University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
Help Your Brain Learn
Podcast

Help Your Brain Learn

Coaching for Leaders

Dave Stachowiak and Lisa Feldman Barrett
Coaching for Leaders, 2021
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Scientific
  • Applicable
  • Eye Opening

Recommendation

In this Coaching for Leaders episode, psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett clarifies the brain’s real aim – to keep the body alive. She argues that once you understand its primal purpose, you can strive to create a stable work environment that optimizes brain function, enhances learning and induces positive behavioral change. Coaching for Leaders Academy founder Dave Stachowiak hosts the podcast.

Summary

Your brain primarily exists to keep you alive, not to think.

Your brain doesn’t exist mainly to engage in cognition – instead, it operates principally to keep your body alive by regulating its functions. It acts like an orchestra conductor, coordinating your body’s activities as efficiently as possible to maintain allostasis – regulation amid various demands and stressors. The brain predicts what the body will do and instantly allocates resources to prepare for those actions, all at an unconscious level.

You may believe you’re sensing the world as it exists and then reacting to it, but instead, your brain is simply making predictions; then, it rapidly creates changes in your body to support the responses it expects. Before...

About the Podcast

Lisa Feldman Barrett is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University and recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in neuroscience and an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. Her books include How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain and Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain. Podcast host Dave Stachowiak is the founder of Coaching for Leaders.

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