EXPAND YOUR PERCEPTION WITH DR. BEAU LOTTO: The neuroscience of how creativity, resilience and adaptability will enable you to thrive in uncertainty

EPISODE 19: WELCOME TO ADVENTURES IN SOUND

Come with me! At least for a while. I’ve no idea where it will end, or how long it’ll take to get there … as is the want of a Vagabond. 

We will be exploring the power of vibration ... and how and why your brain and body are literally impacted by it … and evolved to be so. But also how your vibrations affect the life and lives of those around you. 

It will be an interactive journey … if you want it to be.

This episode focuses on reliability and the importance of reliability in relationships as the foundation of trust, friendship and love. 

To read the blog that accompanies this podcast, CLICK HERE.

EPISODE 18: ADVENTURE REQUIRES TRUST

Dr Beau Lotto explains how we’re wired to trust and how remarkable it is that most of us are unaware of how omnipresent it is in our lives. 

Right now, while reading this, you are probably sitting in a chair of one form or another. Before sitting, did you check to make sure it’d take your weight? Why not? Because your brain trusted it would.

If you’ve never considered this before, then pause and consider the hundreds … if not thousands of actions and situations that you experience every single day in which your physical and emotional well-being … indeed your life … is placed in the hands of others. In the hands of the person who built your chair, your gas heating system, your home, the grower of your food, the provider of your water. Your doctor. Your lover. 

Trust fosters gratitude and optimism. When you trust another, and that trust is matched with action (and not just words), your brain receives an intrinsic reward. A brief moment of pleasure induced by the release of specific neurotransmitters that increases the bond between you and that person (or object). So we’re wired to trust. 

Trust is not something that you gain. It’s something you lose. And when you lose it, you lose more than trust. You gain fear, anxiety and suspicion.

TO READ THE BLOG, CLICK HERE.

 

EPISODE 17: MAKE THE IMPLICIT EXPLICIT

Dr beau Lotto discusses how inspiring people not only express themselves in words, they manifest those words in action. 

How we respond to a situation is our own making.

When you find yourself in a challenging context … ask yourself these questions:

“Do my actions increase or decrease the effort I have to make, or am I transferring my effort onto others?”

“Do my actions increase or decrease my personal responsibility for the context that was created, or am I transferring my responsibility onto others?”

“Do my actions take ownership of their result, or am I transferring the consequence (blame) of those results onto others?” (... and yet taking credit when all goes well?)

Which is why great leaders look away from what is for their benefit if it is not serving all the people / institutions / structures they lead.

We are often blind to ourselves. Which is why the best person to reveal you to you is usually not you. It’s someone else. Hence the importance of pursuing self-honesty, not simply on one’s own.

It could even require questioning the identity that you define yourself by. Which is why true care, friendship, support, love is a risk. 

So making the implicit explicit is generous. It’s a risk since honesty of self can create vulnerability. But it’s also how you create life.

TO READ THE BLOG, CLICK HERE.

EPISODE 16: LEADING OTHERS INTO THE DARK

Dr beau Lotto explains how what defines a good leader is how she/he leads others into uncertainty … into the dark.

Good leaders … powerful leaders … empower.

It’s how one uses power that matters (for good and evil) ... toward a lover, towards friends and family ... towards those in one’s institutions … and, yes, towards yourself. Do you use it to protect, care and enable or disable, dominate and control?

Are the qualities of leadership the ones that you’d like to be ‘normal’ in the future, as they will become the way-of-being from which future perceptions will be created?

Leadership is not restricted to leaders of countries or institutions. Nor is leadership a person. It’s an embodiment of principles and ideals. A thing we become.  And each of us leads within our larger families, our children, our friends … our romantic relationships. We lead those who rely upon us practically and/or emotionally. And each of us is simultaneously led by the very same family members, children, friends and lovers … i.e., those who effect us emotionally and practically … including the different yous that are inside you. 

TO READ THE BLOG, CLICK HERE.

