“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi

A whole lot of human energy emanated from Madison, Wis. two days ago when global thought leaders, including His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, participated in Change your Mind Change the World 2013, a day of panel discussions on how neuroscience, economics, environments, emotional intelligence and health care can combine to make the world a healthier, happier place. The event was co-hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Richard J. Davidson, founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute.

If you weren’t in Madison, or missed the simulcast, recordings of the morning and afternoon sessions will be posted on the event’s web site next week, perhaps even as early as Monday.

In addition to the Dalai Lama, Davidson and Patz, the other participants include:

• Don Berwick, national leader on health care quality, former CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, recent administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services;

• Daniel Goleman, psychologist, science journalist, author of The New York Times bestseller “Emotional Intelligence,” named one of the 25 “Most Influential Business Management Books” by Time magazine;

• Arianna Huffington, author, syndicated columnist, founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post;

• Ilona Kickbusch, director of the Global Health Programme at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva; interdisciplinary advisor on promoting health globally;

• Lord Richard Layard, professor, economist, director of the Center for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, co-author of the United Nations’ “World Happiness Report”;

• Mattieu Ricard, bestselling author, translator, photographer and Buddhist monk, author of “Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill,” dubbed “the happiest person in the world” by popular media. (He also has several awesome TEDTalk presentations. Check out this one.)

And until you can watch the Madison sessions online, check out Action for Happiness, a movement that invites you to be the change, first from within and then outward.

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“We can actually be happier people…if we take responsibility for our own mind.” – Dr. Richard J. Davidson

I admit it. I’m a neuroscience junkie. The plasticity of the brain – its ability to be shaped by thought – is pure mind-bending excitement for me. So I eagerly await the mind/brain topics that highlight for me this weekend and next.

Tonight at The Rubin Museum of Art is a screening of Free the Mind (2012) a film in which leading neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson sets out to discover if and how the brain might be physically altered using only the power of thought.  The test cases include a 5-year-old suffering from ADHD and veterans coping with PTSD. Promo materials tell me he poses two fundamental questions: What really is consciousness, and how does it manifest in the brain and body? And is it possible to physically change the brain solely through mental practices? (Spoiler Alert: By studying Buddhist monks, Davidson has found it is possible to rewire your brain through meditation.)

Next Saturday night rockers The Amygdaloids – scientists by day who shed their scientific garb by night – take the stage for the Second Annual Heavy MeNtal Variety Show, presented by the Helix Center for Interdisciplinary Investigation. The band will play original songs on the mind-body problem, memory, emotion and unconscious processes.  Each suite will be preceded by a short, three-minute talk on the scientific or philosophical foundations of the topic by lead singer/neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux. (Here’s a video in which NYU’s LeDoux interviews colleague Ned Block on the nature of consciousness, from Scientific American online. At 11:30, the interview segues into The Amygdaloids’ music video of My Mind’s Eye.)

May you be equally powered by thought and transformed by fun!

Related Posts:

The bounce-back quality pops up again. (4/29/11)

Do you already have the brain of a leader? (9/24/10)

Image courtesy of The Amygdaloids

Just as quantum entanglement – what Einstein referred to as “spooky action at a distance” – was verified experimentally and recognized as a fundamental of quantum mechanics, so has the relationship of engagement and trust been linked inextricably to the success of an organization. And powerful evidence of the trust-engagement relationship has never been more clear and irrefutable.

If you were unable to attend the free webinar last week by Stephen M.R. Covey and Greg Link, titled Toxic Teams Kill Engagement, you can enjoy a replay of the audio presentation here. Whether you work in business, government or the non-profit world, I think the introduction alone is worth your time. Listen in how engaged organizations outperform in every area and how trust is the key driver to moving the needle on engagement scores.

At the very least, check out Covey’s list of The 13 Behaviors of a High Trust Leader. I’m confident it’s a document you’ll want to print out, memorize and act on.

Image courtesy of Janaka Dharmasena at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I have a suggestion for you. Sign up for a free webinar offered Tuesday, Feb. 21^st with business partners and Smart Trust co-authors Stephen M. R. Covey and Greg Link. Here’s why.

On the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Edelman launched its thirteenth Trust Barometer, a global study that explored levels of trust across 26 markets and diverse industry sectors. Among its findings: Only 15% of people in the U.S. believe business leaders will tell the truth with confronted with a difficult issue.

Trust is the ultimate leadership skill and the igniter of that fireball of energy, focus and commitment that’s critical to the success of any organization: employee engagement.

According to Covey and Link, low trust causes toxic teams, and toxic teams kill employee engagement. Their own data, published in Smart Trust, show that a 10% increase in trust has the same impact on employees as a 36% increase pay.

Join the conversation on the 21^st. And feel free to submit your own questions for discussion. A little trust can change everything.

Related posts:

Happier people work harder. (Sept. 9, 2011)

Trust: the ultimate skill. (Sept. 14, 2012)

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

My first post about discovering the unlimited possibilities of the mind back in August, 2010 featured the mischievous magpies Heckle and Jeckle in The Power of Thought. Last week, thanks to AsapScience co-creators Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown, I found another two-minute piece of clever animation that addresses the brain’s integration of imagination and action head on. You won’t want to miss The Scientific Power of Thought.

Image courtesy of MR LIGHTMAN at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“You can’t let the future happen to you. You have to take action.” – Brian David Johnson, in-house futurist at Intel

That’s right. Intel has a futurist on staff. I learned about Brian David Johnson while reading Adam Bluestein’s special report on the game-changing trends and hot markets of 2013 that appears in this month’s issue of Inc. magazine. Johnson’s advice for companies that want to get a handle on future markets, but don’t have the resources for a futurist made me laugh: Get a 13-year-old mentor. But right under that quote I drew a star next to his thoughts on how to think about the future. He says the future is ours. We own it. And we get to shape it by thinking about and visualizing the world we want.

