Stefanie Faye: Recent Episodes
Stefanie Faye
What happens when the neuro-buzzwords and theories everyone is using turns out to be incomplete? When we build our explanations on someone else's terminology, we inherit whatever happens to that terminology later. Some of it gets debunked. Some of it...
READ MOREThe post The problem with memorizing brain parts: Why neuroscience explanations age better when they’re based on systems appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Years ago I was a school and family counselor. I had recently finished graduate studies at NYU, where I got to take part in incredible research at the Institute for Prevention Science and at the Phelps Lab for Neuroscience Research*....
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There are entire territories of a person's life that are affected by their mindset. And that mindset will affect whether they'll ever even try what you're suggesting. Specifically a ‘malleability mindset’.. Personality malleability. Can I actually become someone who responds differently, or is this...
READ MOREThe post The Brain’s Malleability Mindset: Two questions that reveal whether someone believes change is possible. appeared first on StefanieFaye.
In a previous article, I wrote that every idea you offer is landing on a nervous system (with a history and in a particular state)... if that system isn’t in a state that allows it to open to new...
READ MOREThe post 3 ways the brain filters information: your ideas need to make it past these filters appeared first on StefanieFaye.
“[...] every human has the built-in power to improve, to change for the better, to significantly restore and often to recover. Tomorrow, that person you see in the mirror can be a stronger, more capable, livelier, more powerfully centered, and...
READ MOREThe post How to talk about neuroplasticity: Giving language to one of the brain’s greatest strengths. appeared first on StefanieFaye.
In many ways, growth mindset is more neurologically 'accurate' than fixed mindset. A growth mindset reflects the idea that we can build and evolve our abilities and intelligence. This also includes our responses to stress and to other people. A...
READ MOREThe post Fixed mindset has a neuroscience problem: Why neuroscience supports growth more than fixed ability appeared first on StefanieFaye.
There is a quiet intelligence inside you … one that knows how to bend without breaking, to repair what has been ruptured, to return to connection to oneself and others after a disruption. Science calls this resilience: the brain...
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There's a version of "being regulated" that sounds a lot like being untouchable. Calm. Collected. Unshaken. Always able to find the breath, hold the space, stay present no matter what walks through the door. And if...
READ MOREThe post The Neuroscience of the Comeback: if we measure regulation by never getting triggered, we’re measuring the wrong thing appeared first on StefanieFaye.
In a group training I ran recently, I started with a mindful moment. Some people in that room needed to slow down. Others needed the opposite. A little lethargic, a little foggy, and what would actually help them was to...
READ MOREThe post There is no magic state (what our brainwaves tell us) appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Our brain is a prediction machine. It is constantly running models built from its history - and using them to predict and filter data about what's about to happen, and what we're capable of handling. It's efficient.....
READ MOREThe post The Neuroscience of What’s “Possible” appeared first on StefanieFaye.
I've been writing a lot about mindset lately.. about what a person believes regarding their own capacity to change, and how much that shapes whether anything we offer them takes hold. I'll be talking a bit more about mindset tomorrow...
READ MOREThe post Your Nervous System Is Already Teaching: appeared first on StefanieFaye.
For the past 18 years, I have been teaching the neuroscience of growth mindset to audiences all over the world. I've developed curriculum for non-profits, international organizations and schools, all to help more people understand the power of the human...
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There's a difference between knowing the words and knowing the mechanism. Many of us have collected vocabulary about our internal states. ‘Dopamine menus’. ‘Dorsal vagal shutdowns’. Acronyms from someone else's framework. These phrases spread because they give us something to...
READ MOREThe post Why Mechanisms Beat Memorized Neuro-Words: Nervous systems don’t always follow acronyms appeared first on StefanieFaye.
"Emotions and the feelings are not a luxury, they are a means of communicating our states of mind to others. But they are also a way of guiding our own judgments and decisions. Emotions bring the body into the loop...
READ MOREThe post The safest place your nervous system can return to appeared first on StefanieFaye.
You didn't learn to walk by getting it right. You fell. Over and over. And your brain treated every fall as data... fuel for the next attempt. In many ways, you were born with a growth mindset. Then your...
READ MOREThe post Your brain was born with a growth mindset: What happened to it… and how to get it back. appeared first on StefanieFaye.
The Future of Leadership Is Embodied Systems Thinking The leaders who will guide us through complexity, polarization, and problems that seem to repeat themselves, are the ones learning to work with the biology of how humans actually perceive, connect, and...
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Notice what happens the next time you get something wrong. Is there a voice that helps you stay open and keep trying? Or one that makes you want to shut down... or give up? Developmental neuroscience (one of my 'favorite'...
READ MOREThe post The Neuroscience of the Inner Critic: The way you talk to yourself has a history. appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Within about 100 milliseconds of making a mistake, brains show a burst of electrical activity. Before a person consciously registers "I got that wrong," their error-monitoring systems have already flagged the mismatch between what they predicted and what actually happened....
READ MOREThe post Why mistakes sometimes build the brain, and sometimes don’t: how “failure” affects the brain appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Many of us have heard, or said, the words “calm down”. We use it as a way to try to help someone who is dysregulated. But lets take a look at what "calm down" actually asks of the brain. ...
READ MOREThe post The hidden nervous system signal of “You’re too much right now.”: what “calm down” actually asks of the brain appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Humanity is at a threshold. We have more information about how to ‘live life to the fullest’ than any generation before us... and yet more people than ever still feel stuck. Some don't realize there's a better way...
READ MOREThe post A biological explanation of HOPE… and the one ingredient hope alone can’t give you appeared first on StefanieFaye.
"Breakthroughs come when people learn how to take the time to stop and examine their assumptions." Peter M. Senge Why Your Nervous System Matters More Than You Think Our words matter. But so do our: facial expressions, tone of...
READ MOREThe post Every nervous system leaves a trace: what is yours contributing to the field appeared first on StefanieFaye.
There's a moment, right before we reach for the answer, when something else is available to us. The next time a new idea unsettles you, or you notice yourself wanting the tool, the formula, the instruction for what to do...
READ MOREThe post The brain activity that comes before an answer: Your neural circuitry needs something before it needs a solution… appeared first on StefanieFaye.
There was a time when simply saying, "Believe in yourself," was enough. Today, we live in a world with unprecedented access to information. Within seconds, we can ask AI almost any question. We can read research papers, listen to podcasts,...
READ MOREThe post The neuroscience of why “believe in yourself” stops working: Prediction, plasticity, and what happens when people finally understand why appeared first on StefanieFaye.
There are moments in every person's life that quietly divide time into two parts. Before they believed something... and after they believed something new. Sometimes that moment arrives through a conversation. Sometimes through a teacher, coach, leader, therapist, parent......
READ MOREThe post One micro-signal can rewrite a future: Small signals shape what the brain predicts appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Brains fascinated me long before I studied them. But what actually pulled me into neuroscience was watching a single shift in someone's thinking change the trajectory of an entire life. I wanted to understand what had just happened. What makes...
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When someone says "I can't," the brain is usually offering a prediction. A forecast, drawn from past experience, that feels like truth from the inside. The brain is a forecasting system. Drawing on past experience, it continuously estimates: what's...
READ MOREThe post What the brain is doing when someone says “I can’t” appeared first on StefanieFaye.
This week, many places in the US and in the world are celebrating the idea of independence. There's a quieter, inner freedom worth naming, too. The freedom to revise what your brain believes is possible. Every prediction the brain...
READ MOREThe post The neuroscience underneath growth mindset: a quieter, deeper form of independence and power appeared first on StefanieFaye.
We often reach for words from someone else's theory. Dorsal. Ventral. Amygdala. Sympathetic. Growth mindset. We attach them to brain structures and expect them to create understanding. But a word doesn't become meaningful simply because someone can repeat it. ...
READ MOREThe post The neuroscience of systems thinking: Why memorizing brain words isn’t the same as understanding the nervous system. appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Meditation. Breathwork. Somatics. Mindfulness. Emotional regulation. These things are changing people's lives every day. But when they're explained vaguely, people categorize them as "soft skills" instead of biologically meaningful transformation. Here's what makes the difference: Give someone a technique and...
READ MOREThe post The neuroscience behind “soft skills”: The operating system underneath change appeared first on StefanieFaye.
The Brain Signature of Surrender There's a moment I come back to again and again, that comes from faciliating transformational journeys for people during intensive retreats a few years ago for a wellknown company. Our clients (often CEO's,...
READ MOREThe post The Neuroscience of Letting Go: What happens in the brain when you stop trying to control what’s next? appeared first on StefanieFaye.
When the world shakes, return The world keeps asking us to react. Every hour brings something new to absorb, answer, brace against. The nervous system reads it all as a signal to mobilize. There is another option. Quieter, and far...
READ MOREThe post When the world shakes, regulate and return: a nervous system invitation toward coherence appeared first on StefanieFaye.
“Your brain – every brain – is a work in progress. It is ‘plastic.’ From the day we’re born to the day we die, it continuously revises and remodels, improving or slowly declining, as a function of how we use...
READ MOREThe post Neuroscience as the language that makes “possible” real appeared first on StefanieFaye.
When something doesn't work .. a message ignored, a person who won't engage, an idea that goes nowhere .. most of us read it as failure. The brain reads it that way too. And there's a reason. Deep in the...
READ MOREThe post Humans call this stubbornness. the brain calls it something else appeared first on StefanieFaye.
You've probably heard the tiger metaphor. The one where our nervous system reacts as if a tiger is chasing us—even when no tiger is anywhere close. It's useful. But for many of the practitioners and clients I work...
READ MOREThe post why ‘being chased by a tiger’ is not a good enough metaphor: our anxious, social nervous system appeared first on StefanieFaye.
What if resilience is less about a "right strategy" and more about a different kind of listening? A listening that tunes into the stream of intelligence your body is already broadcasting. The signal you're already sending Vibrational availability is...
READ MOREThe post Vibrational Availability: Resilience as a different kind of listening appeared first on StefanieFaye.
AI is uncommonly good at words. It can offer you ten ways to describe a state. It can mirror back what you 'kind of' said.. and then sharpen it. When we use it well, it can become a kind of...
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"How are you?" "I'm fine." Such a common phrase we here... it’s also a reflection of an untapped potential we have to regulating ourselves more intentionally. Because "fine" is a stand-in word .. the one we reach for when we...
READ MOREThe post “Fine is not a feeling”: how naming feelings with nuance changes the brain appeared first on StefanieFaye.
There's a moment between feeling and naming that can change our choices for what we do with our feelings. In a previous article (“AI can’t smell the rain”), I talked about the multisensory layers.. the tingle of sweat tracing down...
READ MOREThe post The neuroscience underneath “name it to tame it” appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Every offer for change carries a hidden implication: The way you’re doing things right now isn’t working. Even when we phrase it gently. Even when we wrap it in encouragement. The nervous system still hears the signal underneath:...
READ MOREThe post Why the brain rejects helpful advice: The habenula and why people resist change appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Awareness changes biology. What we can name, we can begin to transform..* When we help ourselves or other people make sense of what they’re feeling, we’re already doing something deeply neurologically significant. Whether it happens in... sessions, workshops,...
READ MOREThe post The neuroscience of noticing our feelings: How awareness changes biology appeared first on StefanieFaye.
If the way you say something falls in line with how someone has already heard you (or someone else say) many times before… you might sense your words ‘going through one ear and out the other’.. (Or bouncing off before...
READ MOREThe post No surprise, no learning: how we earn the brain’s attention appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Most of what we call courage rests on a quieter skill underneath it. Most of what feels like real personal power does too. That skill is discernment. The ability to read what our own system is actually telling us. Without...
READ MOREThe post Bravery has a biology: how the brain learns to move toward appeared first on StefanieFaye.
The brain is an energy-conserving system. When something requires effort and doesn't come with a guaranteed return, it gets tagged as be cautious. That tag often shows up as... yuck. I don't like it. Sometimes that signal is protecting us from...
READ MOREThe post Two kinds of uncomfortable: what the brain can’t tell apart appeared first on StefanieFaye.
There is a signal underneath words. Beneath the identities we try to project. Your nervous system is transmitting constantly: micro-movements, frequencies and rhythms other brains detect before conscious thought catches up. And what neuroscience keeps showing us is this: People...
