Welcome to Season 13 of Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning. Join Andrea Samadi as she wraps up a year-long exploration of Grant Bosnick's book on self-leadership, diving into the final chapters focused on the neuroscience of resilience, authenticity, and bias. Discover practical strategies and insights from the latest neuroscience research to enhance your self-awareness, build authentic relationships, and overcome biases for personal growth and improved well-being. Don't miss this final installment filled...
Welcome to Season 13 of Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning. Join Andrea Samadi as she wraps up a year-long exploration of Grant Bosnick's book on self-leadership, diving into the final chapters focused on the neuroscience of resilience, authenticity, and bias. Discover practical strategies and insights from the latest neuroscience research to enhance your self-awareness, build authentic relationships, and overcome biases for personal growth and improved well-being. Don't miss this final installment filled with expert knowledge and actionable steps to transform your daily life.
And we will now resume PART 4, the final part of our review, to sum up last year, 2024, and our entire year studying one book, Grant Bosnick’s “Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership: A Bite Size Approach Using Psychology and Neuroscience” that we first dove into with our interview on EP #321[i] the end of January 2024. The goal was that each week, we focused on learning something new, (from Grant’s book) tied to the most current neuroscience research, that builds off the prior week, to help take us to greater heights this year. It honestly shocked me that this series took the entire year. We began with PART 1[ii] and the first 5 chapters of the book. PART 2[iii] we reviewed chapters 6-9 of Grant Bosnick’s Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership, PART 3[iv], we reviewed chapters 10-13, and finally, today, we will finish with PART 4, Chapters 14-16.
((On today's EPISODE #360 PART 4 of our review of Grant Bosnick’s Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership, we will cover)):
✔ EP 344 Chapter 14[v] “The Neuroscience of Resilience”
✔ EP 345 Chapter 15[vi] “Unlocking Authenticity: The Neuroscience of Relationships”
✔ EP 347 Chapter 16[vii] “The Science of Bias”
If you have not yet taken the leadership self-assessment, or if you would like to re-take it to see if the results are different for you than last year, you can click the link here to find the quick test.
I re-took the assessment for 2025, and did notice some similarities and some differences from last year. If you can, retake the assessment and see what you notice about yourself. I noticed that pathways 2 and 3 are my high areas of focus this year, and that I can drop pathway 6 from my focus. What about you? If you have a few minutes to spare, take this leadership self-assessment again, and see if you notice any changes in your areas of focus for 2025. This is an incredible way to remain laser focused on pathways that will move the needle of success for YOU this year.
EP 344 Chapter 14 “The Neuroscience of Resilience: Building Stronger Minds and Teams”
If you were to ask me which episode is my favorite out of the 16 chapters, I would have to say this topic is at the top of the list, even though this pathway came out as a 0% for me to focus on in 2025. It’s not because I’ll be brushing resilience under the rug this year, as it’s an area of focus I work on daily, without even thinking about it. Who doesn’t want to become more resilient, or understand how to build a stronger mind, and then translate this strength to others for predictable results in 2025?
What drew me to this episode was learning about the fascinating new neuroscience behind the part of our brain called the anterior mid cingulate cortex that becomes bigger when we use our will power to do those things we just don’t want to do. Scientists believe this ability to use our will power to do difficult things, which builds our resiliency, is what’s really behind the will to live. Stop and think for a minute here. Does this resonate with you? If you enjoy doing difficult things, and you would describe yourself as being “resilient” doesn’t it make your mind spin to think that you are actually building a bigger, and stronger brain with this trait? Dr. Amen from Amen Clinics does remind us that when it comes to our brain, that bigger is better and that “a larger, more active brain is associated with better cognitive performance and overall well-being.”[viii]
On this episode we also covered:
- A review of EP 74 and 286 where we covered the Neuroscience of Resilience with Horacio Sanchez’s work reminding us that our protective or risk factors in our lifetime, will determine how resilient we will be throughout our life. While 25% of the population are naturally resilient, Horacio asserts that “if you have little risk, it takes less to be resilient. But—if you have a lot of risk, it takes a lot more protective factors to offset the scale.” Horacio has dedicated his life to helping our next generation become more resilient. If you love Horacio Sanchez’s work as much as I do, stay tuned, as we will be featuring him soon with his new book, Unlocking School Bias: Using Neuroscience to Improve Student Outcomes[ix]. Stay tuned for this episode that will be scheduled as soon as I finish reading his book.
- Next we looked at Grant Bosnick’s book, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership (Chapter 14) where he gave us the analogy of the donkey who fell into the well, and demonstrated resiliency when he used the dirt shoveled on him, to climb out. This example taught us that we all will have dirt shoveled on our backs in our life, and “that we can either get buried in the dirt or shake it off and take a step up. Each adversity we face is a stepping stone, and we can get out of the deepest wells by shaking off the dirt and taking a step up.” (Chapter 14, Resilience, Bosnick, Page 160).
