brain really lights up fast from our other past episode which will be in the show notes our brain really lights up on what we don't want to do and it becomes a motivator that's when we began recognizing this is what I'm least interested in my No. 6 and so that's as important as you're 1 and 2 you know you're least interested and so you're gonna make things new and darn it if you hadn't done that Ron it's amazing

[01:02:10] Ron: give me a little bit of time but not 10 years between our talks but give me a give me a few months I'd like to come back and talk about a new book that I'm writing right now the book title the working title is defined by moments and they are critical events in my own development that I think other people will truly identify with and one of the things that will be unique to me and possibly not others is how a high d responds when they're told they can't do something and all of a sudden

[01:02:40] Suzie: it will be back it will be back yeah that'll be fun yeah yeah all right I can't wait when is this book coming out Ron

[01:02:47] Ron: the publisher tells me October 1

[01:02:49] Suzie: okay great okay so I'm putting a note on the calendar I'll be back in touch cause that would be amazing you have so many both of you just have both so many great insights into doing such good work we definitely want to highlight it and share it and I'll definitely want to read your book is there anything you want to share about motivating or are we ready to move on did you look at those that page in your Talent Insights

[01:03:10] Ron: not any specific statements that came to mind

[01:03:13] Suzie: we already covered it when you said what I really want to do is mix it up and not be stuck on the rules

[01:03:20] Ron: well and the actually you know I think many of us have some little statement that directs us on a daily basis and one of the things I attempt to do with everything that I'm doing during the course of the day is predicated on a statement that I started using in my lived life almost 40 years ago now looking at one thing and seeing another so whatever I experience what if I were to view that differently and what can I learn from that from a different viewpoint from a different perspective looking at one thing and seeing another in other words trying to focus on creativity becomes a daily goal for me that is your flute come in the middle of that well they come in for two ways number one somebody said well you you can't really learn an instrument at your age and so that became again a challenge I the d says oh yes I do yeah yeah but it does I've seen it yeah and I do I just finished a whole day a workshop Harmony Hollow where I was able to work with a Reiki master and I played Background Energy Master for a session

[01:04:28] Suzie: that's amazing so two follow UPS one is there's a quote I always use in a lot of the workshops is it's not what you look at it's what you see not saying the same thing as the creativity but you know I look at someone and I see their strengths or I see that they're different from me and dislike it you know so it's not what you look at it's what you see I always I like that statement and the other thing I wanted to mention is how you talked about how your team and this is what we want for with every team has different strengths and we appreciate the different strengths and the different interests and one wants to do this and the other wants to do that and you're appreciating the perspectives that's the goal and it's not getting beyond the this is me and like it or leave it it's this is me and let me learn about you and let's see how we work together that's the more pro level of this stuff you know what we do that's in that's amazing and you're a great representative of what you're doing so it's exciting oh thank you alright

[01:05:26] Ron: no I'm just elated to again off screen before we started this we were talking about the fact that well good or bad I actually had this vision and started down this road awfully long time ago but along the way obviously you can't do it yourself and so with the team has emerged and grown and today marks a red letter day for me because I got to listen to Carissa who actually was able to express what it is we do far more articulately than I ever could have and it is just was a joy to be able to even be here but more importantly to listen

[01:06:04] Suzie: it's good that you're there and I'm thinking you have a beautifully beautiful center I saw the center before you moved and I've seen some pictures of it I believe on Facebook or somewhere about your new center so Carissa I'm thinking you might have had a hand and making sure it looked as beautiful as it looks I mean everybody probably played a part but were you intimately involved with those details cause it's a beautiful center beautiful furnishings I mean it's a vibe I haven't been to the new one like I said but I am sure it's a vibe like the other was when you walk in you feel it

[01:06:36] Carissa: yeah we wanted that to be the main goal of the center so that you can feel relaxed and calm when you come in but Doctor Ron's daughter was actually the main designer who helped us put all the everything in the center together so we're really appreciative of her work she did amazing amazing stuff in there

[01:06:52] Ron: what's really cool uh by your statement is that her assessment is much like Carissa's and her No. 1 is harmonious