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Yesterday I wrote about how parts and theory vocabulary can pull a person up and out of their body. Today I want to go into the flip side. What it actually looks like to explain nervous system regulation in...
READ MOREThe post the ‘neuro-words’ that bring people back into their bodies appeared first on StefanieFaye.
There's a pattern I keep noticing. People come into the coaching, learning, personal growth space for real reasons (as learners and leaders). They want to feel more agency over their desired states and experiences. Part of this...
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Do your words match what you really want to say, and what you want others to hear? There is a layer under belief. Under culture. Where every nervous system already carries its own intelligence. Think back...
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Human nervous systems are constantly teaching each other what to expect from the world. Safety or vigilance. Openness or defensiveness. Curiosity or contraction. And most of that communication happens long before conscious thought catches up. Maybe the deeper question isn’t:...
READ MOREThe post Your Nervous System Isn’t Just Yours.. What Are You Contributing to the Field? appeared first on StefanieFaye.
“The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.” — William James, Principles of Psychology (1890) For more than twenty years, I've worked with people who would never call themselves...
READ MOREThe post Nervous system science: 3 things I don’t do to reach people who resist ‘self-help’ appeared first on StefanieFaye.
This week I presented to several groups of 4th graders (part of career week presentations I was honored to share with my family) and I got to spend the morning talking about brains. Kids ask the best questions :-) ...
READ MOREThe post A question from a 4th grader I keep thinking about: The eye-brain link that shifts your nervous system in seconds. appeared first on StefanieFaye.
The brain is an energy-conserving system. Something to understand and reflect on - for ourselves and those we interact with, is that.. Before willpower. Before motivation. Before any conversation about discipline or commitment… The brain is always...
READ MOREThe post The neuroscience of why change is so hard: metabolic math for the brain appeared first on StefanieFaye.
We are vibrational beings. At every moment, we are transmitting frequencies and vibrations that reflect our internal state, whether we realize it or not. You've felt this. The teacher who walks into a classroom and the room settles. The leader...
READ MOREThe post Vibrational Beings: your nervous system as a bio-collective contribution appeared first on StefanieFaye.
"Feelings can annoy or delight us, but that is not what they are for […]. Feelings are for life regulation, providers of information concerning basic homeostasis or the social condition of our lives." -Antonio Damasio, The Strange Order of Things...
READ MOREThe post Mixed, Messy Feelings: Your brain isn’t confused. It’s computing. appeared first on StefanieFaye.
A lot of self-help and nervous system advice is designed for conditions that don’t exist in real life. A quiet room. Time you don’t actually have. Space to step away, reset, come back. But regulation isn’t tested there. It’s tested...
READ MOREThe post How one nervous system shifts an entire room appeared first on StefanieFaye.
There are not many people, right now, walking through their day thinking about how to help another human being feel a new sense of well-being and strength. That orientation is rare. And it is what humanity needs more than almost...
READ MOREThe post You are the rare place: the science of the frequency you carry into this world appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Most of the humans on this planet have not built nervous system regulation to its full potential. We're not born with that architecture. Humans develop the capacity to regulate through attuned, responsive relationships. What you might have guessed is...
READ MOREThe post A biological address for the “soft skills” you already teach appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Self-regulation is not something we are born with. Many of us learned the opposite. Our world and the people around us told us (even if not explicitly)... that if we try hard enough, and grow up enough, and pay enough...
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There is a threshold the nervous system uses to decide whether information is worth attending to. … for a lot of people, in a lot of rooms, positive framing doesn't clear that threshold. Not because they don't want change. ...
READ MOREThe post Start in the Shadow: The dark side of the nervous system – and why it’s often the most powerful place to begin appeared first on StefanieFaye.
What happens after we stumble depends on what our brain was aiming for before we started. In a previous article, we met the habenula — the structure that registers lower-than-expected rewards (disappointment) and socio-evaluative threat, and begins to close...
READ MOREThe post Permission for Imperfection — Habenula Part 2: What Your Brain Does Differently When You’re Allowed to Be Wrong appeared first on StefanieFaye.
"Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable." -Fred Rogers "Name it to tame it" -Dan Siegel) The neuroscience behind these ideas is real: Putting words to emotional states reduces the intensity of...
READ MOREThe post Name it to Tame it: The Brain Sequence That Regulates appeared first on StefanieFaye.
What Regulation Is Actually Teaching You When you begin to understand your own system — not just manage it, but genuinely know it — something subtle shifts in how you move through the world. You start to recognize the moments...
READ MOREThe post The Inner System Work That Moves the World appeared first on StefanieFaye.
There's a moment that can feel so uncomfortable for many of us... That feeling of a wall going up. Of not being able to reach someone even though you are right there in front of them... sharing something you genuinely...
READ MOREThe post Your brain isn’t looking for the truth (it’s looking for something else) appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Your Brain Is Running a Cost-Benefit Analysis on Every Idea You Share And so is the brain of every person you're trying to reach The brain doesn't evaluate new information neutrally. And understanding the neuro-mechanics of this can be liberating...
READ MOREThe post The Brain Is a Prediction Machine, Not a Truth-Seeker appeared first on StefanieFaye.
The brain did not evolve to function in isolation. It evolved as a social organ.. shaped by and dependent on the input of other nervous systems. Its highest-order capacities — creativity, complex problem-solving, perspective-taking, genuine learning... are not solo performances....
READ MOREThe post What happens when brains synchronize: collective intelligence isn’t just an abstract idea appeared first on StefanieFaye.
There's a version of "being regulated" that sounds a lot like being untouchable. Calm. Collected. Unshaken. Always able to find the breath, hold the space, stay present no matter what walks through the door. And if you've spent any time...
READ MOREThe post What if dysregulation is the doorway? appeared first on StefanieFaye.
There's a moment many of us know well. You try something. You show up. You put something that matters to youout there.. . a conversation, a project, an idea you believed in. And the response you were hoping for... doesn't...
READ MOREThe post The Habenula: Your brain’s disappointment and fear of failure system appeared first on StefanieFaye.
The moment someone is actually with you — present, trusting, willing to move — what happens next is determined entirely by the state of their nervous system. Not their motivation. Not their intelligence. Not how much they want to change....
READ MOREThe post A dysregulated nervous system cannot learn the way we want it to. appeared first on StefanieFaye.
We're working inside a collectively dysregulated nervous system. This means that: we're not just being heard or not heard. We're being filtered through: – threat detection – identity protection – and a brain trying to conserve energy at...
READ MOREThe post We’re working inside a collectively dysregulated nervous system. appeared first on StefanieFaye.
“Your brain - every brain - is a work in progress. It is 'plastic.' From the day we're born to the day we die, it continuously revises and remodels, improving or slowly declining, as a function of how we use...
READ MOREThe post Mastering the Art of Inner Intelligence appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Many coaches, mindfulness teachers, and facilitators believe: “If I give my clients the right tools… their wellbeing and performance will improve.” And to a point—that’s true. But here’s what I see happening over and over again: Your...
READ MOREThe post Where most nervous system work quietly breaks down… appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Maturity, from a systems perspective, is about complexity. About the range and repertoire of strategies a system has developed for meeting its own needs — including the need to regulate its own internal states. A system with lower complexity is...
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There is a kind of intelligence you cannot measure with a test. You see it in how a person meets a hard moment. Some people tense, rush, or shut down. Others stay open enough to feel what is happening...
READ MOREThe post Building Cognitive Flexibility: Three small practices that expand your range. appeared first on StefanieFaye.
There is a quiet intelligence inside you —one that knows how to bend without breaking, to repair what has been strained, to return to center after disruption. Science calls this resilience—the brain and body’s ability to adapt, regulate, and rewire in...
READ MOREThe post There is a quiet intelligence inside you and something much older at work appeared first on StefanieFaye.
There is a quality of mind that reflects an extraordinary level of intelligence.. not one that is aquired by reading books or collecting information... ... something closer to agility, adaptiveness and flexiblity. An ability to hold what's happening without being...
READ MOREThe post 3 ways to increase cognitive flexibility (that actually work) appeared first on StefanieFaye.
As counter-intuitive as this might seem (and you may have heard this before, but it's worth repeating)... Resilient systems aren't built from smooth sailing... They are strengthened and fortified through rupture-and-repair. Remember that you are a system (a...
READ MOREThe post Brains don’t grow in easy moments appeared first on StefanieFaye.
we are walking nervous systems with histories... The people you’re trying to reach are not arriving as a blank slate. They arrive already managing something... unfinished/ dysregulating conversations, background stress, subtle defensiveness, the quiet effort of holding their lives together....
READ MOREThe post Before trust, the nervous system asks something older appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Your nervous system is scanning for threats you don't know you're sending It's not just physical danger. The threat map goes much deeper than that. Here's something that changes how you hold space, lead a room, or teach anything...
READ MOREThe post Your nervous system is scanning for threats you don’t know you’re sending appeared first on StefanieFaye.
“We are part of a network that goes far beyond the few days of our lives and the few square meters that we tread.” -Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time What are you transmitting right now? Not what you're...
READ MOREThe post You enter every room twice: the brain’s danger double scan appeared first on StefanieFaye.
“breakthroughs come when people learn how to take the time to stop and examine their assumptions.” -Peter Senge, Presence The reason why many attempts to help others emotionally regulate doesn't work is not necessarily the tools or techniques. It's...
READ MOREThe post Fight-Flight-Freeze-Fawn is incomplete: Here’s what’s actually true. appeared first on StefanieFaye.
“Feelings can annoy or delight us, but that is not what they are for […]. Feelings are for life regulation, providers of information concerning basic homeostasis or the social condition of our lives.” -Antonio Damasio, The Strange Order of Things
The post Why “calm down” can backfire — and what actually regulates the brain appeared first on StefanieFaye.
We are Vibrational Beings. I've been measuring that — quite literally — for almost twenty years. Brainwaves, neurophysiology, the frequencies that are projected and detected by other nervous systems whether we realize it or now. What the science keeps showing,...
READ MOREThe post We are vibrational beings: Your nervous system changes the field. (whether you’re conscious of it or not) appeared first on StefanieFaye.
A neurological truth: Many helping professionals are exhausting themselves. They’re told: Post more. Show up more. Be visible. But amplifying your message without RESONANCE is energy-inefficient. If you are not clear on: – The lived visceral experience...
READ MOREThe post Buy-in is Biological: Your expertise transmits vibrational intelligence to the nervous systems around you appeared first on StefanieFaye.
It happened again. There you were, feeling all right about life, and BAM — that thing you thought was going well didn’t turn out the way you’d hoped. It feels like your vision for happiness is crumbling yet again. You...
READ MOREThe post Connective Clarity: The Neuroscience of Trusting Your Quietest Voice appeared first on StefanieFaye.
A neuroscience insight that might surprise you: When someone isn't buying into what we are trying to help them with, teach them or convince them of… our instinct is to explain harder. Add more arguments. Give them more reasons to...
READ MOREThe post What Happens in the Nervous System Before Someone Decides to Listen and Learn from You appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Here's what's emerging in the science of intelligence: it's not located in a single cell or a single brilliant mind. It lives in the network. The human species functions like a super-organism — each person a node, each unique perspective...
READ MOREThe post Fewer nodes, less intelligence: How Systems Thinking Expands Our Collective Genius appeared first on StefanieFaye.
The Neuroscience of Feeling Safe Enough to Change Trust isn't a strategy. It's a state. And right now, that state is harder to access than ever. We're living through a period of collective dysregulation—chronic uncertainty, polarization, systems that feel unstable,...
READ MOREThe post Trust isn’t a strategy – it’s a frequency. And we need it to learn and change. appeared first on StefanieFaye.
When Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Brain Science: Returning to What We Already Know We're drowning in information. Collecting data. Consuming content. And yet, somehow, we're starving for wisdom. There's a particular frequency—I sometimes call it home—where the noise quiets and...
READ MOREThe post When Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Brain Science w Dr. Aldrich Chan appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Your nervous system isn't just yours. Every signal you send—through your voice, your posture, the micro-expressions that flicker across your face—is being picked up by the nervous systems around you. Your tone activates their auditory processing. Your facial movements are...
READ MOREThe post Your Nervous System Isn’t Just Yours: the science of collective dysregulation and what to do about it appeared first on StefanieFaye.