His words rungs true for me. Nothing happens until we first think about it. It’s our intention, focus and enthusiasm for how we want things to be that triggers our energy for action.

You know things will change. The challenge and fun is to start imagining how you want them to change. And as a new study reported on in yesterday’s New York Times “Science” pages suggests, you needn’t underestimate the you of the future, either.

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This is the New Year’s post that I find worthy of annual restatement. Because as definite as you are about what you want to achieve in 2013, it’s even more important to be firm in your purpose to feel good. How you feel is the true measurement of your energy. As you think, so you feel.

So as you write down in the coming days what it is you want to accomplish over the next year, please add these few suggestions* of focused feelings and attitudes to your work-in-progress list:

1. I will approve of myself, my characteristics, my abilities, my tendencies, and my likes and dislikes, realizing that these form my unique individuality. I have them for a reason.
2. I will approve of and rejoice in my accomplishments, and I will be as vigorous in listing these – and as rigorous in remembering them – as I have ever been in remembering and enumerating my failures or lacks of accomplishment.
3. I will remember the tremendous energy and potential that lies within me to create that which I can imagine for myself.
4. I will realize that my professional future is a probability. In terms of everyday experiences, nothing exists there yet. It is virgin territory, planted by my feelings and thoughts in the present. Therefore I will plant accomplishments and successes, and I will do this by focusing on how I want and expect the future to be for me.

Whether it’s today, next week or next month, you get to choose what you’ll be focused on. So think big and feel good in the expectation of it. Your time to create a life of personal and professional freedom, growth and happiness starts right now. Happy New Year!

*This list is adapted from one given to Jane Roberts and Robert Butts by Seth on New Year’s Day, 1979.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I never did watch The Oprah Winfrey Show, but I also wasn’t released recently from a North Korean prison camp either. I know who the woman is, and I follow her life of achievement and influence in the news. Most noteworthy for me was the 2007 launch of her Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa.

I learned Monday from her Empower Yourself blog post in The Huffington Post that Oprah Winfrey teaches a weeklong course for the Academy’s 12^th graders at the end of each year called Life 101. Her goal for the curriculum is to impart these young women with everything she wishes someone had told her before heading off to college. And she shares her top five favorite lessons.

I was so curious to know what this smart and powerful communicator considered the most important lessons to becoming your best self and living your best life. They are so simple. And you’ve read about them here. Oprah’s lessons are focused on personal leadership, the limitless energy of thought, a positive mental attitude, strong beliefs, purpose, passion, action and service.

Her first lesson is based on the line from the classic poem Invictus: “You are the master of your fate and captain of your soul.”

Her second lesson: “You become what you believe, not what you wish for, and every choice makes it so.”

Please read the full post to get the last three of her top fave lessons. No matter what your present career or path in life, her words of wisdom are great reminders for every year-end that leads to a new year.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

If the Higgs boson were the first course on a Prix Fixe menu, then your main course selections would include Supersymmetry, Dark Matter, Extra Dimensions, Microscopic Black Holes or Multiverse. That’s what New York University physicists Kyle Cranmer and Neal Weiner served up last week at a lecture titled “The Higgs Boson: Theory & Experiment, Search & Discover.” The NYU Experimental High Energy Physics Group has played a key role in the worldwide collaboration in the search for the Higgs boson.

In July, researchers at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland, announced that they found convincing evidence of a new particle called the Higgs boson, using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the most powerful particle accelerator in the world. Sometimes called the “god particle,” the Higgs boson is a sub-atomic particle that is a building block of the universe; the particle that is believed to imbue all other particles with mass.

In their presentation on how scientists made the discovery and why it’s significant, Weiner and Cranmer offered a preview of what’s likely to come in our new “era of data,” where the scientific community has tremendous amounts of information about nature all at one time.  The LHC was taking 40 million photos per second! And by the end of the year there’s expected to be three times more data than was available before the Higgs announcement.  They said if particle physicists have the Higgs, eventually they can find dark matter.

I appreciate the way quantum physicists think. They don’t ask what will happen, only what can happen.

Inspired by their menu, I discovered a mouth-watering appetizer of my own this year. Feel free to try it over the upcoming holidays.

A record number of women were elected to the U.S. Congress last week. You know that, of course, but I like repeating the fact as often as I can. It speaks loudly to the benefits of gender diversity in leadership. And it reminds me of a groundbreaking model for leadership developed almost a decade ago by Director Joanna Barsh and her colleagues at global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company.

What began in 2004 as the McKinsey Leadership Project – a study of what drives and sustains successful female leaders – identified a set of five capabilities that generated high levels of professional performance and life satisfaction. Barsh and her team used these interrelated potentialities to comprise their model of “centered leadership.” And their continued research confirmed that the model is equally useful to all leaders, not just women.

Here’s how they described the five capabilities of centered leadership in Sept. 2008:

Meaning: Finding your strengths and putting them to work in the service of an inspiring purpose;

 Managing energy: knowing where your energy comes from, where it goes, and what you can do to manage it;

Positive framing: adopting a more constructive way to view your world, expand your horizons, and gain the resilience to move ahead even when bad things happen;

 Connecting: Identifying who can help you grow, building stronger relationships, and increasing your sense of belonging; and

Engaging: finding your voice, becoming self-reliant and confident by accepting opportunities and the inherent risks they bring, and collaborating with others.

An Oct. 2010 McKinsey Quarterly piece validated the power of these ideas. After a worldwide survey of executives, Barsh and team found that a leader who had mastered even one of the above skills was twice as likely as those who mastered none to believe s/he could lead through change.

How do you rate yourself on each? How might your team rate you? Is there an attribute you’d like to enhance?

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