[01:07:00] Suzie: yes yes I know I in our home we always have had a designer because I aesthetics not in the top and I need help but I like to be involved in it but they're the ones pointing out what we need to do and how to do it so good at that let's do a quick what advice would you give your 25 year old self

[01:07:20] Carissa: Carissa I think for my 25 year old self I would probably say don't let a tough it out mentality override a gut instinct um I know for me early on in my career I never wanted to quit I never wanted to give up and if my work environment or something wasn't working for me or I felt some disharmony there I just wanted to fix it I thought that I could push through or I could make it better but my gut was telling me this isn't a fit for you it's time to move on but I didn't listen to it because I thought that that was me quitting I thought that that was me giving up on something and I think that held me back a little bit I probably could have progressed a little bit faster if I just would have trusted myself yeah I would just say kind of listen to your gut instincts know when it's a good fit for you and know when what you've done is enough and it's time to move to the next step of the journey

[01:08:14] Suzie: were there any markers in your life that you can name and I'm putting you on the spot a little bit but any markers that you can name that you got you to start listening to your gut maybe when you made a decision and decided it worked out or maybe when you saw some of your strengths on your EEG or in your assessment I don't know yeah

[01:08:32] Carissa: I think I've kind of had that realization probably since I've been working at TTI and reflecting on my previous jobs that I had before I moved into this industry and you know when you're living in it when I was in for example my first job I was just trying so hard to make it work but when you're in it it's hard to see it from a different horizon and so now having Learned more about myself and then looking back I can recognize what I was toiling with at that time why I was having that push pull of should I leave should I stay yeah I think it's more so just getting an understanding of who I am maybe that came from the assessments maybe it just came from time or experience

[01:09:12] Suzie: but combination of all of it probably yeah exactly yeah that's great Doctor Ron what would you what advice would you give your 25 year old self

[01:09:21] Ron: it's hard to remember that but far back haha oh no no no you're still you got yeah keep going well actually I guess it'll be a lead into this stupid book because that book that I'm writing on define my moments is looking at those critical events in my life that LED to things there is a theme though that that only when you're old enough to reflect back do you start to see some of these patterns and one of the patterns is that most of my life I've been directed by challenges that were presented by others what do I want to do where is my passion rather than somebody telling me I can't do something so all of a sudden I go off on a new road to prove that I can do it only if you get to a point where you really truly can examine and do self examination and so in many ways my message is identical to Carissa's is to take the time to really figure out what you really want to do where are your passions and then surround yourself with people that will help you accomplish that yes not to be directed by them but to be supported by them

[01:10:28] Suzie: very good very good I love that okay so if you could put a billboard anywhere to influence others what message would you put on your billboard and maybe you know where you would share it or put it what would you say

[01:10:41] Ron: I'll make a comment real quick I still like our statement I like our statement that is you know see your brain train your mind change your life

[01:10:51] Suzie: yeah yes okay so that would be your 3 step process which is good I was going to add a summary of it see your brain train your mind change your life okay what about you Carissa

[01:11:02] Carissa: I think if I could put a billboard anywhere I would wanted to say no one thinks like you and I would wanted to scroll through that in a bunch of different languages I'd probably put it in a major airport or something so that the most people can see it it's sort of two fold I think one no one thinks like you so know that you're bringing value to wherever you're going the ideas you come up with are unique you know you have a place to voice them it's impactful no matter what but also from an empathetic standpoint no one thinks like you so focus on communicating your needs focus on understanding where somebody else is coming from and their perspectives no one is going to immediately be on the same page as you so work through it and focus on how you can meet a goal together

[01:11:46] Suzie: oh great I love that I love the two fold on that too yeah one of my uh quotes I've got on my email right now that matters to me a lot is I can't remember exactly what it says but basically a great tragedy in life is to think that your perspective is the only one that matters or something like that there's not different perspectives and so we lose out a lot when we don't open our minds like that right yeah and say it again what were the three words yes no one thinks like you no one more than three words but no one thinks like you that that would really stop people I like that very good very good we need to have that billboard