The world is dysregulated. Collective nervous systems on high alert. And you—the coach, healer, leader, educator devoted to helping people transform—you feel it. You know your work matters. But here’s the truth: without buy-in, even your best work won’t change anything....
READ MOREThe post New Master Class! Science of Buy-In, Nervous System Leadership and Human Transformation appeared first on StefanieFaye.
There's a lot happening in the world right now. You can feel it—in the news, in conversations, in the tension that seems to hum beneath even ordinary interactions. Whether it's in-person exchanges or the charged landscape of online spaces, many...
READ MOREThe post In times of collective stress, your brain runs on old algorithms appeared first on StefanieFaye.
How many browser tabs do you have open right now about something you want to 'eventually integrate' into your work? How many half-finished courses live in your login history? How many podcasts have you listened to where you thought 'that...
READ MOREThe post Reimagining Human Flourishing appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Have you ever noticed how some people seem to shift and adapt with ease, finding new solutions when life throws a curveball, while others get stuck in the same old patterns? What if the difference isn’t just personality, but a...
READ MOREThe post The Neuroscience of Cognitive Flexibility: Your Gateway to Personal Growth appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Most of us walk through the world believing we're responding to what's actually happening. But we're not. We're responding to a model—a statistical best guess shaped by our history, our nervous system, and even the people who raised us. Here's...
READ MOREThe post Your brain doesn’t do reality – it does probability: And this is how we update the code. appeared first on StefanieFaye.
The Strength That Was Never Missing There's a particular kind of anticipation that arrives as we approach the weekend — and for some of us, the holidays. The week's noise begins to settle. The urgency softens- or sometimes transfers to...
READ MOREThe post How uncertainty strengthens your nervous system: complexity without collapsing appeared first on StefanieFaye.
The seduction of certainty. There's something comforting about knowing exactly how we feel. I love this. I hate that. This person is good. That situation is bad. I'm right about this. Certainty feels clean. Efficient. It gives us a clear...
READ MOREThe post Your brain isn’t confused. It’s computing: what neuroscience reveals about mixed, messy feelings appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Gratitude - and all of its related rituals - can come across as surface level and performative. But when we can explore it through the lens of neuroscience, we see that it is not just about some frivolous ‘feel-good’...
READ MOREThe post The Neuroscience of Thanksgiving: regulation beyond the ritual appeared first on StefanieFaye.
What if resilience is less about executing the 'right strategy', and more about a different kind of listening? ... a kind of listing that tunes into the continuous stream of intelligence your body is already broadcasting? I call this type...
READ MOREThe post Your Nervous System’s Secret Language: 5 Neuro-Tools for Vibrational Intelligence appeared first on StefanieFaye.
There’s a story we’ve been told about emotional regulation that doesn't quite match reality. Somewhere along the way, the narrative became about finding the technique—the breathing pattern, the grounding exercise, the magic formula that would keep us cool, calm, and...
READ MOREThe post The Myth of “Acceptable Feelings” (and the science to debunk it) appeared first on StefanieFaye.
We are living in an age of hyper-connection that can lead to dysregulating disconnection—from ourselves, from each other, and from the innate wisdom our nervous systems carry. Our ability as a learning, teaching and wisdom-sharing species means that we can...
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Information Overload: The Wisdom to Ask Why We Consume We are drowning in information. Every scroll, every notification, every breaking news alert tells us that if we pay attention to them, we’ll be ‘more informed’. But somewhere within ‘being informed’...
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The world is asking a question right now... Who will help us access our collective intelligence? Who will model what it looks like to trust inner wisdom while staying deeply connected? Who will facilitate the shift from...
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What is the difference between temporary change and transformation? It’s not another technique. It’s not 5 quick tips. And it’s not about working harder. True, authentic and lasting transformation lies in three interconnected dimensions: Mindset - the neuromechanics...
READ MOREThe post Why Human Resilience Needs Neuroscience (And Why Neuroscience Needs You) appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Resilience isn't built by staying calm. Resilience also doesn't happen by following a script or filling out a worksheet. It's built through rupture, repair, and range. It's about in-the-moment-flexibility, adaptation, and widening our repertoire of strategies and scenarios of what we can handle. I love leading research teams on enhancing human performance and resilience. It helps us get clear about what we...
READ MOREThe post Resilience isn’t built by staying calm: how your brain-body actually heals appeared first on StefanieFaye.
The beliefs we absorb from the people around us, and the language we use to describe our inner world all impact not only our mindset, but our nervous system state. The Science of Mindset + Nervous System Wisdom When...
READ MOREThe post Why Nervous System Wisdom is Key to Real Change (Not Just Positive Thinking) appeared first on StefanieFaye.
The body is not just a vehicle for our work, but the stage where every mindset shift becomes real. When we use the word 'mindset' we leave out the massive importance and intelligence of the body. A mindset shift is...
READ MOREThe post Mindset Is Not Just in Your Head: Powerful Shifts Bridge Brain and Body appeared first on StefanieFaye.
In the most recent Mindset Neuroscience workshop, we talked about helping ourselves and others expand into a Mindset not only of Neurobiological Competence, but into elevating Our Neurobiological Legacy. We have a chance, as humans on the planet right now,...
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You can't teach Growth Mindset only with words. This is because growth mindset is a 'concept'. A concept is something abstract, like ‘passion' or 'perseverance’. Concepts are a way we try to use words to label experiences, behaviors and feelings....
READ MOREThe post Micro-Signals of Authenticity: Beware False Growth Mindset appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Beyond the ‘meat’ of the brain… One of my favorite parts of facilitating programs and workshops is the incredible people that come together from all over the world… who join together to learn about the power of the human mind....
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"Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that your are hardly aware of its existence, until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm" -Donella Meadows Our past creates predictions. These predictions form our MINDSET....
READ MOREThe post Do you see what I see? astonishing ways our past distorts reality appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Years ago, when I started teaching students and teachers about neuroplasticity and 'Growth Mindset', I never actually used the phrase Growth Mindset. In fact, I had never even heard of it! In the years that I studied the brain’s plasticity...
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"What a person sees “depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conception experience has taught him to see.” ― Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions No matter what kind of...
READ MOREThe post The Science of Why Mindset Matters: The Lens That Shapes Your Reality appeared first on StefanieFaye.
How does revenge play a role in our world? Neuroscience research shows that its neurological basis plays a deeper, darker role than we might have imagined... “Behavioral studies from around the world confirm that people who hurt (or kill)...
READ MOREThe post How revenge affects our brain and how we can break the cycle w/ Dr. Kimmel appeared first on StefanieFaye.
What if the most transformative breakthroughs in coaching, leadership, and education happen not in isolation, but when we witness each other’s growth in real time? Each year, I am reminded that the most profound shifts occur when we step...
READ MOREThe post The science of collective intelligence and elevated leadership: Free Global Showcase Event appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Fear is not a bad thing. Just like anger and sadness, emotions are windows into different patterns of beliefs, unconscious triggers and thoughts about ourselves and others. When we let ourselves NOTICE our feelings, we have a better chance of choosing if...
READ MOREThe post How fear blocks brains and human progress: 3 powerful patterns we need to know appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Do you have something important to teach others, but they just don’t seem to get it or care? Part of the issue may be that WHAT you’re saying needs to be more compelling, but another issue might be in HOW...
READ MOREThe post Psychological Safety Neuroscience: 5 micro-signals to build trust & influence appeared first on StefanieFaye.
What if the most powerful leaders are not those who control others, but those who have mastered the art of self-regulation? Not only leaders who can regulate themselves, but those who regulate the nervous systems of those around them. By...
READ MOREThe post Super-Regulators: the Science of Self-Regulation Leadership appeared first on StefanieFaye.
We live in a vibrational-relational reality Our relationships with others build up beliefs, ‘cellular memory’, and neural networks that can help our brains become their most ‘human’: adaptive, resilient, creative, brilliant. When relationships are absent, neglectful or abusive, they can...
READ MOREThe post Super-Regulators Neuroscience: how to use relationships to boost brain architecture & self-empowerment appeared first on StefanieFaye.
When you feel a way you don’t like to feel… do you know how to get out of it? For those feelings you really enjoy... do you know how to improve the chances you’ll feel them more often? Emotion regulation...
READ MOREThe post Super-Regulators Neuroscience: the TOP 2 self-regulation skills that will make us better humans appeared first on StefanieFaye.
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The post FREE Event: See how coaches and leaders use neuroscience to elevate their global impact appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Emotion regulation doesn't mean being calm and collected all the time. It's about range and repertoire, and an ability to intentionally shift into a state we prefer. A state that 'feels better'. Feeling better is always relative - if...
READ MOREThe post Super-Regulators: The Science of Self-Regulation and a New Type of Human appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Our past experiences are not simply stored in the brain—they are patterns embedded into the circuitry of our brain-body system. For many people, their history can linger as patterns of dysregulation, stress, or a sense of being "stuck"...
READ MOREThe post Our Brain as a Liberation Technology: how to free our mind from our past appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Many people stay stuck in their head, 'lost in thought'... this can be a useful tool for creating 'neural play and neural replay' for helping us plan, daydream, mind wander, envision and make our next move. (I'm a big fan...
READ MOREThe post Getting out of our heads and into our desired realities with Mind-Brain-BODY Intelligence appeared first on StefanieFaye.
A neuro-spiritual home In a study published in Cerebral Cortex, neuroscientist Lisa Miller and a team of researchers explain how they generated “personally relevant” spiritual experiences in a diverse group of subjects and scanned their brains while these experiences were happening....
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We can use the challenges AI presents as a CALLING. A CALLING TO GO MORE DEEPLY INTO A SPACE WITHIN US.. that space within us that knows when something feels right and good to our entire being. We can learn...
READ MOREThe post To better navigate a world with AI, we must truly get to KNOW OURSELVES as EMBODIED, INTELLIGENT BEINGS appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Memory is not just in the brain. Many of you have heard of the book, The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van der Kolk. The main idea of the book is that memory is not just something contained in...
READ MOREThe post Our Body Keeps the Score, Our Cells ‘Remember’ with Dr. Nikolay Kukushkin appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Memory is not just in the brain. Many of you have heard of the book, The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van der Kolk. The main idea of the book is that memory is not just something contained in...
READ MOREThe post Our Body Keeps the Score, Our Cells ‘Remember’ with Dr. Nikolay Kukushkin appeared first on StefanieFaye.
What does your mind do when it wanders? Perhaps you catch yourself getting 'lost in thought'... moments of daydreaming, wondering, wandering... Do you believe that those 'lapses in attention' are helpful or hindering? Without knowing what the brain is...
READ MOREThe post The Science of How to Build Our Most Powerful Brains w Dr. Immordino-Yang appeared first on StefanieFaye.
“One thing about human intelligence is absolutely certain: it is malleable, meaning it can be changed through exposure to new information or even by looking at what you already know in a new way. There is no limit to what...
READ MOREThe post Tapping into Humanity’s Genius Potential: how neuroscience can inform learning, teaching and education appeared first on StefanieFaye.
“We spend our life monitoring our behavior as well as that of others, and our statistical brain constantly draws inferences about what it observes, literally “making up its mind” as it proceeds. Learning who we are is a statistical deduction...
READ MOREThe post Your limited-data-biased brain: how the people around you shape your reality appeared first on StefanieFaye.
How your EYEBALLS move AFFECT & REFLECT how you think and feel. Your eyeball movements are tied to how you process memories and interpretations of events and stimuli, including past and current SOCIAL INTERACTIONS. HOW AWARE ARE YOU OF YOUR...
READ MOREThe post Embodied Intelligence: how your eye movement reflects & affects how you think and feel appeared first on StefanieFaye.
“[...] humans, people and knowledge are not only objectively significant: they are by far the most significant phenomena in nature – the only ones whose behaviour cannot be understood without understanding everything of fundamental importance.” ― David Deutsch, The Beginning...
READ MOREThe post Artificial Intelligence, Disembodied Wisdom: interview with Dr Mathilde Cerioli appeared first on StefanieFaye.
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” -Khalil Gibran Is it possible to take a painful and negative event from our past, and 're-purpose' it to become an empowering feature...
READ MOREThe post Our collective nervous system: how to bring healing to hidden wounds appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Using the example of being ‘chased by a tiger’ to describe fear doesn’t resonate Many of us hear about the concept of fear, and that we have primitive systems that make us believe we’re being ‘chased by a tiger’ even...
