Brain Fact Friday on ”Using Neuroscience and Dr. Covey’s 5th Habit to Find Peace and Hope During Difficult Times”

  This has been a tough week in the United States and while being interviewed on Tom Schimmer’s[i] educational podcast on Monday that focuses on learning, leadership, and life, he asked me what keeps me up at night related to education, and my answer to him was “school shootings” since they don’t seem to be going away. This was a day before the next mass school shooting would hit the news around the world. This has been a really tough week for everyone, in addition to the stress the world is already facing, and I’m sure those listening to this episode outside of the US can feel the turmoil, and have many questions. While I certainly don’t have all the answers, I do have some thoughts that I think can provide some insight and hope for those who tune in. After this incident, while working on releasing our next episode, nothing felt right to me as I was writing, and so I figured the best solution was to take a break from our usual episodes, and think of ways that we could use this platform to amplify the voices left behind (like Chey and Pav have done do well)[ii] and highlight those who have been working in the trenches, to provide solutions for those impacted by the events like we saw repeated this week.  For returning guests, welcome back, and for those who are new here, I’m Andrea Samadi, author, and educator, with a passion for learning, understanding difficult concepts, and breaking them down so that we can all use and apply the most current research to improve our productivity and results in our schools, sports environments, and workplace environments. For today’s episode, #218, and this week’s Brain Fact Friday, we are going to look at how neuroscience can help us to understand what’s happening in our world today, with some strategies that we can all use to move us from a world of chaos, towards hope. Now this episode feels right to me. Before we take a look at these brain-based solutions, getting a bigger picture overview of the events that occurred this week is important. The k12 school shooting database lists some charts and graphs that provide visuals of this issue documenting “each and every instance a gun is brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property (in the US) for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time, day of the week.” There’s a map that you can click on to see the incidents that have occurred by state[iii], and it’s eye-opening.  Click on the link in the show notes and see for yourself. There wasn’t ONE state in the US that was exempt. You can see some that have less incidents, but country wide, you can see no one remains unaffected. There’s also another graph that shows some of the most recent and well-known incidents next to ones we might not all know by name, all the well-known incidents highlighted in red. We can see Columbine in 1999 with 13 people killed, Sandy Hook in 2012 with 26, Sante Fe 2018 (10), Parkland, Florida, 2022 (17) and now Uvalde, Texas with 21 killed this week. I share these numbers and visuals as a way to show that what Mathew Portell said is right on the mark. Moments of silence aren’t solutions.  It’s time to speak up. But what exactly do we say? How can we “Seek to Understand?” when things are so horrible and abnormal? Dr. Covey’s timeless principles can help us all here. We must first Seek to Understand[iv], using Dr. Stephen Covey’s Habit #5. How do we understand such difficult tragedies in our world? The Brain of a School Shooter: This takes me back to the work of American Psychologist, Dr. Daniel Amen[v], whose work looking at the brain through SPECT Image Scans[vi] (that looks at blood flow and activity in the brain—where he looks to make improvements and further balance the flow to improve brain function) his work and scans weren’t widely accepted when he began years ago, but he now helps people who come to his offices across the country (from well-known sports athletes, to celebrities, to regular people) to look at their brain to get to