[01:12:19] Ron: one more thought I want to share with you I want it okay what do you want to share Ron you guys were stimulated this when I started this first of all we have a person listening back here Alicia's gonna be joining our team and so she's been listening to this and I hope she's got excited about the conversation and what her role will be down in the future and I mentioned her because when she came here on an internship a couple years ago she was working in psychology I have spent so many years that I recognize that it's a beautiful thing the world is changing when I first started in this world we were siloed where neurology was basically totally separated from neurology psychology and neurology were different worldviews they had different rules and they didn't overlap very much now that's changing and they're starting to overlap a little more and that's exciting to see that yes it's on my mind because last week I worked with a gentleman that has been instrumental in everything we do at Tom Colura out of Cincinnati and he is greatly influenced me and so he and I are doing a talk next year at an international conference and I put in this abstract where I said it's time now to break down yet another Silo what if we were to merge psychology neurology and philosophy yes yes and so we are going to be presenting a model that has all three legs to the stool oh and I'm pretty excited philosophically about how this is going to come together well

[01:13:53] Suzie: you know I think that's what Hartman was trying to do back in you know before he died in 1973 he was a philosopher and a mathematician and his students still today say he was the kindest man they ever met he had that Renaissance thing that you're talking about of the bigger picture where you're you're melting the intellectual with the subjective with the science yeah that's great so

[01:14:14] Ron: I think it's gonna be exciting to try to get people to think about what each of those fields offer but what would happen if we merged their viewpoints

[01:14:23] Suzie: will that be also available like a Ted talk or anything

[01:14:26] Ron: oh I'm hoping to go a long way with it but that'll be Tom and I have to have lengthy conversations he's the one that got the fire lit under me years ago because he is a philosopher and so I was excited I wrote this abstract without his permission I just knew he would like it

[01:14:43] Suzie: oh it doesn't surprise me at all it sounds like it's wonderful you know I want to back up to real quick before we ask our last question is the Ted talk that you're doing when is that you said it's coming up in a few weeks

[01:14:54] Ron: well first of all I'm not doing the Ted talk although you're not doing a Ted talk I did a Ted talk in Europe I did a European Ted talk oh a number of years ago I can't remember what year it was but at any rate I now am in the audience for the big show

[01:15:09] Suzie: the big show I see and you'll be able to make a lot of connections with folks got you yes

[01:15:14] Ron: and this will be an opportunity in fact I love the system that they have if you really want to know how to pull together a community you ought to look at how Ted Talk does it because all 1,800 of us have written a bio and have written what we're passionate about and what we would like to talk to others about and we've answered those questions and you can review each other and if you find somebody that really excites you with their answers then you create a new network and when there's build in times during the 8 days where you get to network the people that you connected with through their BIOS it's such a beautiful system you know

[01:15:52] Suzie: I think Ron Price might have talked about that in a post or something and I've heard that before and I was not aware that that's what went along with the Ted talks I just knew the Ted talk thing I've never been so you're gonna go be in that when you're talking about a community now that makes more sense to me okay

[01:16:07] Ron: and I've already had messaging with the subgroups before I even leave town about what we're gonna talk about and what we could do one gentleman last night said I've read your research and now I went and found your papers and I think there's a project that we need to do

[01:16:22] Suzie: hey community building if we've got any event planners or organizations you can do that for every like in an organization if they're having an event do the same kind of concept yes really that's right yeah talk about community people need a sense of community and a sense of belonging and talk about acknowledging strengths yes yes yes that that goes along with everything wake up eager let's call wake up eager conferences wake up eager community yes alright so we're closing out this wonderful conversation with you all one actionable step to take today to start becoming the CEO of your brain Carissa you want to kick it off

[01:16:58] Carissa: I think one actionable step and it's a good place to start is just to try to practice when you're having realizing when you're having mindset shifts so practice the awareness component practice noticing what you're feeling in your body when you're shifting in your mind you know if it's an emotional state that's heightened if it's a stressor and then reflect on it you know is it a stressor that you then think about for several hours is it a stressor that maybe could have been managed and you could move on was it something that you just kept thinking about over and over so you were self triggering then for you know several hours throughout the day so just practice that awareness that's the first step that I would say

[01:17:42] Suzie: I love that that's great and you know I've mentioned that we have a segment it'll be coming up at the end of yours where we have Douglas white sharing about well being 2.0 and he's talking about your feelings so this is gonna tie perfectly with that just just pay attention to them and acknowledge them and be aware of them and and I was taking you whether yes you're taking them or they taking you that's wonderful Ron what would be your last bit of advice or to the group

