Welcome back to Season 12 of the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning podcast! In episode 342, we continue our 18-week self-leadership series inspired by Grant Bosnick's book, diving deep into Chapter 13, which focuses on the neuroscience of agility.
Join Andrea Samadi as she explores how physical and mental agility play critical roles in our ability to handle sudden changes and stressors. Discover practical strategies to enhance your mental agility, build resilience, and thrive in the face of adversity.
This episode not only highlights the importance of maintaining physical fitness but also delves into the science behind mental flexibility. Learn how to identify and manage your stressors, strengthen your neural pathways, and become anti-fragile in both your personal and professional life.
Stay tuned for insights from neuroscientist Tara Swart and actionable tips to improve your brain's agility, ensuring you are better prepared to navigate life's challenges. Don't miss this enlightening episode and the upcoming interview with Dr. Sui Wong on resilience!
On today's episode #342 we continue with our 18-Week Self-Leadership Series based on 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. 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 in 2024. So far, it’s taken us 8 months to cover the first 13 chapters thoroughly, and we still have 6 chapters to go. After this week on agility, we have chapter 14 on resilience, 15 on relationships and authenticity, 16 on biases, 17 on trust, 18 on empathy and the final chapter 19 (and one of my target areas to focus on this year), the topic of presence. When we finish each of these chapters, we will put them all together, with a review of each one, in one place. It really has surprised me that a thorough study of this book will take the entire year to complete.
On today's EPISODE #342 we will cover:
✔ The Neuroscience of Mental and Physical Agility
✔ An overview of our personal and professional stressors
✔ Why being antifragile can help us overcome life’s obstacles and challenges
✔ Characteristics of an Agile Brain
✔ 6 Pathways of an Agile Brain
✔ 4 STEPS to Developing an Agile Brain for Future Problem Solving Success
For Today, EPISODE #342, we are moving on to Chapter 13, covering “The Neuroscience of Agility” which came out as a low priority for me with the with 0% (Pathway 5) along with Change and Resilience. If you’ve taken the leadership self-assessment[ii], look to see if Agility (in Pathway 5) along with change and resilience, is of a low, medium or high priority for you to focus on this year.
I was surprised to see this topic showing up with a low priority, not because this topic is something that I don’t think about daily, but it was when I read the first few paragraphs of Grant Bosnick’s chapter 13, on Agility, where I was reminded that we are talking about physical agility, in addition to mental agility, and as I’m getting older, I notice this area requires extra effort to stay on top of. While the self-assessment says this is not an area of focus for me, it’s one of my TOP priorities at the moment.
Grant Bosnick opens up this chapter by talking about a basketball player who pivots by “maintaining one foot having contact with the ground without changing its position on the floor and utilizes the other foot to rotate their body to improve position while in possession of the basketball. In life and business, when we are faced with a change or challenge immediately in front of us (Bosnick says) it is the same.” (Chapter 13, Bosnick, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership). He reminds us that “in basketball, to be agile and pivot, a player needs to be physically fit and have strong ankles, otherwise they may injure themselves in the moment of stopping suddenly.
Reading this paragraph took me back to my 20s when I was a teacher in Toronto. I loved basketball. So much so that I spent some of my weekends being trained as a basketball coach where I learned drills directly from one of the Toronto Raptor’s coaches themselves. I remember taking these drills to a boy’s PE class, and watched in amazement at the skill of these young men, playing a sport, where I honestly thought there were players in that PE class who should have gone pro. I watched them pivot, and move in ways that I knew I never could. One student worked with me after class, trying to teach me to walk and pass the ball through my legs at the same time, and after an hour, I just gave up. It took these young athletes many years of practice outside of their gym time to develop these skills. Thinking back now, to those days, a few decades later, I know that while I don’t have the same physical agility as I did years ago, and I definitely can’t walk and pass a basketball through my legs at the same time, I still put exercise at the top of my list, and know that when I put in the time here, this helps (not hurts) my ability to pivot maybe not like those basketball players, but enough to be prepared physically, to handle sudden change that inevitably will come my way in life. And while I know that we can’t all be at the same level physically, (depending on the amount of time we can dedicate here) we ALL have the same advantage when it comes to the ability to strengthen our mental agility.
This is where Grant Bosnick takes us in his book, reminding us that “in business or life, when we are faced with a challenge or a change that makes us stop suddenly in our course of action. At that moment, we need to have mental agility to be strong in that moment… (reminding us that) we all face stressors and challenges in life. We need to push through, adapt and thrive in the moment, so that we can pivot, see the opportunities and come out even stronger on the other side.” (Chapter 13, Bosnick, Page 145)
Stressors and Triggers
Bosnick covers “various stressors or triggers that may cause us to stop our course of action (with) ways to improve our mental agility and ability to pivot.” (Chapter 13, Bosnick, Page 145).