READ MOREThe post The anxious social nervous system: being chased by a tiger metaphors aren’t enough appeared first on StefanieFaye.
Emotion regulation doesn't mean being calm and collected all the time. It's about range and repertoire, and an ability to intentionally shift into a state we prefer. A state that 'feels better'. Feeling better is always relative - if we...
READ MOREThe post Emotion Regulation doesn’t mean being calm and collected all the time – Mini Episode appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
In my interview with Michelle “MACE” Curran, we dive into the neural architecture behind the idea of our inner critic, imposter syndrome, and what it means to live life from a place of striving and opening towards what we desire, rather than from a place of fear of rejection and failure.
We talk specifically about how these systems play out in our pursuit of our passions.
As you think about something you want to improve, achieve, transform… what do you notice about the chatter that goes on inside… does it remind you that you may not be able to pull it off? Or perhaps there’s an image of others looking at you disappointed, indifferent, or amused…
This is a big part of Michelle’s journey, as she dealt with self-doubt and feeling like she didn’t belong in a community that she had initially joined because of her passion and big dreams.
What would your life be like if that voice or those images boosted you up and fueled you to keep showing up as your highest, most evolved, courageous, alive self?
We can activate that inner voice to serve us in those ways, fueled by purpose, intention and faith in our ability to adapt and pivot as needed, even when things are uncertain and rocky.
Learn how we can specifically suppress, switch and engage our inner voice to help us expand towards our most vibrant states of being, service and purpose in this fascinating conversation with Michelle.
———-
Michelle Curran a former United States Air Force (USAF) major and a pilot in the USAF Air Demonstration Squadron, or Thunderbirds. Curran was the lead solo pilot for the Squadron. Curran is the fifth woman to fly with the Thunderbirds, her callsign (or nickname) is "MACE".
The post Suppress, Switch, Engage: The neuro-mechanics of your inner voice and how to fuel your purpose – Season 4 Ep 7 appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Can we stop repeating the past by perceiving reality in a new way? Everything you perceive with your senses, you perceive through a filter that was built in your past. Each one of us has built up neural networks...
READ MOREThe post Can we stop repeating the past by perceiving reality in a new way? appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
“We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it [...] has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present. Trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of...
READ MOREThe post The Neuroscience of Intergenerational Trauma and Healing: Interview with Tim Lewis – Season 4 Ep 6 appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
The only way change occurs is when something NEW activates in the brain-body system. The only way change LASTS is if those new activations happen over and over again. A new activation happens when we move, speak, write, think in...
READ MOREThe post How New Challenges Empower our Nervous System appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Don't limit your thinking by selecting from existing options. Create new ones - even if there is no instruction or pre-approved status. That is the power of the human mind, and why we are Universal Constructors. We can imagine what...
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The mind-brain-body creates algorithms and predictive models by using our PAST to make assumptions about what’s happening NOW. The brain is doing this to be an efficient problem-solver. Algorithms and predictive models provide a logic or series of if-then sequences...
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In order for you to have the impact you are hoping for, the people you are trying to influence need to be WILLING to be influenced by you. How do you increase the chances of this? By building trust and...
READ MOREThe post The science of what it takes to inspire change appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
“What matters is not how things are, but how they interact.“ – Carlo Rovelli, theoretical physicist, in his book, Reality is Not What It Seems Relationships are the key to building our most powerful mind. Our relationships with others build...
READ MOREThe post Relational Minds: Connection as a Neurobiological Imperative to Activating our Most Powerful Potential appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
What is it about those things we know are good for us that we somehow just can’t get ourselves to do? Maybe we have intentions to do something healthy but then we don’t. … or maybe we do start making...
READ MOREThe post The Neuroscience of Feeling Like a Failure: why our brain makes us feel like giving up and what we can do stop it – Interview with Dr. Kyra Bobinet, Season 4 Ep 5 appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Growth mindset can be applied to more aspects of life than we may currently realize. Many people are familiar with growth mindset as a way of thinking that can help us improve certain skills and talents. What some people...
READ MOREThe post The Science of Growth Mindset Relationships appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
"Resiliency isn’t a set of skills to learn nor is it a list of statements to write out and repeat. Resilience doesn’t come from a script, a worksheet. The idea that we have to force healing down a particular path...
READ MOREThe post How to skyrocket human resilience: range, repertoire, purpose appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
“Emotions and the feelings are not a luxury, they are a means of communicating our states of mind to others. But they are also a way of guiding our own judgments and decisions. Emotions bring the body into the loop...
READ MOREThe post Becoming a better human through emotion regulation: 3 keys to mastering your nervous system appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
“too often people typically spring into action based on what first comes to mind, and thus too often mind… And thus too often, wind up seeing the world through the lens of what they already know.” - Maggie Jackson,...
READ MOREThe post Uncertain: The Science and Wisdom of Being Unsure Season 4 Ep 4 appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
“The patterns of activity of neurons in sensory areas can be altered by patterns of attention. Experience coupled with attention leads to physical changes in the structure and future functioning of the nervous system. This leaves us with a clear physiological...
READ MOREThe post Video: How to re-wire your brain to lower self-doubt and self-criticism appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Remember that as a complex adaptive system, you are an interactive work in progress. Stay open to the possibility of your own growth - know that it happens in increments. Notice micro-evolutions in yourself - those tiny moments where your...
READ MOREThe post How to re-wire your brain? Notice your micro-progress appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
You don’t want to feel like you played small in this life… in all areas of your life. Whether it’s how you figure out the best path for you and your loved ones, or how you nurture the incredible...
READ MOREThe post Don’t Play Small: Discomfort vs Release Thinking appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
“The patterns of activity of neurons in sensory areas can be altered by patterns of attention. Experience coupled with attention leads to physical changes in the structure and future functioning of the nervous system. This leaves us with a clear...
READ MOREThe post Video: How to re-wire your brain to lower self-doubt and self-criticism appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Or are you a coach, leader, educator or consultant who feels like you are not getting the engagement you hope for from your audience (whether it be potential clients, students, teachers, peers, partners or family members)? Maybe you are sharing...
READ MOREThe post How to inspire others to take notice and listen appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Struggle... literally, physically, neuro-biologically, makes us stronger. You may have heard that you should 'love mistakes!' and 'celebrate failure!' But without knowing exactly what 'failure' and mistakes' are - it's hard to get excited about them. We know from research...
READ MOREThe post Mistakes grow your brain appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
When you hear the term ‘trauma-informed’, what does it make you think of? Some people believe that if their work is not specifically related to mental health or an industry that talks about trauma and post-traumatic stress, that the...
READ MOREThe post Being trauma-informed is an act of science-based compassion appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
A few years ago, I spoke at a symposium in Berlin, where I was joined by engineers, neuroscientists, design thinking and creativity researchers from Stanford University, the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design , the Max Planck Institute for Human Development...
READ MOREThe post It’s a tragedy this remarkable skills isn’t taught in schools… appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Do you believe that your EXPERTISE is one of the most important aspects of helping others change and learn? You might think that without it, people won’t listen to what you have to say, and you won’t get a...
READ MOREThe post Your brain is not an isolated entity… appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Next workshop: Tuesday April 9, 7:30-8:45 PM MST Topic: "Use Your Words"... Discover the extraordinary, surprising and LIFE-CHANGING power of the words we hear, internalize and think about. We will look at connections between words and brain functioning, attention problems,...
READ MOREThe post Use your words: the LIFE-CHANGING power of words we hear, speak and think about… appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
“One thing about human intelligence is absolutely certain: it is malleable, meaning it can be changed through exposure to new information or even by looking at what you already know in a new way. There is no limit to what...
READ MOREThe post Before Growth Mindset, Focus on THIS appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Our nervous systems and brain networks are powerfully shaped by experiences that are embodied, visceral, sensory-motor and social. This is the essence of Embodied Social Neuroscience.
In this episode, learn about 5 concrete embodied, neuroscience-supported pillars you can use to get better at honing the incredible power of the human mind-brain-body system. We look at several biomarkers and physiological pillars of how to combine the extraordinary, beautiful and magnificent power of the human brain with the mechanics of our body to help us achieve a state of deep fulfillment and sense of agency and alignment with our highest potential.
The post Embodied Social Neuroscience: lower anxiety and improve mental wellbeing with these 5 fundamentals appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
You were born with a growth mindset. When you were first learning to speak and walk, you fell and fumbled over and over again. But there was a part of you - an algorithm - that understood that this was...
READ MOREThe post You were born with a growth mindset. Then something happened. appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
I often get asked ‘what is a mindset in terms of what is happening inside the brain? ‘ Mindsets are a set of beliefs and predictions that reflect the activity of brain circuits that are well used and repeated....
READ MOREThe post The neuroscience of growth, mindset: how the past affects your present appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Do you believe that ALL successful coaches have huge social media followings? This is NOT true! Many successful coaches and consultants who attract dream projects and clients don't spend time appealing to the 'masses', or constantly put content out to...
READ MOREThe post Don’t waste your energy appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Any time you are creating CHANGE... Any time you are doing something that is not the way you have done it before, it means that you are trying to change the future, and not repeat the past. This requires...
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How exactly does growth mindset lead to improved performance and results? How can we explain it from a neurological perspective and apply this to enhance various aspects of our lives? Research has shown that adopting a growth mindset in 3...
READ MOREThe post Three little known ways growth mindset changes your brain and improves your life appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Have you noticed how many coaches out there are bringing neuroscience into their content? If you haven’t, start paying attention. Personal development is entering a new era. Concrete, measurable and tangible measures of how people transform and improve their performance...
READ MOREThe post Neuro-Coach Program appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
🌟🗣️ Are you truly saying what you mean, or are unconscious forces distorting your message? Every interaction includes a symphony of signals, both audible and invisible. Join us as we decode the subtle cues and hidden meanings woven into...
READ MOREThe post Vibrational beings: hidden signals and frequencies of communication – workshop appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” ― Albert Einstein In a world that often values certainty and consistency, it can be hard to admit when we need to change our minds. The concept of changing...
READ MOREThe post Mindstuck: the science of stubbornness and how to change your mind- interview with Michael McQueen Season 4 Ep 2 appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Do you believe that if you could just give the 'right' kind of information, you'd be able to change someone's mind and convince them to make better choices? Unfortunately, this is not generally how influence and mindset shifts happen. In...
READ MOREThe post Mindset Shifts Won’t Happen Without This appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Unlock 3 powerful life improvements with a growth mindset: 1. Expand your toolbelt: replace rigid thinking with flexible solutions. Develop different skills to overcome challenges by exploring options, adapting to change, and seeking creative answers. 2. Boost your outcomes: Shift...
READ MOREThe post Unlock 3 powerful life improvements with a growth mindset: appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Emotions are creations that come from many different systems and thought patterns based on our past experiences. A huge factor that plays into our emotional experience is our 'perceived ability to cope'. The less we feel we can cope...
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When we connect with others who believe in our power and brilliance, this helps us remember an internal guiding force within ourselves. In my experience in counseling and coaching, I have seen two forces that help pull someone out of...
READ MOREThe post The non-negotiable power of attachment and safe relationships appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Are you feeling overwhelmed with challenges and uncertainties with everything happening in the world, and in your life? Understanding your MINDSET can help you access heightened levels of growth and healing. ❤️🩹 Growth mindset emphasizes NEUROPLASTICITY: that we are...
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Growth mindset is not all about positivity and cheerleading. Some people think that the idea of adopting a new mindset means we should accept our situation, even if it is undesirable, and simply power through with our mind, rather than...
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"Whatever the circumstances of a child’s early life, and whatever the history and current state of that child, every human has the built-in power to improve, to change for the better, to significantly restore and often to recover. Tomorrow,...
READ MOREThe post Your brain is a work in progress appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Remember that as a complex adaptive system, you are an interactive work in progress. Stay open to the possibility of your own growth - know that it happens in increments. Notice micro-evolutions in yourself - those tiny moments where...
READ MOREThe post Notice your incremental progress appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Upcoming workshop! The Science of Emotions, Reactions & Abilities to Cope With Life Did you know that our mindset affects our emotions? In this workshop, we will look at the neuromechanics of what is really occurring beneath the surface of...