[01:18:10] Ron: well I actually could have said exactly what Carissa said I'll say it a different way I think and this is hard for people to accept but we really do create our own reality and so as a result of doing what Carissa suggested becoming more self aware you can alter that reality I don't know if people are ready for that that's a big step to really acknowledge because we always want to blame we always have excuses we always want to push off the responsibility of being all we can be for various reasons but at the end of the day once you let go of that feeling and become more self aware of what your handicaps are is the only way you can correct them

[01:18:55] Suzie: yes and we don't want to hold back a truth because somebody's not ready to hear it and I believe that that's a truth and the flip side of we create our own reality means oh it sounds good oh it's a little scary oh but I'm in charge I can impact this yes I love that you all are awesome both of you thank you so much for the work you're doing I'm so glad that I have associated with you through TTI Success Insights and appreciate how you're leading the way to the future and I really appreciate you taking time to be on the wake up your workforce podcast I hope you enjoyed our discussion today as much as I did I just found it fascinating and interesting to think about the fact that we can measure the brain and that we can see the impact of the assessments through the brain research it's just an amazing thing so I'm gonna recap some of the highlights of the session like I normally do in every episode and I also have something special in this episode I'm giving away something and it'll be for the first person who reaches out so hang out till the end and I'll I'll tell you what I'm gonna give away and I'll tell you what you might need to do for that but we want to go to our well being 2.0 aligning with your excellence segment that we've been doing this year with recurring guest for 2025 featuring Douglas White he's the CEO of Soul Integrated Athletics where they are building a platform to help leaders in athletics and athletes perform better and he is a wonderful well being coach and he brings his experience as a pitching coach you know working under pressure and being in the director of pitching for the Los Angeles Angels and he had a 17 year career in Major League Baseball including the Houston Astros I have been involved in four time Major League champion and part of two World Series winning teams she's got interesting experience from working under the gun he's a wonderful character and kind person and I love sharing this segment with you and I want to tie it to what we just talked about today to kind of remind you as a little bit of a recap of today Ron and Carissa share that we are controlled by our emotions as much as 95% of the time that our emotions dictate our final outcome and so with the mind Science Center and what Douglas is sharing um we're all dedicated to bringing this insight to light so that we are aware of that we become aware of what we are feeling and realize that our emotions do not have to hijack us that we can manage them and use them to create the life we want let's listen to Douglas this is segment 6 there are ongoing segments and you can hear all the segments together if you go to pricelessprofessional com forward slash well being but let's listen to what Douglas is talking about today

[01:21:52] Douglas: hello everybody Douglas White again segment 6 emotional well being 2.0 aligning with your excellence now if you're just tuning in you gotta go back you gotta listen to the previous five segments cause they're all building on each other I mean you don't have to but I really want you to because what we're doing is building a foundation of what the heck we're trying to do but ultimately I wanted to give you that like what are we ultimately trying to do here with these segments and and really to be honest with you more so in your life what we're trying to do is we're trying to identify and then for lack of a better term eliminate limiting factors in our lives so that we can have the life we want to have we can live the life we want to live but the only way to do that is to be able to identify those limiting factors first and then figure out how to eliminate those that's kind of a rhetorical trick type of statement because you really don't eliminate anything in this world which we're gonna go into here next and so we're still building the foundation because there's some things we want to know to make it easy or easier or simple to be able to identify and eliminate those limiting factors so we can have live be who we want to in this life so physical versus vibrational reality the reason why I'm bringing this up right now cause this is huge foundational work from what we've already been speaking on physical reality most people think they're gonna change their life by simply acting it doing things differently in an action oriented way and in in some ways absolutely that works there's always going to be the action step but here's the deal it's not necessarily what you do it's how you feel about what you're doing so if what you're doing right now is not assisting you it's not helping you're still in the hamster wheel you want to go and re address how am I feeling about what I'm doing for example if you're trying to change something in your life and you're doing it by physical action steps stop for a second touch base with yourselves check in with your emotions how do you feel about the action steps and see where that leaves you because in this world to considerably change your life to really let's say be a new person right or have a new life create new experiences it's about the feeling behind it first the energy behind what it is that you're wanting to change is what is so important because if you don't change the energy behind it the way you're feeling about it you can't permanently change a physical reality it defies the laws of the universe it doesn't work that way so this is more of that foundational work of how do I really get what I want in life how do I identify and eliminate limiting factors in my life first things first I want to know how I feel about them and how I feel about them matters because it's my indicator of what the energy is behind them the the lackful energy the doubts the worries the inner hatred the anger the resentment the guilt the shame the embarrassment whatever it is that's what we want to be working on either in parallel with our physical reality those action steps or we wanna do that work first the vibrational work first the emotional work first and then get into the action steps you could do it either way but just trying to change your physical reality through controlling through action that's gonna be hugely difficult for you okay hope this is helping I love you guys so much bye

