Brain Fact Friday on ”The Neuroscience Behind Self-Belief and Our Identity”

“All things are possible if you believe.”[i] “Our results are all based on our beliefs” “If we don’t like what’s going on outside, we’ve got to go inside, and change our beliefs.”[ii] --Bob Proctor Welcome back to the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning podcast, for episode #199 on “The Neuroscience Behind Self-Belief” that I want to dive into instead of the episode I was planning on writing this week, (a deep dive into David A. Sousa’s NEW Edition of How the Brain Learns), that I will release next week instead. For those new, welcome, I'm Andrea Samadi, author, and educator from Toronto, Canada, now in Arizona, and like many of you listening, have been fascinated with learning and understanding the science behind high performance strategies that we can use to improve our productivity in our schools, our sports, and workplace environments. My vision is to bring the experts to you, share their books, resources, and ideas to help you to implement their proven strategies, whether you are a teacher working in the classroom or in the corporate environment. Sometimes we must listen to what’s going on around us, and I got the message loud and clear this week, that made me pivot towards this topic of self-belief. This week I met my good friend, Patti Knoles, for coffee. We used to work together years ago when we both worked for Bob Proctor in the seminar industry, and although we live in the same state, it’s been a few years since we met up in person, but after the news earlier this month, we decided to meet and share some memories. Patti Knoles with her daughter, Jessica Knoles NOTE-- For those who follow this podcast and tuned into our final episode of our Think and Grow Rich Book Study[iii], you will know that my mentor, Bob Proctor sadly passed away earlier this month and I dedicated that final episode to him. After I released that episode, I knew I needed more time to just process everything and wasn’t finished. I wanted to stay open to what else I could cover, that would make an impact for everyone else who tunes in, while saying goodbye to the man behind the work that I do, so I just kept my eyes and ears open and went to meet Patti for coffee. Patti Knoles, is a quiet, yet fierce force behind many creative efforts with Bob Proctor’s seminars, since the late 1990s when I first met her. She’s a graphic designer by trade, but so much more than that. She’s a true visionary, with a talent of combining her creative ability, with her imagination and thoughtfulness, bringing something powerful out in her work. It was Patti who I asked to design the covers of my two books, because I wanted her talent to shine through with my work, which it did. The Secret for Teens Revealed[iv] that was published in 2008 won an outstanding book sales award, and the publisher funded my second book, Level Up[v] with this incentive that ended up helping thousands of teens globally to go after their dreams, and live the life they imagined.[vi] Think about this for a second. When we know what we want, we’ve got to start with writing it down. Writing causes thinking, thinking creates an image and this is where ALL ideas begin. Patti was able to take what I wrote down and turn it into an image that would later impact thousands of others around the world. Your ideas, or what you want to create, really do have the ability to change the world.  I wonder if you believe that? When I met Patti for coffee, she had a bag, and a gift for me that I’ve got to say was the most thoughtful gift I’ve ever received. To honor Bob’s legacy, Patti created coffee mugs that had a photo of Bob, saying “Live Like Bob” and on the side she inscribed “BE. DO. HAVE. GIVE.” which she had heard him say often. There was so much thought to this gift, but the icing on the cake came with the card that had a whole bunch of sayings that I know Bob said all the time, that have stuck in my head over the years. I’ve got the card and mug on my desk as a great reminder to