On Table 13.1 Bosnick lists common stressors in the workplace, in our personal lives and I think he’s got ALL of the stressors covered. I looked at what is currently stressing me out (in my work and personal life) and they are ALL on Bosnick’s list in some form. I think that it’s easy to get overwhelmed with work and personal stressors, that I even forgot about daily stressors like traffic, or road closures, not having enough time for the daily exercise, or things that are important to us, or those days where I fall short on sleep, and know I’ll pay for it somehow.
Bosnick does tie chapter 9 on emotion regulation into this chapter, with strategies to overcome our daily life stress, and when we look at the Neuroscience of Mental Agility next, we will connect emotion regulation with a strategy from Tara Swart, MD, PhD, a neuroscientist and author ofThe Source: The Secrets of the Universe, the Science of the Brain for improving and strengthening our neural pathways, to improve our brain agility (or mental agility).
Before we can strengthen our mental agility, it helps to know what is stressing us out. I was actually talking about this during the week with one of my good friends from high school. We throw ideas back and forth, and I mentioned that as certain stressors were piling up in my daily life, I was getting to the “end of my rope with them.” She gave me a good analogy, and shared that we can pile up all of our stressors on a book shelf, until we reach our breaking point, and the book shelf breaks. I think it’s good to be aware of our breaking points, and how much we can handle at once. Bosnick suggests an activity where we identify all of our stressors.
IDENTIFYING OUR STRESSORS
- First, look at the stressors on Bosnick’s list, (Table 13.1) and see if you can identify what is stressing you out. I think these days we can also circle workload, and lack of time in our work day, and I’ve circled injury with my girls who are both facing injuries from competitive gymnastics at the moment. Look and see what your stressors are.
- Bosnick suggests next to uncover the magnitude of these stressors by rating them on a scale of 1-5.
Here’s where our mental agility comes into play. Bosnick introduces three terms from the book Antifragile by N Taleb[iii] where there are three types of systems, organizations or people.
- The fragile: which is like an egg and breaks under stress. No one wants to be labeled as fragile.
- The robust: which is like a phoenix, when destroyed comes back exactly as it was before. This is a step in the right direction, but who wants to emerge from challenge the same as before?
- The antifragile: gets stronger from uncertainty—like the Hydra from the Greek myth where you cut off one head, two grows back in its place. It gets stronger from the sudden change.
When we face challenges, changes and stressors, we need to become antifragile in the process according to Grant Bosnick. He also mentions resilience that we will cover next in chapter 14, and have covered this topic often on this podcast[iv] with EP 135 “Using Recovery to Become Resilient to Physical, Mental and Emotional Stressors.” This episode came from some of the biggest AHA moment from EPISODE #134[v] with Kristen Holmes, the VP of Performance Science of WHOOP[i], a wearable personal fitness and health coach that measures sleep, strain, and recovery.
Bosnick, in chapter 13 cover specifically how to grow from adversity, sustaining our peak performance, and that what we want to take away from this chapter is how to “train our brain to be antifragile in order to be more agile in the moment when we face challenges or stressors.” (Chapter 13, Bosnick, Page 149)
HOW DO WE IMPROVE OUR PHYSICAL AND MENTAL AGILITY?
Bosnick does talk about the importance of maintaining “a healthy lifestyle, with proper amounts of sleep, food, water and physical fitness. This will increase your energy and mental alertness” (Chapter 13, Bosnick, Page 151) so that when something comes our way, unexpectedly, we can be better prepared, or more agile which will help us to be “prepared to withstand the shock.” (Chapter 13, Bosnick, Page 150). He also talks about the importance of taking the time to rest and recover by going for a walk, practicing yoga, or meditating. We’ve gone deep into the Top 6 Health Staples Scientifically Proven to Boost Our Physical and Mental Health[vi] that will provide us with the mental strength “to withstand our stressors in the first place, just like a basketball player needs to have physical strength to withstand the sudden stop.” (Chapter 13, Bosnick, Page 150).
Bosnick also suggests “yet another way to improve our mental well-being and strength is to find meaning in what we do (and that) by aligning personal meaning and doing what matters most, we will create a focus and a source of energy that can help us cut through a lot of the chaos. We did cover this topic with Chapter 2 on Goals[vii] and Chapter 3 Inspiration and Motivation[viii].