READ MOREThe post Science of emotions workshop appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
You were born with a growth mindset. When you were first learning to speak and walk, you fell and fumbled over and over again. But there was a part of you - an algorithm - that understood that this was...
READ MOREThe post New Podcast! The Science of Growth Mindset, Healing & Resilience – Season 4 Ep 1 appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Have you ever had a misunderstanding over text? Maybe you texted someone and they didn’t reply right away.. or their answer left you feeling rejected or frustrated? Do you know why you feel the urge to put an exclamation mark...
READ MOREThe post The Biology of Tech-Induced Emptiness & Misunderstanding appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Who and what we surround ourselves with matters. The human experience is filled with complexity, unpredictability and constant challenge. We have the brain architecture and physiology needed to constantly learn and adapt.. but we also need to be aware that...
READ MOREThe post Social brain networks: the hidden reason your brain judges, failure, mistakes, and other people appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
“You can't navigate well in an interconnected, feedback-dominated world unless you take your eyes off short-term events and look for long term behavior and structure.” -Donella Meadows, Systems Thinking: A Primer We all have emotion regulation strategies. We all...
READ MORE The post New Video! Emotion regulation skills won’t work without this appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we never were able to do. Through learning we reperceive the world and our relationship to it. Through learning we extend our capacity to create, to be...
READ MORE The post Human Systems Resilience: New videos, mini-book and learning community! appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
What drives you to do the things you do? When you wake up in the morning, what thoughts or feelings come up and how do they help or hinder you from putting your feet on the floor and starting the...
READ MORE The post Mental health relies on these two key elements appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
"A problem never exists in isolation; it is surrounded by other problems in space and time. The more of the context of a problem that a scientist can comprehend, the greater are his chances of finding a truly adequate solution."...
READ MORE The post Season 3 Ep 12 – Safety, Security and Systems Intelligence appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
After completing all chapters of my book, I'm now heading into intense editing and creating a biomechanics map of systems resilience. I have been loving the writing journey so much. It has pushed me to new levels of stamina...
READ MORE The post Human systems intelligence & biodynamics appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
on the home stretch… I’m doing my best to stay engaged online and also go into the deep space needed for this book. I’m close to the finish line and happy with what I’ve achieved so far…. but with less...
READ MOREThe post Behind the Scenes… appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
https://youtu.be/wMp5rtrcSzI Boundaries, anger and aggression reflect important nervous mechanisms that play a role in relational dynamics and emotional strength. The idea of anger & aggression is controversial. On the one hand, when we don’t have control of it, particularly...
READ MOREThe post New Video! Boundaries, power and why we need them appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning...
READ MOREThe post Season 3 Ep 11: Mission, Endurance and Post-Traumatic Growth – Interview with Two Wolf Foundation appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
AI is a Feedback system that feeds us back what we feed into it. It is one layer out from our experience, meaning that it uses the digital info, 1’s and 0’s- it receives from our symbolic expressions (words &...
READ MOREThe post Depth & dimensions appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Scene from my new neighborhood :-) I am still conserving my cognitive creative energy to bookwriting (and podcast) as best I can right now, but am excited to free up some of that space in a few weeks to...
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Hello! Just wanted to give a quick update as I get into a busy week of moving back to the US and taking care of a few more things here! I recently had an incredible conversation with the founder of...
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As we interact with many systems, we play a role in clearing pathways for brighter futures ahead for ourselves, our loved ones and future generations. How we respond to danger (perceived and real) and WHO we turn to (including...
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So much of what is tied to mental health is tied to the maturation process - the developmental journey of learning how to self-regulate, stay true to one's own integrity, to know one holds value, and to integrate into...
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“When we talk about the big bang or the fabric of space, what we are doing is not a continuation of the free and fantastic stories that humans have told nightly around campfires for hundreds of thousands of years....
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Because of how human brains develop, the only way for maturity to emerge is in the presence of maturity. The most effective way to get this to happen is to start in small circles, so that the ratio of...
READ MOREThe post Season 3 Episode 10 – Education, Maturity & Human Potential appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
How often do you plan for things to not go as planned? Using our mind to think about different plans and actions ahead of time in case of emergencies or negative scenarios is a powerful mental tool. It is for...
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Just registered for the second part of my Wilderness First Responder training. I'm realizing that something that many of us may need to pay attention to is the vulnerability of falling into old patterns when we are surrounded by...
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Sometimes there are no words or on-screen images capable of honoring what we experience. Off camera, beyond the gaze and reactions of others. Life is best enjoyed building connections with people...
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Brains mature in the presence of mature brains. Maturity is one of the most important, and complex, topics of our current time. Maturity is directly related to mental health, and mental health is at the core of all the...
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Learning, adaptation and change are: Enfleshed Embedded Enacted Extended … within the mind-body system for learning. The current education paradigm has not caught up with this fact. What and how we teach children and young people about...
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Long form content. We need it. Our brains need it. The next generation needs it. What do I mean by long form content? Books, audio books, long podcasts, in-depth interviews, as well as courses, workshops, seminars, training classes. Images are...
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brainwaves and book-writing... First I want to send my appreciation to all of you who are sending me the most beautiful emails and insightful, intriguing questions related to my last newsletter and podcast episode! I will dedicate some time...
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It’s Sleep Awareness Week, so I thought I’d share some information about the importance of sleep, dreams and circadian rhythms. Something I have found with many clients, and especially teenagers, is that they are not getting enough sleep. This...
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“To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature has a way of taking my breath away… Being outdoors yesterday made me think of quotes from Ralph Waldo...
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I just sent out a monthly newsletter to email subscribers! If you'd like to receive these (which also include exclusive invites for subscribers, such as an upcoming online Q & A with me), make sure to subscribe using any...
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A quick episode that covers some insights gained over the course of my career in human communication and psychology, child development, teaching, and neuroscience. Highlights include the importance of: mindset, purpose and effective teachers anti-disciplinary thinking and teams...
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Taking a short break from social media (and writing blog articles) for a few days (maybe 3-4, so not long!). If you don't see me online, it's so that I can focus my 'verbal energy' towards book and other...
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"Increased struggle leads to increased structural change in the brain." -Dr. Lara Boyd During a conversation yesterday with a few other beginner jiu jitsu students, someone said, 'the way I'm learning is I keep failing and then noticing...
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Sometimes there are no words or on-screen images capable of honoring what we experience. Off camera, beyond the gaze and reactions of others. Life is best enjoyed with people who inspire...
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One of my workshops for teachers at a French school in Canada (I always started with movement and then an activity for everyone to connect with each other). I went to another Brazilian jiu jitsu class yesterday and absolutely...
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Years ago, I directed programs for kids at the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University. What we understood from experience and research is that no child is born gifted or pre-determined for a specific trajectory. Passion, talent and goals...
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"Science is about reading the world from a gradually widening point of view.” — Carlo Rovelli, world renowned quantum physicist A scientist's mindset is open to questioning what it has learned, what it has been told. It is...
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Had an amazing experience this past weekend connecting with people who came together to celebrate the grand opening of a wonderful coffee shop* in Montana and to learn some basic principles for preparing and dealing with emergencies The conversations...
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https://youtu.be/YAmCdYYPtYs I spent several hours yesterday (as I do almost every day) with people's brainwaves and team meetings about self-regulation strategies. Decided to make a short video with some thoughts and themes emerging through book-writing and working with clients. ...
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As a continuation from a previous post about some favorite travels, I thought I’d share one of those stories… So after traveling on a tiny fishing boat with a couple of friends (where the roof fell off and we...
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The moment I can sense the 'aha' from someone when they see a situation, themselves, or someone else with 'new eyes'... that's a moment I live for. When that person tells me later how that new way of seeing has...
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I’m excited to continue to integrate the past couple of decades of my career experience in the field of neuroscience, mindset, and my extensive world travels and outdoor experiences into a way of contributing new perspectives and models for...
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One of the most common brainwave profiles I’ve seen with clients over the years are related to anxiety. This is often correlated with very fast frequencies (high beta). (see video below) https://youtu.be/uFvyu_A20Yw A neurochemical that I think...
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Sometimes there are no words or on-screen images capable of honoring what we experience. Sink into those spaces. #offscreen #behindthescenes #patience #resilience...
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There is something about coffee shops for me... I love how they bring people together, I love when they are done well. This one had a cute book about making the best coffee at home (Chemex is my favorite at-home...
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When we talk about the importance of coming together with others, who we surround ourselves with, and what we do when we come together matters. It’s not just about connecting and bonding. In fact, the bonding hormone oxytocin has been found...
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“The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.” -Thich Nhat Hanh The quality of presence... how do the micro-signals and rhythms of being...
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“One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone.” ― Shannon L. Alder Listen on Blubrry Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify How we distract ourselves...
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“What is success? To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate the beauty; to...
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"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better." -Albert Einstein Our plan to take a day trip to the mountains yesterday changed due to various circumstances. I was still able to go on a nice...
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Taking the day off computers and phone to head to the mountains for the day. Although I am still very immersed in technology, I try to look for inspiration to continue to build towards my vision of a lifestyle...
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As I was preparing and editing my interview with Kelly Harris of Warriors Heart for my upcoming podcast episode, a theme emerged: ‘perceived ability to cope’. It’s a concept that is very similar to the idea of agency and...
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“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” ― Kahlil Gibran Just as in a physical injury, when we embark on a healing journey, we take into account the...
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In my wilderness first responder training this past weekend, an important task during various emergency scenarios was to figure out the Mechanism of Injury (MOI). Understanding how a person got hurt was important for figuring out further steps for assessing...
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As I began re-writing chapter 5 of my book, I wanted to share some highlights of a few studies. The neurobiology of affiliation - which is tied to interactive regulation - has 2 key components: Biobehavioral Synchrony...
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"It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the...
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A signal-to-noise ratio tells us about the level of signal power compared to the level of noise power. Signal refers to useful information - meaning frequencies and vibrations that are being transmitted that we ‘want’ to detect because...
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The field of psychology and human behavior that emerged out of different schools (the three Viennese schools of psychotherapy, beginning with Freud, then Adler, then Frankl) reveals an evolution from what we can see as humans mature from self-serving...
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One of my favorite ways to learn about people and the world is through stories. We take story-telling for granted in the fast-paced, visual-imagery dominated world of technology. Stories I've been listening to recently have really shown me how...
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The word ‘expedition’ came out of my mouth the other day as I was explaining to a friend that I am attending wilderness first responder training. I didn’t even really know quite what the word meant, but as soon...
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The way forward is found on a path through the wilderness of the head and heart---reason and emotion. Thinking, knowing, understanding. Laurence Gonzales To understand our ability to thrive, adapt, survive and flourish, a deeper of understanding of our...
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"Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the...
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“A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.” – Albert Einstein The idea of preparation is one of the key concepts I’m learning about in partner-based teaching, leadership and facilitation. … not just preparing to succeed but also...
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“A change in purpose changes a system profoundly, even if every element and interconnection remains the same.” ― Donella H. Meadows Your Mind-Brain-Body is more powerful than you’ve been ‘taught’ to think. That was the key message...
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One of my favorite parts of the holidays so far has been listening to people tell stories. It is amazing how much we can learn as we transport ourselves back in time and hear what someone experienced, the details...
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Do you truly believe that growth is possible? That you have the ability to find new ways through whatever it is you’re going through? That one small shift of mindset is the first, critical starting point. Without that shift,...
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Posted this earlier and took it down - but realizing I need to allow myself to put this out there no matter what because it's what's true to me and my heart... When we have a chance to create...
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Thank you to everyone for the beautiful words of support and encouragement I just received from so many people... I was not expecting that! As you all know, I do my best to try to work with what life...
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...there is a lot of trial and error involved as I make mistakes and then try to learn and evolve from them as much as I can. It's not a linear process. It's ups and downs, starts and stops. Putting...
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Transitions have generally been pretty easy for me for some reason. Except this one. Normally when I move, I do it with the goal of settling there for a while. But due to various reasons (including not giving up on...
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Humans are literally, neurophysiologically, 'better together' than alone Attuned, problem-solving teams, partnerships and family units optimize our individual and collective functioning. Affiliative neuroscience shows us that self-attunement, other-attunement and a common-higher purpose are key to optimizing our mental health,...