EPISODE 15: THE RISK OF THE RETURN

Dr beau Lotto explores the risk of possible self honesty created by returning from an adventure.

‘The Return’ is a critical part - if not the most essential part - of adventure. When you return, your brain can experience the cognitive dissonance between the newer, nascent, questioning self and the more familiar, more established self who was left. What’s fascinating is that the older self - who seems to have all the answers, waits for your arrival with open arms like a loyal friend ... keen to reestablish its place in the hierarchy of things. 

In my return there is the opportunity to not ignore that way of being … that self … that was waiting for me.  But to expand upon it by laying a foundation of understanding that enabled me to see what was unseen before … in a never-ending attempt to pursue self-honesty.

TO READ THE BLOG, CLICK HERE.

EPISODE 14: THE POWER OF A REASON

Adventure, as in life, needs a reason and so essential is ‘the reason’ for our vitality that the human brain is perceptually sensitive to its authenticity in yourself and in others.

So essential is ‘the reason’ for our vitality that the human brain is keenly perceptually sensitive to its authenticity in yourself and in others. When perceiving it in yourself, the more authentic you feel (with true honesty) the stronger will be your self-esteem, even more so than your perception of power. So it’s not power that empowers you. It’s your authenticity. 

EPISODE 13: ADVENTURES REQUIRE A SANDBAR

Adventures are not like a holiday.

Holidays are planned to minimise risk. We consider the different possible destinations. We choose. We go. We stay. We return. By actively choosing to create a context of uncertainty, you are choosing to disrupt the old ecologies of the past and in doing so create the true freedom of choice. This is what an adventure does. It shepherds you into a new state of being.

Sandbars are bridges into that risk.

They enable the risk to be taken … and in doing so allows someone to embrace the uncertainty of themselves with courage and agency.

Each of us can be a sandbar in another person’s life. You too can be the place from which another person feels certain enough to take a risk in order to expand their perception. In doing so, you too will expand.

EPISODE 12: EVERY ADVENTURE BEGINS IN THE SAME WAY

All adventures begin in the same way: They begin with leaving.

Looking back is why leaving is hard … because we know that it will require letting go.

We can often experience the fear, uncertainty and confusion when considering ‘letting go’ … but also clarity and expansion on the other side of it. And why we need a certainty from which to bridge into Not-A. 

What can be that bridge? 

Love. Love helps us leave. 

To read the blog that accompanies this podcast, click here.

EPISODE 11: LIVING IS AN EXERCISE OF LIVING

We don’t train and then live. We train by living.

We don’t overcome our fear of uncertainty and then step into it. We don’t first overcome our pain before stepping forward. We get in shape along the way through the exercise of living. Adventures are hard and at times we get sore and lost in mind, spirit and body.

In this time of COVID we’ve all seen - and indeed throughout history we are here because of … those who stepped forward … first. Into the fire … first. Into the protest for the freedom and dignity of others … first. Into compassion within conflict … first. Today we call some of these people ‘first responders’, who risk themselves every day for an anonymous other in a time of pandemic. Others we call parents, teachers, friends and lovers (at least when done beautifully). 

We know from neuroscience that we will all go further if it’s for the benefit of another. The Lab of Misfits has shown that you’ll even endure more pain if the endurance benefits another brain more than your own.

To read the blog that accompanies this podcast, click here

EPISODE 10: THE SECRET TO SUCCESSFUL ADVENTURES IS LISTENING

How you listen and what you listen to is what will define your adventure. Not just now, but in life, in love and in yourself. 

To truly listen, is not to listen without assumptions - that’s impossible. It’s to listen with ‘perceptual awareness’: The awareness that you have assumptions, and that they will shape what you hear (and see, feel and do). Hence why true listening i.e., the kind of listening that will expand you and deepen your relationship to the world, requires humility combined with the desire (if not need) to understand the world … whether 'that' world is the world of another person or the natural world itself from which we all extend.

 

To read the blog that accompanies this podcast, click here.