- Another analogy we learned was through the mother and daughter story, and that when adversity faces you, Bosnick asks us to reflect. “Are you the carrot that seems strong but with pain and adversity (wilted) and became soft, losing its strength? Are you the egg that starts with a soft heart, but hardens with the heat? Or are you like the coffee bean that actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that (brought) the pain?” (Chapter 14, Resilience, Bosnick, Page 161). I’m hoping that we all desire to experience change with the adversity we face, like the coffee bean and use our difficult experiences in life to build a better, and stronger version of ourselves.
- After learning about building resiliency in ourselves, we learned about building resiliency within our teams, and looked at Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. The absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results. Then we learned to turn this around, using the five functions of a high performing team: trust, absence of fear of conflict, commitment, accountability and attention to results.” (Chapter 14, Resilience, Bosnick, Page 170).
- Finally, we looked at how we develop resiliency, using our Will Power from EP 294 where I shared an activity to strengthen this faculty of our mind either through meditation, or with an activity of staring at a candle flame, and with time, effort and sheer will power, blocking out everything else around you, until you and the candle flame become one.
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EP 345 Chapter 15 on “Unlocking Authenticity: The Neuroscience of Relationships“ we covered:
✔ Author Mo Issa’s definition of authenticity from his book The Shift: How to Awaken the Aliveness from Within. We met Mo Issa on EP 346[x])
We learned that Mo believes that “true authenticity means being ourselves—not an imitation of what we think we should be or what others want us to be. We all have a unique gift, and we must find and nurture it.” (Mo Issa, The Shift).
✔ Andrea’s reflection from 2021 when Mo Issa asked her “what does authenticity mean to you?”
What’s authentic for me—it’s living life according to my values. Living who I am by design. If I’m not putting health first, (for myself and my family) or learning, growing, researching, and then disseminating/sharing what I’ve learned, I’m not living my true authentic self. It will hurt my productivity if I compromise who I am, at this granular level.
✔ We ask the reader to consider: What makes YOU authentic?
✔ How do you know when you are living a truly authentic life?
✔ Have you identified your unique gifts or talents that make you stand out from others?
✔ Do you know what might be holding you back from being truly authentic?
✔ The Neuroscience of Our Social Brain
“We have two systems in our brain: the X-system and the C-system. The X-system (or reflexive system) is automatic, responsive, like/dislike, reward/threat.
The C-system (or reflective system) is controlled, conscious, with executive function and executive control.” (Chapter 15, Bosnick, Page 186). Motivation and effort are required to engage this part of the brain.
The story of Phineas Gage who destroyed the C-system, in his brain and was operating on X-system only. In other words he had no control over his automatic, reflexive system, and his behavior became unbearable as a result.
The C-system, (that requires motivation and effort to activate) we learned, is important for self-reflection and understanding self/other. We know this part of our brain as the Default Mode Network[xvi], and the part of our brain where we take breaks for creativity, thinking and learning to occur.
“When the brain is at a resting state, this specific system kicks in, which is focused around social understanding (thinking about yourself, others’ thoughts, others’ actions etc.).” We learned to get into this resting state by “staring out of a window and do nothing (except reflecting on what else we can do to improve our relationships) and this knowledge that we uncover will help us to build more authentic relationships. We learned to slow down the conversation with people, truly listen to them empathetically and be fully present with them. This will build the relationship to be deeper…go slow with the conversation and communication in order to go fast with the depth of the relationship.” (Chapter 15, Bosnick, Page 186).
✔ 4 Steps to Building More Authentic Relationships
- Think of a person in your business, or personal life, that you would like to build a more authentic relationship with.
- Get to know them on a deeper level. How would you describe them? Are they introverted/extroverted? How do they approach authenticity and relationships?
- Let your brain go into your Default Mode Network. Stare out of a window and think: what could you do to build a more authentic relationship with each of the people you are thinking of? How can you go slow with your conversation to go fast with the depth of the relationship?
- And finally, we looked at the quote from Mo Issa that suggests that once we have done the work ourselves, and know what makes us truly authentic, once we know our own unique gifts and talents, and we continue to nurture and grow them, next, we can look outward, and recognize the unique talents and gifts in others.
REVISIT THIS EPISODE TO REVIEW THIS CONCEPT IN DEPTH
Finally, we covered EP 347 Chapter 16 “The Science of Bias“ where we
✔ Reviewed past episodes where we covered this topic of cognitive biases.
✔ Chapter 16 of Grant Bosnick’s Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership on The Neuroscience of Bias.
✔ A review of our two types of thinking (X-system=reflexive/automatic and C-system=reflective/intentional).
