Unlock Your Wise & Mindful Brain

At 16, I started my journey into the big and fascinating world. In my pocket, I had securely packed the final piece of advice my mother had given me: unlock your unique potential and become the most beautiful version of yourself. But what does that mean? Years later, during my time as a researcher in the field of neuroscience, I started to look at the question from a neuroscientific point of view. This is where our 30-day journey begins.

This is no surprise to you: your brain is never at rest. Every second of the day, your brain seems to be doing something. When we look inside the brain, this 'constant business’ is called spontaneous activation. As the word implies, this activation cannot be avoided and pops up automatically. Interestingly, this spontaneous activation in the brain filters incoming information and gives this information meaning. In this session, you will experience this for yourself!

Part of the spontaneous activation that our brain produces is relatively stable. This is unique to who you are. When we measure this part of the spontaneous activation with incredible precision, one’s personality traits can be predicted. In this session, you will learn how spontaneous activation can predict your attitude toward cooperation and trust. Is this scary? Well, not really. Just as the color of your eyes, there are parts of your personality that form a stable foundation of who you are. And you are beautiful, just as you are.

Our brain is never at rest. It produces about 70,000 thoughts per day. Where do these thoughts come from? Are they all yours? In this session, you will learn about a very dominant network in your brain that constantly produces thoughts: the Default Mode Network. It produces thoughts about ourselves, others, the past, and about how we believe the future will look like. We will also call this our monkey mind. It feels like a full zoo at times, right? Learn how the creation of your own destiny and life quality starts with one single thought.

The way performance is considered in the course is not about working more and longer. Authentic performance is about unlocking the potential that you possess at this very moment. When we are capable of bringing out our full potential, we will, at this very moment, bring our best performance. Unfortunately, we are often blocked in our potential because our brain produces internal interferences or blockages. These blockages are mostly produced by our own thoughts. It is self-regulation that will enable you to reduce your own blockages and unlock your potential.

Self-regulation is the most important predictor of our success, both in private and business life. Although it is present as a personality trait in each one of us, we can all strengthen our self-regulation capacity. Self-regulation will allow us to recognize and effectively reduce our internal interferences or blockages. You will come to learn how a strong self-regulation leads to a strong freedom to decide, one the most important human qualities to have.

We have come to learn that performance stands for our own potential, minus internal interferences or blockages. Most of these interferences are caused by excessive amygdala activation. Although the amygdala is vital for our survival and general quality of life, excessive amygdala activation in situations where there is no real danger can strongly block our potential. The amygdala will play the central role in today’s session.

For good mental performance and the creation of healthy relationships with ourselves and others, the prefrontal cortex plays a significant role. In this session, we will take a look at the large number of functions for which we need the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is only fully developed in our twenties and has a limited capacity. A fully charged prefrontal cortex is a good start in expressing the true version of who you are. In this session, you will gain insight into how the amygdala and prefrontal cortex operate and interact throughout a normal day.

In order to unlock our unique potential and become the most beautiful version of who we are, regulating our amygdala and boosting our prefrontal cortex is what we need. Science has shown that regular mindfulness practice is a powerful strategy to reduce amygdala activation and, at the same time, significantly boost the functioning of the prefrontal cortex. In this session, you will learn the core that lies at the heart of mindfulness meditation: switching between the Default Mode Network (monkey mind) and the Direct Experience Network (awareness of our senses).

We have learned that mindfulness practice can play a significant role in unlocking our unique potential to become the most beautiful version of ourselves. In this session, the most important learnings of the first block will be repeated, followed by an extension of mindfulness. You will learn how you can easily integrate mindfulness into your daily life. With mindfulness, we can develop the best version of ourselves. We can also do this as a group, a family, or an organization. Even better, with mindfulness we can create a better version of humankind. This is an idea worth spreading.

This session will give you your first insights into the emotional life of our brain. You will learn which brain structures play a significant role in our emotions and how they influence the quality of our life. We will make a distinction between short-lived emotional bursts (such as stress when we have to perform on stage) and the deeply ingrained emotions that are connected with our personal values and beliefs. With a reflection exercise, you will explore which images in your mind are connected to particular emotions.

The emotions that we experience are a complex occurrence. The complexity of an emotion entails judgment, bodily changes, motivation, expression, and reflection. Looking at the different brain structures that are involved in an emotion, it becomes clear that an emotion is expressed in nearly every cell of our body. You will learn about the limbic system and about the six basic emotions that are found to be part of each culture. There is no life without emotions. Emotions are life.

Emotions are life. They make up the quality of our life. At times, we experience negative emotions and energy loss. Where does this come from? Energy loss usually is the result of a mismatch between who we are and the environment that we live in. This energy loss is mostly the result of too much (unwanted) amygdala activation. This energy loss will deplete the prefrontal cortex and mentally exhaust us. In this session, you will come to learn about the different options that we have to deal with this energy loss.

Today, I will tell you about an imaginary special guest: Madonna! Madonna is not only a great fan of meditation. She is also known for bringing great performances on stage. In this session, you will learn how you can apply mindfulness in the heat of the moment. You will come to learn how certain techniques will bring you one step closer to a state of focused relaxation when you are in the midst of a challenging situation.

Have you noticed that when you try not to think of something, it only gets worse? This is the ironic rebound effect at work. In this session, you will learn more about the irony of trying to suppress thoughts. Although the conscious mind will get you on the right track, the unconscious mind will present you with the very thought that you try to suppress. Together, we will practice how we can take away the power of unwanted thoughts without trying to suppress them.