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Have you ever had the experience of feeling like someone really ‘gets you’? This can take various forms - like being able to share what’s on our mind and the other person holding space for us to explain. It...
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"The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.” – Ben Okri, poet and novelist One of my favorite things to do...
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How we regulate ourselves and deal with social danger, rejection, status, comparison, the need for acceptance are tied to neurochemicals. These neurochemicals are part of who we are and drive many of our behaviors- including constantly seeking external...
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Danger - and how it is dealt with - is the central theme of attachment - and therefore human interaction. Who we turn to and who we have around us during times of uncertainty and threat affect our abilities for information processing and preparing and responding to future events.
The concept of how we regulate ourselves and with others, and how we deal with social danger, rejection, status, comparison, the need for acceptance, and how we diversify our abilities to navigate our neurochemicals are topics we cover in this Episode of the Mindset Neuroscience Podcast, where I interview Loretta Breuning of the Inner Mammal Institute.
In our interview, we explore:
-The neurochemicals associated with how it feels to have social support - and how this differs from social dominance
-The fluctuations of neurochemicals, feelings and behaviors tied to threat, rejection, and constantly seeking external rewards and short-term gratification
-Being more realistic about the ups and downs of all of our neurochemical states, rather than believing we should feel good all the time.
-The biological purposes to the fluctuations and varieties of states we experience and why it’s helpful for us to understand this so we can get better a-t making choices that are good for our mental and physical health
-The life-threatening feelings people experience when it comes to social rejection, and social comparison
-How our brain and body store information about threats, and how this can significantly influence our current reactions to people
-The idea of ‘dopamine droop’ and our constant urge to seek reward and avoid discomfort
"We have inherited a brain that compares itself to others to promote its survival. It creates has a sense of urgency about how it measures up. If you don’t know you are creating this feeling yourself, you think the world is doing it to you. You feel bitter, resentful, and victimized. Instead, you can accept that the people around you are mammals, and you are a mammal too." -Loretta Breuning, Inner Mammal Institute
The post Season 3 Episode 7 – Danger, Attachment and Navigating our Neurochemicals with Loretta Breuning appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
What is your self-talk? Self talk is an internal working model. It’s the activity of brain circuits that are well-used and repeated. Because you were around a small set of people during critical years of brain development, you...
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After spending a day with people's brainwaves yesterday, I was about to wrap up for the evening and was overcome with the sense that it was time to put up another episode so I recorded another portion of one...
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Thought I was figuring stuff out... realizing I have sooo much work still to do. Hoping that being near family for a couple months and helping out my mom will help me in my own process of healing as...
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“The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” – Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms Don't know about you.. but I feel the world needs more opportunities, programs and gatherings where our intention...
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"In one lifetime we can be reborn many times" -yung pueblo A true teacher of healing, resilience and transformation is someone who is able to turn inwards to heal and reflect on themselves, and take compassionate and sincere accountability...
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“The human voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, but it is the most difficult to play." -Richard Strauss The vibrations of your voice affect the world around you. Every letter, every sound of your voice is...
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“We spend our life monitoring our behavior as well as that of others, and our statistical brain constantly draws inferences about what it observes, literally “making up its mind” as it proceeds. Learning who we are is a statistical deduction...
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“Love is at once an affirmation and a transcendence of who we are.” ― Esther Perel “And what is true for human beings is true for every living thing: all organisms require alternating periods of growth and equilibrium. Any person...
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Every season has its benefits… seasons of the earth and the seasons of our life. The winter (at least where i’m from) leads to sense of quieting, deadening, retreating… but it’s not wasted time... it's meant to prepare for...
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German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer used the term the 'hedgehog's dilemma' as a metaphor about the challenges of human intimacy. Although hedgehogs may seek to move closer to one another, they cannot avoid hurting each other with their protective spines....
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"The truth of war is constantly being submerged. But it’s our responsibility to reach for ways to deeply understand these stories, these veterans, before their moral injuries harden into isolation and despair. “ - David Wood The truth of war...
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“Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh* , The Miracle...
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As much as we need to learn how to self-regulate, as mammals we also need safe connections with others in order to restore our systems. It’s part of our oxytocinergic, co-regulating genetic heritage. Every human relationship is therefore a...
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“You possess a kind of inner force that seeks to guide you toward your Life’s Task - what you are meant to accomplish in the time that you have to live..." -Robert Greene, Mastery "In childhood this force was clear...
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“Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together.” ― Anais Nin "Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the...
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Resilient relationships - whether in friendships, intimate partnerships or families - are not about perfection or only positivity. The ruptures within ourselves and our relationships are precisely what our nervous system needs to build a repertoire of strategies that...
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Our earliest experiences in social settings, including family systems, may include dynamics that lead to internal working models that negatively impact our potential. If the people around us don’t believe in us, or give us cues that we are too...
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“Deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. And yet, most people have...
READ MORE The post Deep work, connection, purpose and 5-Dimensional Experience appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
"Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as...
READ MORE The post A life of meaning and long-term vision appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Unity and Individuality When our caregivers first gazed into our eyes and we gazed back at them, we experienced a surge of brain activity, soothing theta waves, opiates and feel-good endorphins. In adults, when there is a strong...
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"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” * ― Leo Tolstoy Listen on Blubrry Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts We are in the most interconnected period that humanity has ever experienced. The...
READ MORE The post Season 3 Episode 5: Why social rejection is so scary – the science of communication, maturity and purpose appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
"The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it." ― Marcus Aurelius Our ability to access a new mindset is a key to our growth and evolution. Because life continues to present us with new challenges and unexpected...
READ MORE The post Free mini-book: Why Change is So Hard (and how to make it easier): Mindset, Discomfort and New Realities appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Learning is a gateway to power and freedom Learning increases our degrees of freedom by giving us new ways to move, communicate and adapt to challenges and capitalize on opportunities. Listen on Blubrry Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple...
READ MORE The post Season 3 Episode 4: Embodied Cognition and Learning: My Interview with Sheila Macrine and Jennifer Fugate appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
“Once again, the world seems to be less about objects than about interactive relationships.” ― Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics Studying human brains while a person is immobile and alone in an mri machine can only get us so...
READ MORE The post Season 3 Ep 3: The socio-biomechanics of resilience, trust and flow appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
"Willpower is more than just a metaphor. Self-control is a finite resource." - Robert Sapolsky, Behave What internal rewards do you have for continuing to strive towards your goals, to create your best life? Book-writing has exposed me to a world...
READ MORE The post The neuroscience of self-control: how expectation and simulations guide you to your desired future appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
To update our algorithms and enhance our brain functioning, there is one key thing we can do: Intentionally add experiences into our weekly routine that engage our sensory-motor systems in ways that are completely unfamiliar to us.
That is the essence of my interview with Jason Knight, director of Alderleaf Wilderness College. In this interview, we discuss:
-Jason’s journey to becoming a wilderness expert and his desire to connect people more deeply with nature and the types of thinking that come with those experiences;
-How people’s mindsets get disrupted when they experience a learning environment that challenges what they are used to;
-How our awareness expands as we spend time in nature: we begin to see allies, tools and individuated beings;
-A truly embodied perspective of empathy: working with natural systems requires us to move out of our self-referential networks and expand into neural territories that recognize how another living organism can perceive the world differently than us;
-High-level pattern recognition: how get the best possible solution and sustainable way of achieving a goal by expanding the space-time horizon and creating maps to see multiple systems working together across long periods of time
The post Season 3 Episode 2 – Interview with Jason Knight: Natural Intelligence and Embodied Mindsets appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
The spectrum of human behavior we see as ranging from inspirational to irritating to horrific are tied to two key mechanisms Self-regulatory systems: neural and behavioral resources that we are NOT born with and must have attachment-based experiences in order...
READ MORE The post Neuroscience of Self-Regulation: 5 Ways to Master Your Nervous System appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
As children, we all seek a secure base. The harbor we know we can return to and rely on, no matter how upset or distressed or emotionally messy we get. As children, it’s not our job to be a secure...
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In this episode, I explore:
-the difference between our autonomic and somatic nervous systems and why knowing the difference gives us power to change
-biomechanisms we use to protect or defend ourselves that are tied to our past and may not be helpful to us in our current situation (as I am learning, these can be hard habits to break)
-how we can experiment with new patterns using skeletal muscles to control our breath, voice, eyes, hands and body within our social interactions
-10 key mechanical adjustments we can make to move in this world in ways that optimize our functioning and sense of fulfillment
-how our hyper-focus on words & devices makes us lose touch with our bodies, with our environment and with all the non-verbal aspects of life
The post Season 3 Episode 1 – Biomechanics of Human Communication and Social Intelligence appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Growth mindset is more neurologically accurate than fixed mindset. A growth mindset reflects the idea that we can build and evolve our abilities and intelligence. A fixed mindset is the idea that we have 'fixed' amounts of intelligence and...
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Anxious thinking is associated with fast brainwaves. The more relaxed you are, the slower your brainwave activity. In this video I show you how to slow your brainwaves so you can access a more relaxed state. I also go into:...
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"Paradigm: the mindset out of which the system - its goals, structures, rules, delays and parameters - arises." -Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems The idea of presenting one thing next to another in order to see both more clearly is...
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What is moral injury, and how can we use it as a path to cognitive flexibility, sense of purpose and forgiveness?
In this episode, we explore the following:
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what is moral injury
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what is morality and how it can be used to improve energy efficiency and resilience of the human species
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how forgiveness and flexibility help us activate highly sophisticated and evolved neural mechanisms
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that brain activations that are different in trauma compared with moral injury
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how the human species is an interconnected network of nodes that requires social signaling for trust and cooperation
The post Season 2 Episode 12 – Moral Injury, Forgiveness and Cognitive Flexibility appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
The best way to get on track to fulfilling your life purpose is to know that there's no 'correct' version of what fulfilling your life's purpose looks like. Many people seem to believe that it looks like what a celebrity...
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Psychic trauma, annihilation anxiety and moral injury reveal fears about how our life and existence is valued by others. Using the example of being ‘chased by a tiger’ to describe fear doesn’t resonate Something that has come to the forefront...
READ MORE The post Moral Injury Part 2: Psychic Trauma and Annihilation Anxieties appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
“The residues of the past and the content of the future tend to be formulated, constructed, and reconstructed in terms of that [traumatic] experience” (Dowling, 1986) Read Moral Injury Part 2: Psychic trauma and annihilation anxieties Read and listen...
READ MORE The post Moral Injury Part 1: Residue from the Past appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Attachment theory is not a 'theory'.. it's a part of our neurophysiological operating system Attachment is a way of seeking proximity to an attachment figure. It’s a biobehavioral adaptation that helps us regulate ourselves and explore new frontiers. This in...
READ MORE The post Season 2 Episode 11 – The Neuroscience of Attachment and Emotion Regulation appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
“The residues of the past and the content of the future tend to be formulated, constructed, and reconstructed in terms of that [traumatic] experience” (Dowling, 1986) Every aspect of our cellular design is to solve a problem. And that...
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Many of us don’t realize how many of our behaviors are automated. We need a certain amount of this automation to free up cognitive processing energy to learn new things, try new behaviors and deal adaptively with new situations. ...
READ MORE The post The science of habit change + my podcast interview with Heidi Sawyer appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Have you ever had the experience of feeling like someone really ‘gets you’? This can take various forms - like being able to share what’s on our mind and the other person holding space for us to explain. It...
READ MORE The post Season 2 Episode 10 – The Science of Feeling Understood appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
What does it mean to react? An important aspect of the word reaction is ‘re’ - which means that it happens again. To re-act is to act again and again in a similar way. In the psychotherapy...
READ MORE The post How to stop overreacting – Part 2 of 2 appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
In this interview, we focus on why learning new ways of being, thinking and reacting can cause discomfort. I share my two 'origin stories' of how I got into the world of neuroplasticity and neuroscience research, and my discoveries of...
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Have you had an argument recently, or an interaction with someone that didn’t go as you hoped it would?
What was your reaction in this situation? Was it anger, defensiveness, or shutting down?
Did you say what you truly wanted to say?
Did you hold back?
Or did you say something hurtful?
Is there something you feel about this situation that you can’t put your finger on why it bothers you so much? Or do you think you know why, but you don’t know how to express it to that person?