Bosnick does cover more strategies in Chapter 13 including overshooting, mental self-talk, and the importance of anticipating the future with examples that I know we’ve mentioned before on this podcast, with neuroscientist Friederike Fabritius, who wrote about Wayne Gretsky’s ability to think ahead of the hockey puck. Bosnick shares that “Wayne Gretsky, the greatest ice hockey player in history, once said “I don’t go where the puck is; I go where the puck will be.” And this, Bosnick reminds us “is what we need to think in order to get through these stressors or obstacles and find the opportunities on the other side.” (Chapter 13, Bosnick, Page 156) anticipating and directing ourselves to where we want to be.
Bosnick has us think of ways that we can adapt and manage ourselves through change, urging us to overshoot to strengthen our mental muscles which can endure more than we think, with strategies that include learning to become more optimistic.
It was here that I wondered what else could we learn about the neuroscience of agility (specifically mental agility where we all have the same ability, since we all have a brain) and I wondered if there was a way that would allow us to use our brain to work FOR us, rather than against us, and the answer came when I found Tara Swart MD, PhD, a neuroscientist and author ofThe Source: The Secrets of the Universe, the Science of the Brain. The answer came to me with her definition of “Mental Agility.”
What Is Mental Agility?
Tara Swart opens up her book, The Source, with a paragraph written by Charles Haanel, from 1919, (you can tell from the language that this was written over 100 years ago) in her Epigraph that reads:
“Some men seem to attract success, power, wealth, attainment with very little conscious effort; while others conquer with great difficulty; still others fail altogether to reach their ambitions, desires and ideals. Why is this so? The cause cannot be physical…hence mind must be the creative force, must constitute the sole difference between men. It is mind which overcomes environment and every other obstacle...”
Tara Swart says that “Mentalagilityis theabilityto switch between tasks and between different ways of thinking, such as logical, emotional, creative, intuitive, physical, or motivational.”
She says that mental agility “also enhances the way you respond to stress and your capacity to keep multiple options open, allowing you to make your thoughts and emotions work for you during challenging tactical or physical events.”
In many ways, mental agility boils down to being flexible and not so hard on yourself, whether life gets in the way of your goals (like with any of the stressors from Bosnick’s list) or you encounter personal slip-ups in your day to day life. We’ve all been there, but how we persevere through all of this is a sign of mental agility.
Tara Swart wrote this book to offer an up-to-date, scientifically backed method for retraining the brain to direct our actions and emotions to lead us towards our deepest dreams and goals. She shows us how to take control of our own brain, and this powerful understanding took her nine years of college, seven years of practicing psychiatry and ten years of being an executive coach to get to this point.
In chapter 5 of The Source, Swart lists an activity to help us to improve our Mental (Brain) Agility by learning to “nimbly switch between different ways of thinking.” (Chapter 5, The Source, Page 109).
Swart reminds us that we are all “perfectly capable to assessing more of our brain power more of the time. We don’t because we don’t realize how brilliant, flexible, and agile our brain can be.” (Chapter 5, The Source, Page 109).
DID YOU KNOW THAT “an agile brain is one where each of our neural pathways is adequately developed?”
An agile brain Swart says can:
- Focus intensely and efficiently on one task at a time
- Think in many different ways about the same situation or problem
- Switch gradually between these different ways of thinking
- Fuse ideas from differing cognitive pathways to create integrated solutions
- Think in a balanced way, rather than thinking rigidly (or logical) for example.
What is Swart’s Whole-Brain Approach to Brain Agility?
(IMAGE CREDIT: Credit by Andrea Samadi from Chapter 3, Brain Agility, The Source, Tara Swart).
Swart lists 6 ways of thinking that correlate with a simplified version of that neural pathway in the brain.
HOW AGILE IS YOUR BRAIN?
Swart next suggests that we try this activity to see how agile (or balanced) our brain is to see where our strengths are, as well as areas for improvement.
STEP 1: Draw a circle in a notebook, and give yourself 100% to start of with in the center with “Your Source”
STEP 2: Draw the arms for each of the 6 areas that correlate with brain agility. Emotions, Physicality, Intuition, Motivation, Logic and Creativity.
STEP 3: Call to mind one of your stressors (personal, or work) and rate how much of your brain power went towards each area.
STEP 4: Look to see how effectively you draw from your brain’s resources during times of stress. Did you allocate more energy to certain areas, and less to others?
Swart reminds us that we don’t need to have balance in all areas, but it’s important to “feel strong enough in all the pathways, as well as knowing what your key strengths are.” (Ch 3, The Source, Page 115).