At any point in life, we are a collection of our deeply ingrained values and emotions. Deeply ingrained values can express themselves as strong emotions that constantly guide us. Emotions motivate us to undertake something or to avoid a particular situation. Emotions make up the quality of life. It is only when we live in line with our values and emotions that we are the true expression of ourselves. In this session, you will learn how mindfulness can help us to reconnect with our inner wisdom.

At times, we do not behave in line with our deeply ingrained values. This usually triggers a negative emotion in us, which makes us aware of dissonance. This is called cognitive dissonance - a discrepancy between our values and behavior. In this session, you will learn that most of the time, it is challenging to adapt our behavior to be in line with our values. Unfortunately, this process can go on for a long time and affects your quality of life. Do not wait for something terrible to happen to live the true expression of who you are.

When we notice that we do not behave in line with our values, it does not necessarily mean that we simply adapt our behavior. Change can be challenging and requires courage. In this session, you will learn about the true meaning of courage. Courageous people do not look away. They face their own fears and doubts. This session describes the importance of mindfulness in dealing with fear and nurturing the courage to take the first steps towards change. Remember: A journey of thousand miles starts with a few steps.

Change can be challenging. Being brave is about facing our own fears and doubts. In this session, we will have a look at how our own body posture can positively influence our confidence when we face a challenge. Easy and small changes in our body posture influence our levels of testosterone. As a result, we feel significantly more confident to face challenging situations. I am grateful for Amy Cuddy, who nicely conveys the effects of power posing in her famous TED Talk.

This session will summarize the insights into the emotional life of our brain. We will repeat the most important brain structures that play a significant role in our emotions and how they influence the quality of our life. We made a distinction between short-lived emotional bursts (such as stress when we have to perform on stage) and deeply ingrained emotions that are connected with our personal values and beliefs. When we do not behave in line with our values, change often is desired. Change can be challenging. Planning the first steps, in combination with power posing, can be a great start.

This session is the first session of the third block, where we will focus on the social life of our brain. Many of the emotions that make up the quality of our life are associated with social relationships that we have. Through a reflection exercise, you will mentally create an image of a house: the house in which our social connections and associated emotions live. The reflection exercise will form the basis of many other practices that focus on positively influencing the relationship we have with ourselves and with others.

In this session, you will be introduced to the fascinating world of unconscious bias in the brain. You will learn about affinity bias and gender bias. We will take a deeper dive into the personal biases that we carry with us and that can cost us a lot of energy. These are strong connections in our brain between a person and negative thoughts and feelings. We will revisit our social house and perform an exercise with which we can lower the negativity in our mind that is connected to a particular person. Free your mind!

In this session, we are going to take a closer look at the personal social biases we have that negatively influence our own quality of life. You will come to understand how we are the source of reinforcing negative thoughts and feelings that are connected to a person. This is good news. When we are the creators, we can also make a desired change. Based on the Corner Cottage exercise, you will experience the power of perspective change. You decide which thoughts in your mind will receive your attention.

In this session, we are going to take a closer look at change of perspective. You learned that energy loss is not caused by a social relationship itself, but rather a result of negative thoughts and feelings that happen in our mind. The vicious circle can be broken down by lowering the negativity of these thoughts and eventually by taking responsibility for our own quality of life - something called active perspective change. With a reflection exercise, you will adapt the learnings to an existing relationship that is costing you energy.

Acceptance and forgiveness are on the agenda today. Acceptance and forgiveness will set us free. You will learn what acceptance truly means. Acceptance is not about agreeing with someone or with a certain situation. It is about acknowledging that the past has happened, just as it happened. With forgiveness, we take it one step further. Forgiveness is about deliberately letting go of feelings of resentment. Both acceptance and forgiveness can be hard and are usually an ongoing process.

Emotions are contagious. You will come to experience this by listening to this session. You will learn about the neural mechanism behind the ability to feel what others feel: mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are important to learn and imitate. It is also believed that these neurons play a significant role in the development of empathy. We will shed light on two types of empathy: Empathy, with which we suffer with others and which can be harmful; and compassion, with which we can connect with others and support people in need. With a reflection exercise called "the garden of my values", you will come to feel what you want to pass on to others and how you can positively influence your relationships.

In this session, we will have a first look at the cornerstone of a healthy relationship: trust. Based on your own inner wisdom, you will reflect on how trust feels like and why you trust people. Based on science, the experience of shared emotions can play an important role in the development of trust. I will invite you to play the trust game to gain insight into how trust is researched in science.

In session 27, you gained your first insights into how we can nurture trust. Here, we will have a look at an important hormone that influences the amount of trust that we have in others: oxytocin. Oxytocin is also known as the cuddle hormone. It plays an essential role in many social functions. You will learn how you can increase this hormone to positively influence the relationships that you have with others.

We can positively influence trust through close human contact and mindful listening. But what exactly is mindful listening? This is the question that we will address in this session. Mindful listening is about becoming aware of the impulse to interrupt and reply during a conversation and about letting this impulse go. Mindfully listening to someone is a true gift. Regular mindful practice will bring us closer to listening to understand and not to reply.

Today is not about saying goodbye. It is the start of a new beginning. To close your 30-day journey, we will have a close look at a powerful emotion that strongly contributes to leading a happy and meaningful life. With all my heart, I wish you the very best on your unique life path.