In this podcast episode, I go into
-brain-body mechanisms that lead to overreactions
-connecting the dots between your childhood and anxiety, stress, depression and other challenges you may be facing
-A process to help us be less reactive and increase our attentional control during difficult interactions
The post How to stop overreacting – Part 1 of 2 appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Why do systems fall apart or become dysfunctional?
A system can be a family, relationship, community, business, organization, society. The human mind-brain-body is also a system.
One reason dysfunction can happen is related to hierarchy and ‘signal flow’.
Hierarchies exist throughout nature and throughout human society.
Hierarchies are best able to serve the system when there is efficient signal flow from subsystems to the higher levels and vice versa.
We can see dysfunction happen when the highest levels of a hierarchy are
-not serving the goals of the entire system
-have communication channels dominated by a specific subgroup/subsystem
-are blocking or suppressing efficient communication and signal flow from the subsystems
Optimal functioning of a system requires a state of signal flow where all members or nodes feel ‘understood’.
This experience of being understood is at the core of optimal system functioning within human systems. When we don’t feel understood, it means there is a block of signal flow.
This episode covers the idea of hierarchies and signal flow - and what happens when hierarchies don’t serve the goals of the entire system.
In upcoming articles, I’ll be bringing this concept back down to more personal and interpersonal levels.
The post Season 2 Episode 9 – Hierarchies and Signal Flow appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Many of our patterns - whether we want to admit it or not - come from our childhood. It’s hard to get around this fact. This is because when we are young, our brain is specializing its algorithms and...
READ MORE The post The science of self-fulfilling prophecies and why we repeat relationship habits appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Something i see happen quite a bit in the mental health field is that a lot of people are seeking a quick fix and a way to alleviate their symptoms. This is completely understandable, and might be needed in...
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Do you find yourself in a state of mental fog, or not being clear-minded, ‘out of it’? This is something that i hear a lot of people reporting issues with. In the brain maps that I do, i see...
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Growth happens in increments and happens in ways that are often way below the surface
If our sense of success comes from a very specific outcome, then the only chance we have for that neurochemical reward is at the ‘finish line’ so to speak. That means we won’t get hits of it along the way, which can mean we are more likely to give up.
The post How to use neuroscience to build growth mindset appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
In this podcast episode, I talk about something called ‘shifting the burden’. It’s about the topic of what we depend on ourselves for, and what we look to others to help us with. The balance of our dependence on ourselves and others - whether in adaptive maladaptive ways - is based on our first experiences with depending on someone.
Many of us simply don’t know how deeply emotional of a subject this is. It is one of our most primitive, primal CORE-to-the-CORE experiences of being human… a battle between wanting to be independent and self-sufficient, and yet also knowing that one of our deepest desires is to connect in authentic ways with others.
My reflection questions at the end of the episode are about your doubts, desires and dependencies - how they interplay on each other and how they’ve been formed over time - through your experiences with others.. and what they’ve doubted, desired and depended on in their own lives.
I hope you find something in this episode helpful.
The post Season 2 Episode 8 – Shifting the Burden appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Our families are complex adaptive systems. Our relationships are complex adaptive systems. A complex adaptive system is a system where the behavior and trajectories of the nodes/parts/subsystems/people are nonlinear and may not be predictable. This is because the interactions...
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‘Can you fix my kid’s brain?’ asked a woman who ran into me as I was leaving one of my workshops. she was referring to her son’s strong emotional outbursts, especially with his family. And she was also referring to...
READ MORE The post Can neuroscience change behavior? New video and monthly classes! appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
In brainwave patterns that correlate with the experience of anxiety and anxious thinking, we see a higher amount of a very fast brainwave frequency range called high beta (or hibeta, which is about 20-35 hz). Clients and patients...
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There are certain patterns i see in brainwave profiles (that are obtained through quantitative EEG analysis) that are often linked with people who report challenges such as depression and anxiety One of those patterns is asymmetry. What...
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What's the difference between 'normal' and 'natural' behavior? As children, we don’t get to choose what our environment is or what kind of system we are a part of. Since we don’t get to choose, we must...
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If aliens landed and wanted to communicate with us, what kind of team would you assemble and how would you go about communicating with them? What would you do to try to understand them or help them understand us...
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Self-directed neuroplasticity is one of the first topics that drew me in to study neuroscience. One of the most important aspects of it is ‘self-directed’. We can’t help that our brains get built through our experiences and relationships. ...
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We can't change our reactions or behaviors if we don't realize they are being driven by our mindset. We can't change our mindset if we don't realize we have one. A mindset is a 'setting' of our mind. It's...
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When we leave the womb, the first moment of feeling ‘disconnected’ from our place of safety is the loss of all-encompassing warmth. We emerge into a world with air and light and un-muffled sounds. Our main reassurance that we are...
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https://youtu.be/zNWORt7vW3o Every mood, intention and internal state you experience transmits audible and visible signals to others - whether you know it or not. Brain imaging is interesting, but you don't actually ever know what part of your brain is activating...
READ MORE The post What ‘social frequencies’ are you transmitting? appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
I just wanted to send you an update of what's going on behind the scenes here... First - thank you to all of you for sending beautiful messages of understanding and encouragement. The insights I've had over the past...
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Normal is based on historical data. It’s based on what has happened the most often in the past. Our past ‘normal’ can make it easy to not question if there is more that’s possible in terms of wellbeing and a deeper sense of meaning for our life. But what we really, truly, deeply need to understand is that the ‘normal mode’ of consuming and doing the same combination of movements day after day without challenging our brain-body to higher and higher levels of creation and exploration is not NATURAL.
We are: COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS. Our NATURE is to adapt to ever-changing, increasingly difficult and complex situations that involve other complex systems so that our adaptive problem-solving faculties become more honed and finely tuned. Many of our behaviors and patterns are blocking us from tapping into our most natural abilities.
The post Season 2 Episode 7 – Normal versus Natural appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
before i could release the weight of my sadness and pain, I first had to honor its existence -yung pueblo Hello friends, I need to be more personal with you than I usually am. I'm taking a big risk here,...
READ MORE The post Taking time off from my blog/podcast/social media appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
One of my favorite music artists of all time is a French singer named Francis Cabrel. Acoustic guitar* is to me one of the most soothing sounds and the French language does something to me :-) One of my favorite...
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The most dangerous form of human interaction is shame. If some of your past experiences involve feeling shame, it's quite possible that you do not have conscious awareness of where those feelings come from. This is because shame...
READ MORE The post The Shame-Submission Response and Weaponizing the Human Voice appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Season 2 Ep 5 Feb 7.mp3 [00:00:00] Hi, this is Stefanie Faye, and this is season two. Thanks for joining. Welcome to season two, Episode five, Happy 2021. In this episode and the following few episodes, we're going to...
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A mindset shift is a visceral, sensorimotor experience. What does 'visceral' mean? Viscera refers to the soft internal organs of the body, including the lungs, the heart, and the organs of the digestive, excretory, reproductive, and circulatory systems. ...
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When we focus on trying to 'fix' dysregulation without acknowledging how it emerged, we are conveying a message that somehow the anxiety or overreaction just ‘appeared’ because of an imbalance in their brain and that distress, dysregulation and anxiety are...
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Being trauma-informed is an act of science-based compassion. When we understand the neurobiological impacts of trauma, violence and what I call 'sociobiological insults' to our psychological safety - we naturally become more understanding of human pain. We need to discover...
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“We don’t passively forget that something is scary. We must actively learn that it isn’t anymore." - Stanford Neurology professor, Dr. Robert Sapolsky The day a young man I had been counseling told me that, for the first time...
READ MORE The post This is why I chose to study neuroscience appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
As humans, we make 'reasonable' decisions based on the information we have. But we don't have perfect or complete information. Nobel-prize winning economist Herbert Simon calls this Bounded Rationality. And even the information we do have is filtered through our experience-dependent predictions and...
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Freud called it repetition compulsion. Psychotherapists call it 'trauma retention'. It's a tendency we have as humans to 're-enact' a situation from our past - something that is unresolved within us, like a puzzle. We re-enact it in...
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“You can't navigate well in an interconnected, feedback-dominated world unless you take your eyes off short-term events and look for long-term behavior and structure” - Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems Systems change, bounded rationality, burden-shifting, systems traps, intergenerational transmission and...
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Season 2 Ep1 Systems [00:00:23] Imagine that there are 20 desks in a classroom and nothing else. Nobody else, no person. And you close the door to this classroom and nothing is going to enter or leave it. You leave...
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The formation of self-identity and group identity through the lens of hyper-coherent networks, key features of what makes a system resilient. (remember - your brain, your relationships and human society are all systems).
To help systems become more flexible and innovative, we need to understand the mechanisms of change.
A mindset or paradigm shift is one of those mechanisms.
A level higher than that: being able to rise above paradigms altogether*.
This is what can free our mind to experiment with perspectives that are guided by our values - rather than only confirming a narrow field of vision based on our past, which is largely driven by our tribal identity.
The post Season 2 Episode 5 – Resilience, Stability and Hyper-Coherent Networks appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
What seems to be emerging in our understanding of the nature of intelligence is that it is related to collective networks of ‘nodes’ that share information, more than a single cell or node. Here’s a perspective I also see...
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Hello! Just wanted to update you that season 2 of the podcast will continue in 2021. I hope you've had a chance to enjoy Episodes 1-4! I'll be doing some webcasts with the Institute for Organizational Mindfulness in 2021 (where...
READ MORE The post The P.E.A.C.E. Curriculum and taking a break to self-regulate :-) appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
The human species has some pretty spectacular systems built into us to achieve mental, emotional and physiological states that most of us are not even really aware of.
We also have systems and features within us that make us very vulnerable to being influenced and 'programmed' into behavior that is not reflective of our most evolved neural circuitry.
Technology is interfering with and manipulating those systems.
And the more we get to know how technology is interfering with those systems, the more we can get control over our internal state rather than let the tech companies (who do not have the best interests of the human brain and nervous system in mind) hack into our vulnerabilities.
The post Season 2 Episode 4 – Tech Addiction and the Social Dilemna appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
How can we understand our brain in a way that helps us be more patient with the people in our lives? One way is to engage what is called ‘the high road’ of our brain -the more sophisticated, and generally...
READ MORE The post The Neuroscience of Parenting Patience – interview with Mindset Dad appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
What do a viral video and a stampede of animals have in common? It's a mechanism that is also related to 'self-fulfilling prophecies', self-beliefs, anxiety and negative thinking in general. It has to do with something called 'positive feedback'....
READ MORE The post Season 2 Episode 3 – Feedback Loops appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
One of the most powerful ways we can convey our internal state and our intentions to another is through our eyes. Specifically the muscles around our eyes. When we are comfortable and happy, this relaxes the orbital muscles,...
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Our Mind-Brain-Body is a Signal Seeking System We all want to understand how to better navigate our world. The more 'information' we get, the more data our brain has to work with. This gives the mind-brain-body system...
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YOUR PRESENCE MATTERS. I can see it in your eyes. I can see it in how you move and walk. Sometimes you're 'here'. Sometimes you're not. I know when you 'come back' into the present...
READ MORE The post Get you out of your head and focus with these 3 simple moves appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
https://youtu.be/0IbuB3xsgxU What does your hand grasp every time you want to 'feel better'? Is it automatic or are you choosing? Think about various forms of addiction, whether it's drinking, drugs, gambling, online shopping, eating, smoking, video games, social...
READ MORE The post Mindset, micro-movements and super-regulators: My interview with Girl on Fire host Kirsten Franklin appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Are you 'in your head' a lot? In that constant, incessant thinking, chatter, noise? Isn't it exhausting? And then... what do we do? We often try to escape our thoughts by turning to something else - our phone,...
READ MORE The post Your ‘me-me-me network’ (default mode network) and how to keep it from running your life appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
I just finished an interview with a fantastic podcaster, Kirstin Franklin, for her Girl on Fire podcast. We talked about how to ‘get out of our heads’ and find release from anxious thinking, as well as self-regulation and Super-Regulation. I’ll...
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One of the most complex adaptive systems we know of is the brain*. When we are trying to understand a complex system, one of the most important things for us to think about is its function. ...
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"Stop Resisting" goes against the physiological make-up of the human nervous system Here’s why: 1) if a person says "stop resisting" or "stop fighting", it means whoever they’re saying it to is already in a sympathetic nervous system threat...