[01:26:21] Suzie: so Douglas in his wonderful way is reminding us about if something is not working we need to take a moment and check in so don't keep pushing the the shoulder to the boulder and is kind of what it made me think of and not pay attention to or stop for a moment say how am I feeling about what I'm doing what's the energy behind what what I'm doing and that Doug is reminding us that things are not going to change and that feelings are insight into the energy behind our action so he says feelings Ron and Carissa say emotion they're talking about the same thing and we make decisions 95% of the time um you know are they're controlled by our emotions and so we want to be aware of that and so we've got to decide what we want and then calibrate to it and the only way we can calibrate is not just by our actions but really the driver is our emotions and our energy behind our actions so the calibration is about our emotion and feeling place so appreciate Douglas for another great segment reminder you can listen to all the segments and learn more about Douglas he is a well being coach and he does help athletes so he works with leaders and athletes wonderful person and the link to see all of the videos or they're actually audios or listen to those is priceless professional dot com forward slash well being so now let's go to a little bit about recapping what we talked about today so first off it's amazing to me that we can see our brain I have not done the neuro net thing yet but I would like to do it um but I like that we can see our brain and then we can train it and then change it that's their three step process at the Mind Science Center and it includes our assessments which I love and enjoy that we talked about that with the scans and we can see literally see how we're responding to stress and emotion and that makes us more aware and allows us to take action so I like that they have very very much customized coaching programs that strengthen mental clarity and emotional control and they talked about how the EEG that scan of our brain is like an X ray or a blueprint so fascinating to me emotional regulation is the new superpower so that's why we're talking about it so much this program bridges neuroscience coaching and real world leadership challenges to help people build neural pathways that lead to self regulation and the result is clear decision making who doesn't need that more of that today calmer reactions do you think we need that we've always needed it um but even more important today and out of that comes enhanced productivity I mean all skills that define high performing leaders today so to be a wake up eager leader
[01:29:11] Suzie: we have to be able to be in control of what's happening and to understand when we're emotional what we can do to work through those emotions and use them so that our action is what we intend and we have have the ability to make better decisions the other thing that was really highlighted today is that self awareness fuels sustainable success so whether you're a CEO or an emerging leader growth starts with understanding your emotional responses and biases with measurable before and after brain scans this approach provides tangible proof of the progress which is so helpful and I kept it comparing it to all the fitness stuff that I do but it is it's helpful and it always plays in my mind about how I scored and how I wanna keep keeps me more accountable and it gives me something to celebrate and gives me something to measure same thing here with how we're interacting it's just a it's the future of development and that it reinforces that lasting change comes from the inside out so we have to have self reflection personal responsibility and deliberate mindsets to shifts so just having the scan is not going to make the difference we have to now decide to work on it which they talked about here the most committed you know fitness person has the biggest success same thing with development and the same thing with these brain scans another thing that I found very interesting and thoughtful is that Ron talked about how therapy is most often subjective and abstract and that this whole program is built on science and it's customized to each person that was powerful to me not I'm not dinging therapy I have taken coaches have coaching support and it could be sometimes have been referred to as therapy same thing that you can get support in a lot of different ways but here's a here's a program that's built specifically on science and it is about emotions it's very nice Ying and Yang there I think I like that Carissa talked about how she had personally experienced the difference between being able to recognize and manage her emotions and and that she thought that that was just the way she was that maybe there was a that was just part of her character when she would have emotions and not know what to do with them or you know feel hijacked by them like we all can but now she knows that she can manage her emotions it is not about her character that she has the power to do that how empowering is that and it makes sense to know what is happening in your brain so that we can go from we're unaware to self aware to self regulation and really self management and the clear brain that we talked about here when we started they talked about how hard it is for people to calm and clear their brain when they start you know then it shows up on the scan so I think that would be interesting to see I can imagine what my brain would be like it would be