✔ 3 Steps to Understand and Manage our Biases from Grant Bosnick’s book:
- Accept and admit we are all biased. It’s a natural part of being human. The exercise from Daniel Kahnaman’s book showed me how quickly I reverted back to system x, reflexive, automatic thinking. This self-awareness has helped me to consider where else I make quick judgments, without thinking reflectively.
- Label the Bias. While Bosnick covered three examples, similarity bias (making quick conclusions about people similar to you), urgency bias (where we put non-urgent tasks on hold to push through to do something that requires our immediate attention), or experience bias (where we believe our perception is the truth and that others who see things differently from us are wrong, knowing there are close to 200 different biases, it’s a start to be aware that our thinking could possibly be flawed.
- Mitigate the Bias. We aren’t going to solve all of our biases at once, but once we are aware that’s it’s human to have them, we can begin with looking at strategies to mitigate each.
I’m looking forward to diving deeper into the neuroscience of Biases with Horacio Sanchez’s new book. Stay tuned for this interview coming this Spring.
✔ 4 Strategies for Mitigating our Biases
- SLOW DOWN: Bosnick goes into detail on how to mitigate the top three biases that he listed. The strategy that he used was to step back, slow down and access your Systems 2 reflective thinking to see what you notice. The maze exercise showed me I could benefit from slowing down my thinking and not jump to conclusions.
- BE MINDFUL: When talking to others, work on “engaging our System 2 (reflective) thinking…the more mindful we are, the more we can engage our mental brakes, increase self-awareness, reduce emotional impulses, and reduce our susceptibility to unconscious bias.” (Ch 16, Biases, Bosnick, Page 212). Being mindful of others will help us to learn to appreciate different perspectives, as well, other people will connect more to us when they can sense we are thinking from their point of view.
- LEARN FROM OTHER PEOPLE: Talk to others so you can learn “how to get out of our own experience bias and appreciate other people’s perspectives. This will help us to get out of our autopilot, easy route thinking of the urgency bias to have deeper, more robust and deliberate thinking.” (Ch 16, Biases, Bosnick, Page 212).
- ASK FOR OUTSIDE OPINIONS: Find others you can brainstorm with to come up with fresh ideas to help you to think in a different way. Ask for feedback to gain a new perspective. This is just the beginning of this topic for us here on the podcast. While writing this episode, I had a message from our good friend Horacio Sanchez, third time returning guest from EP 111[vi] and we will have him back on for a 4th time, to dive deeper into this topic.
REVISIT THIS EPISODE TO REVIEW THIS CONCEPT IN DEPTH
REVIEW and CONCLUSION:
To review and conclude this week’s episode #360, PART 4, our final piece of our review of Grant Bosnick’s Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership, where we covered a review of the final chapters of his book, with strategies that can help us to implement each concept, from chapters 14, 15, and 16.
EPISODE #360 PART 4 of our review of Grant Bosnick’s Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership, we covered:
✔ EP 344 Chapter 14 “The Neuroscience of Resilience”
✔ EP 345 Chapter 15 “Unlocking Authenticity: The Neuroscience of Relationships”
✔ EP 347 Chapter 16 “The Science of Bias”
We will see you next time, with some returning guests, Dr. Sui Wong (coming up in April) and Horacio Sanchez. See you next time.
REFERENCES:
[i] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #321 with Grant ‘Upbeat’ Bosnick https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/insights-from-grant-upbeat-bosnick/
[ii]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #355 Mastering Self-Leadership REVIEW PART 1 (Grant Bosnick) https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/mastering-self-leadership-with-neuroscience/
[iii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #356 Mastering Self-Leadership REVIEW PART 2 (Grant Bosnick)https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/unlocking-the-secrets-of-self-leadership-chapters-6-to-9-review/
[iv]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #357 Mastering Self-Leadership REVIEW PART 3 (Grant Bosnick) https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/unlocking-the-power-of-persuasion-time-management-and-change/
[v] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #344 “The Neuroscience of Resilience” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/the-neuroscience-of-resilience-building-stronger-minds-and-teams/
[vi] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #345 “ Unlocking Authenticity” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/unlocking-authenticity-the-neuroscience-of-relationships/
[vii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #347 “The Science of Bias” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/unlocking-the-science-of-bias-mastering-self-leadership-and-cognitive-awareness/
[viii] https://www.amenclinics.com/conditions/brain-optimization-peak-performance/
[ix]Unlocking School Bias: Using Neuroscience to Improve Student Outcomes by Horacio Sanchez published Feb. 12th 2025 by Corwin Press https://www.corwin.com/books/unlocking-bias-292586
[x]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #346 with “Mo Issa: The Midlife Shift: Discovering Authenticity and Vulnerability” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/the-midlife-shift-discovering-authenticity-and-vulnerability-with-mo-issa/