READ MORE The post A neurobiological take on police brutality appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
https://youtu.be/uwYY8xVX6uw There are different types of danger that we deal with. "tissue-damage danger" and "non-tissue damage" or symbolic danger. In order to not have our immune systems go into overdrive and deplete our resources, we need to know the...
READ MORE The post The science of courage: 3 brain techniques to deal with fear and stress appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
This episode focuses on the idea of systems thinking, and how we can use this 'lens' or paradigm as a way of expanding our thinking so we can see new ideas for solving challenges in our life and in...
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"One thing about human intelligence is absolutely certain: it is malleable, meaning it can be changed through exposure to new information or even by looking at what you already know in a new way. There is no limit to what...
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Welcome to the Growth Mindset Neuroscience Video Series! In this video series, we’re going to look at the neuroscience of how our mindsets get formed, and how we can inspire others to adopt a growth mindset and sense of purpose....
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“Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.” – Bessel Van Der Kolk (this is me many years ago in Ejura,...
READ MORE The post These 5 Micro-Movements are a sign of Trust & Safety – PLUS my interview with Danny Bauer appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
When uncertainty and insecurity increase, these are signs that things we have turned to for stability are ending. This may seem like everything is crashing and collapsing around us. . . . When a point comes where all previous possibilities...
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“What matters is not how things are, but how they interact.“ – Carlo Rovelli, theoretical physicist, in his book, Reality is Not What It Seems Relationships are the key to building our most powerful mind. Our relationships with others build...
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Your brain builds circuitry based on what you ‘feed it’. This can be healthy or unhealthy. Your brain isn’t filtering out ‘bad’ input, or judging whether something is going to help you grow or keep you stuck. It just...
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The human brain depends on experiences to build its most evolved and dynamic circuitry. New experiences push the brain to light up new networks, rather than repeat old ones. The brain thrives on being challenged. It is designed to grow...
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In my guest interview with Andrea Samadi, we discuss: Why applying growth mindset proving to be so difficult—whether in the classroom, workplace, or even in the field of athletics How the brain re-wires itself using myelin and why patterned...
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No two people ever experience reality in the same way: our senses and neural architecture are built up by our own lifetime of unique experiences. Our brain and senses are constantly narrowing down our world. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing: if...
READ MORE The post Season 1 Episode 11 – This is what happens to your brain when you add diversity to your life appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Most growth mindset interventions don’t work because they focus on: changing ‘other people’s’ attitudes rather than on the mindset of the person who is teaching or leading catchphrases & posters rather than relationship & trust specific results, like improving standardized test scores this is literally the...
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https://youtu.be/Ix8o9EiDD3E Humans are the most experience-dependent species that has ever existed on the planet. Our brain depends on its experiences to build itself. Our genes lay a blueprint, but they actually only contain a microscopic amount of...
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"Everyone needs to hear this. Period." -Mikkel, YouTube subscriber "One of the best TedX talks I have ever seen, practical & intellectual, there are even references at the end. Thank you Stefanie!" -Munir Rashid, Leadership Facilitator & Executive...
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"We don't passively forget that something is scary. We actively learn that it isn't anymore." -Robert Sapolsky, Stanford neurobiologist and primatologist https://youtu.be/oRP-HLyyJkU This video is definitely an over-simplification of the concept of stress and fear... it's not meant to...
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“In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them.” – Bessel Van Der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score A couple of years ago, I spoke...
READ MORE The post It’s a tragedy this isn’t taught in schools appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
There are different types of danger that we deal with. "tissue-damage danger" and "non-tissue damage" or symbolic danger. In order to not have our immune systems go into overdrive and deplete our resources, we need to know the difference....
READ MORE The post Three steps to build brain circuits that will help you deal with fear and stress appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
"In order for there to be courage, there needs to be risk. It doesn't take courage to open up the refrigerator." - Seth Godin Can we teach people how to be brave? Can we learn how to be brave?...
READ MORE The post The neuroscience of bravery: 3 keys to build brain circuits for courage and vulnerability appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
In order to teach growth mindset, we need to be sure it’s coming from an authentic place. It seems that much growth mindset teaching is focused on changing the attitudes of others’, rather than looking at how we internalize and...
READ MORE The post Season 1 Episode 9 – How to be more authentic when you teach growth mindset appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
We are the most nurture and experience-dependent species that has ever existed on the planet. This means that our brains are not just hardwired from birth. They are literally, physically, neurologically, moment-by-moment, formed and built by our experiences. ...
READ MORE The post We are the most nurture-dependent species that has ever existed appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Have you ever had a misunderstanding over text? Maybe you texted someone and they didn’t reply right away.. or their answer left you feeling rejected or frustrated? Do you know why you feel the urge to put an exclamation mark...
READ MORE The post Season 1 Episode 8 – Toxic Media: How social media impairs your brain, nervous system and relationship skills appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Earlier studies on fixed vs growth mindset reveal how we build bias and stereotypes. The original wording used by Carol Dweck and colleagues before they popularized ‘fixed versus growth mindset’ was ‘entity’ versus ‘incremental’ mindsets. Dweck’s research (included the idea...
READ MORE The post Season 1 Episode 7 – How fixed mindset leads to bias, stereotype and prejudice appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Humans are the only species that can imagine a reality for themselves that does not yet exist - and then create new circuits to achieve that future reality. We can create a future version of us that is more ideal...
READ MORE The post Why changing our brain is so hard: meet The Dip appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Sound may be the most important sense we have for learning as well as for detecting others emotions. The human ability to hear ‘just noticeable differences’ is significantly more powerful than what our eyes are able to detect...
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In part 2 of my interview with Maria, we do a deep dive on the four essential elements of growth mindset development. We also discuss the 3-step process we can follow daily to develop a growth mindset at any age....
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In this first part of our discussion, we explore my learning journey and why I decided to study psychology and neuroscience. We also talk about how experience-dependent learning helps us adopt a growth mindset. Later, we discuss why even identical...
READ MORE The post Neuroscience of Growth Mindset – my interview with Maria Xenidou (part 1) appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
“Feelings can annoy or delight us, but that is not what they are for […]. Feelings are for life regulation, providers of information concerning basic homeostasis or the social condition of our lives.” -Antonio Damasio, The Strange Order of Things...
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Summary: In this episode, we look at how neuroscience can help us explain: why so many people react to life unconsciously (not ‘on purpose’). Understanding this helps us get to the root of our issues, instead of repeating our reactions...
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Fear is necessary for keeping us alive. Unfortunately, because humans live in a very metaphorical and symbol-based reality (using 'sophisticated grunting' as language, and words as symbols), our fear system can sometimes make us act as though our life is...
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There's a lot of 'old science' out there. Stuff we humans used to believe that has been de-bunked. Things like... 'humans are more complex than other species, which means we have more genes.' Before the Human Genome Project was completed...
READ MORE The post Season 1 Episode 3 – The science most people keep using is wrong appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
The Mindset Neuroscience 2019 Reading List for Enhancing Human Potential These books and articles changed me. Everything listed here has had a profound effect on my understanding of the world and my role in it. These authors, researchers and scientists...
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Are we better at 'hearing emotions' than seeing them? With society's current amount of time spent looking at screens, we are using our eyes to a degree that is out of proportion from our other senses. The other issue is...
READ MORE The post Are we better at ‘hearing emotions’ than seeing them? appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Understanding Neuroplasticity is Today's Moral Imperative: 5 MUST-Read Books for 2019 We are the most nurture-dependent species that has ever existed on the planet. This means that our brains are not just hardwired from birth. They are literally, physically,...
READ MORE The post Understanding Neuroplasticity is Today’s Moral Imperative: 5 Must-Read Books for 2019 appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
"It's not merely that we can't be loving or creative when we're scared; we can't heal." -Stephen Porges In order for us to access our most evolved neural and behavioral resources, we must be in a state of physiological...
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Did you know that if you condensed all of the matter of the universe, it would fill less than a teacup? The deeper into matter we go, the more space we find. That means even you. Your body is...
READ MORE The post This is the science we need to hear in these times of divisiveness appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Listen on iTunes Old, outdated science said that the human brain basically stopped developing in childhood and there wasn't much we could do to change it. What we got was what we got. But we now know that that...
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“Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.” – Bessel Van Der Kolk (this is me many years ago in Ejura,...
READ MORE The post These 5 Micro-Movements are a sign of Trust & Safety – PLUS my interview with Danny Bauer appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
How do you help someone learn and perform at their highest level? First they must be WILLING to learn. How does that happen? It starts with trust and connection. Find out the science behind why humans MUST feel a...
READ MORE The post How to get people to listen: the science of trust and attachment appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Had a great interview with Your Brand Marketing expert then Ben Baker! We talked about some of the problems we see in education that holds learners back from understanding their true potential. We also discussed some of the danger...
READ MORE The post Toxic school & business culture, Brand Marketing interview with Ben Baker appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Comment about this episode from Better Leaders Better Schools: One of my favorite podcasts so far! So much wisdom and like you said it is comforting that she affirmed and confirmed things I was already thinking and implementing! I...
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As amazing as it is in encouraging strong learning habits and perseverance… yes, there is a dark side of growth mindset. Many growth mindset interventions lose sight of the need for safety (both psychological and physiological). In order for certain...
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Growth mindset is a concept. A concept is something abstract, like ‘passion or perseverance’. You can’t ‘teach passion’ because a person has to experinece it themselves to know it. It’s the same with ‘growth mindset’. But there is something you...
READ MORE The post Without this, you can’t “teach” growth mindset… appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
This article has been revised and is now at this link
The post What Bird Box Reveals about the science of human connection appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
“In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them.” – Bessel Van Der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score I recently spoke at a symposium in...
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Download this poster as a pdf and make sure to share it!! 1. Ask not what to do differently, but how to see differently ALL human behavior starts with how we ‘see’ (perceive) a person or situation. If we want...
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Comment about this episode from Better Leaders Better Schools: One of my favorite podcasts so far! So much wisdom and like you said it is comforting that she affirmed and confirmed things I was already thinking and implementing! I...
READ MORE The post Micro-Movement & Micro-Progress appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
This podcast episode has been updated! Go to this link to listen: stefaniefaye.com/podcast/importance-of-sound-mnt-006
The post How to overcome dyslexia myths that will damage students – MNT 006 appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Although childhood trauma is shown to negatively impact brain development, learning, memory and behaviors in ways similar to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), if you look up ‘PTSD’, you’ll find many articles that only talk about it as a ‘disorder...
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“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” – Pablo Picasso If you’ve looked at the Growth Mindset Goal Setting Booklet, you’ve seen that ‘sparking self-transcendent purpose’ is the final step in cultivating resilient,...
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This podcast episode has moved! The original episode has been edited into two separate episodes: Episode 3: The neurobiology of trauma and psychological safety (will be re-posted May 1, 2018) Episode 8: How to avoid the divisiveness and damage...
READ MORE The post Build trust before mindset – MNT 003 appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
Psychological safety’ is a biological requirement for learning and creativity. Period. The Podcast Episode for this topic is here: Episode 2: Psychological Safety, Resilience & the Vagus Nerve. Learning environments that emphasize psychological safety and relationship build better brains. Simply...
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PLEASE NOTE: THE LINK TO THIS PODCAST HAS CHANGED! GO TO THIS PAGE TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD THE AUDIO! ……………………………………….. Growth mindset is at risk of being yet another hyped up buzz word that gets killed off by bad explanations,...
READ MORE The post Buzz Words & Bad Explanations: Why the Future of Growth Mindset is in Danger – updated link available appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
This Episode has been updated. Go here to listen to the newest version of Episode 2
The post Why the future of Growth Mindset is in danger – MNT 002 appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
This episode has been edited – the new version can be found here.
The post The Neuroscience of Growth: MNT 001 appeared first on Stefanie Faye.
I’m excited to share this updated 2018 Growth Mindset Goal Setting Booklet! I’ve added new pages, descriptions, and research articles! I also added the most important step to building growth mindset: Learn and Talk About Neuroplasticity. Why should we?...
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Click on image above or on this link to view the Neuroscience for Empowered Mindsets Slide Presentation
The post Neuroscience for empowered mindsets slide presentation appeared first on Stefanie Faye.