interesting to see I want to point out the initial conversation that I had with Doctor Ron many years ago when they were using the the new brain center at that time for mostly to improve the assessments and so it's a really good interview and he shared a lot about so if you're interested in that and about our assessment piece of it he goes into a lot more detail about that you can go go hear that episode and we'll have it in the show notes that episodes at priceless professional.com forward slash brain and then the show notes for today our for this episode is priceless professional.com forward slash train your brain the quote I shared before Douglas's segment with a well being a segment was that we are controlled by our emotions as much as 95% of the time and that our emotions dictate our final outcome that's staggering we have emotional response to something and then we talk ourselves into it because that's what we've decided then I want to close with the giveaway that I told you about but before that a couple of thoughts I really like what Carissa shared about that what she would put on the billboard is no one thinks like you and the two fold meaning of that one you are special and unique you have special talents you have special insights you have special way of being and you came here with your own unique special talents to use in the world and your own purpose so I'm very passionate about that around wake up eager leaders and wake up eager self wake up eager life knowing what that is and one amazing tool is through the assessment so you can understand what your special talents are and the second meaning of that is we need to understand others perspectives and as we understand others perspectives we understand that people don't think like us they don't behave like this they're not motivated by us they don't have the same talents as us and the sooner you've live that and embody that the more you can tune into others the more you can help them see their strengths I'm always talking about acknowledging that seeing the good in others as you see your talents it's easier and you have the system of TriMetrix to start to understand the framework of how you can talk about strengths and now you have this amazing science that's going to emerge more and more as we move forward through the brain scans see perspectives of others and during our conversation I couldn't remember the quote that I have in my email fully but I I got it here so I wanted to restate it for you it's from Doug Baldwin who is a former football wide receiver for the Seahawks I didn't even really know that I just like the quote apparently he's quite the philosopher in his quotes he's got a hot ton of quotes when I went and looked him up but here's what I have in my email and the reason I have it in my email signature is because of what we just talked about about understanding others perspectives and understanding that you're unique and special and here is the quote
[01:34:54] Suzie: the greatest strategy for any human being is going through their entire lives believing the only perspective that matters is their own so that says to me look at others perspectives see where other people are coming from get into yourself know who you are know you're special and unique build your resilience then the stronger you are there and the stronger you're able to quell and quell emotions manage emotions work the emotions be calm and clear the more you're gonna be able to listen to and understand others perspective so the greatest tragedy is for any human being is going through their entire lives believing the only perspective that matters is their own boy it's a rich life when you're reaching into others lives and seeing the good that they bring even when it's very different from yours now here's my promise from the giveaway I have a hard copy hardback copy of Ron and Carissa's book it's signed by them it's The 5 Science of Self How Personal Insights Create Transformative Impact if you will write a review for us on Apple Podcast and then send me a note that you've done that the first person who does that I will mail you a signed copy of that book it's an excellent book there's personal stories in there there are insights about the 5 Science of self I'm actually sending it to clients and so I have an extra copy that I would like to share with someone and we would love for people to find our podcast put a lot of energy into these episodes because we want them to be a value and meaningful so would you leave a review if not leaving a review how about share this with someone maybe on your app somebody who might like this or find this beneficial or one of our other episodes please tell them about the wake up Eager Workforce podcast and lastly wanna make sure you can find the show notes for this episode today it's priceless professional dot com forward slash train your brain all right I'm excited we've got an interesting guest next I'll keep it a secret as who it is join us on our next episode at Wake Up Eager Workforce com and go forward today be good to yourself remember your strengths and your talents see the good in others connect with others give to yourself give to others fill your tank too fill their tank and create a wake up bigger life

[01:37:18] Outro: take care this episode of the Wake up Eager Workforce podcast was brought to you by Priceless Professional Development thank you for tuning in if you enjoyed today's show head over to Priceless professional.com to gain access to more professional development resources