EXAMPLE:
From Andrea: You can see my example in the show notes with a sports injury with both my children that is definitely one of my stressors.
INTUITION 50%
While dealing with anything stressful, I notice that I go straight to my intuition first. Before was even told about each of my daughter’s injuries, I could tell by looking at their facial expressions, and body language that the injuries were important for me to take seriously.
PHYSICALITY 20%
Once I have the intuitive feeling, next I’ll feel something in the pit of my stomach that tells me (to go straight to the ER) or whether we can wait the injury out with some time.
EMOTIONS 10%
While I’m always working on mastering my emotions, it’s impossible for me to hide what I’m feeling. When I’m serious, you will see it on my face.
CREATIVITY 10%
Next I’m thinking of ways to solve the problem, (the injury) and what we will need to do for a speedy recovery.
MOTIVATION 5%
This pathways keeps me focused on the end result
LOGIC 5%
I don’t need to get x-rays or wait for a doctor to tell me the results. While I know that my husband would lean this way first, I rely on different pathways in the brain while under pressure.
If you can take ONE of your stressors, and do this activity, you will learn what pathways in your brain are your strengths. Most people, Swart says have 2 or 3 pathways that they favor, 2 they draw on while under pressure and 2 they don’t use much, if at all.
REVIEW AND CONCLUSION
To review and conclude this week’s episode #342 on “The Neuroscience of Agility” we looked at Chapter 13 of Grant Bosnick’s Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership uncovering our top work, personal and everyday life stressors.
Next, we rated our stressors on a scale of 1-5 to uncover the magnitude of what stresses us out on a daily basis.
We looked at three terms from the book Antifragile by N Taleb[ix] where there are three types of systems, organizations or people.
- The fragile: which is like an egg and breaks under stress. No one wants to be labeled as fragile.
- The robust: which is like a phoenix, when destroyed comes back exactly as it was before. This is a step in the right direction, but who wants to emerge from challenge the same as before?
- The antifragile: gets stronger from uncertainty—like the Hydra from the Greek myth where you cut off one head, two grows back in its place. It gets stronger from the sudden change.
We learned that when we face challenges, changes and stressors, we want to become antifragile in the process so that we grow from adversity, and become stronger in the process.
Finally, we looked at Mental Agility, with Tara Swart’s whole-brain approach from her book, The Source, by taking one of our stressors, and rating how much of our brain power we use while problem solving. I highly encourage this activity to notice which pathways you favor during problem solving, which ones you go to while under pressure and which ones you don’t use at all.
The goal with this episode was to show us that while physical agility is important, it’s our mental agility that some, like Charles Haanel, from 1919, believe “overcomes environment and every other obstacle.”
While I will always keep the TOP 6 health staples at the top of my mind to improve my physical agility, I’ll end this episode with a quote from our ALL-TIME most listened to episode from November 2022 on “Applying the Silva Method for Improved Creativity, Intuition and Focus”[x] that has now over 9K downloads.
I hope you have found some valuable insights in this episode, and we will see you next week, with an interview with neuroscientist Dr. Sui Wong, and then chapter 14 on resilience.
See you next week.
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] Self-Assessment for Grant Bosnick’s book https://www.selfleadershipassessment.com/
[iii] Antifragile by Nassim Taleb Published Jan. 28, 2014 https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incerto/dp/0812979680
[iv] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #135 “Using Recovery to Become Resilient to Physical, Mental and Emotional Stressors” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/brain-fact-friday-using-recovery-to-become-resilient-to-physical-mental-and-emotional-stressors/
[v] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #134 with Kristen Holmes, VP of Performance Science of WHOOP.com on “Unlocking a Better You: Measuring Sleep, Recovery and Strain”https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/kristen-holmes-from-whoopcom-on-unlocking-a-better-you-measuring-sleep-recovery-and-strain/
[vi] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast BONUS EPISODE “Top 5 Health Staples” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/bonus-episode-a-deep-dive-into-the-top-5-health-staples-and-review-of-seasons-1-4/
[vii]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #323 “Using Neuroscience to Level Up Our 2024 Goals” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/insights-from-season-11-of-the-neuroscience-meets-sel-podcast/
[viii]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #324 on “The Neuroscience of Inspiration and Motivation” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/a-self-leadership-series/
[ix] Antifragile by Nassim Taleb Published Jan. 28, 2014 https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incerto/dp/0812979680
[x] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast PART 1 “Applying the Silva Method for Improved Intuition, Creativity and Focus” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/a-deep-dive-with-andrea-samadi-into-applying-the-silva-method-for-improved-intuition-creativity-and-focus-part-1/
