Brain Fact Friday "Neuroscience Q&A" Livestream Andrea with Katherine Alexander-Dobrovolskaia

Welcome back to the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, for Brain Fact Friday, episode #140 and our first Livestream event. I'm Andrea Samadi, author and educator from Toronto, Canada, now living in the United States, (but broadcasting this livestream from my balcony in HI with my co-host Katherine Alexander-Dobrovolskia who is joining us from London, United Kingdom) and like many of our listeners, we have both been fascinated with learning and understanding the science behind high performance strategies in our schools, sports, and the workplace. If you have been listening to our podcast, you will know that we’ve uncovered that if we want to improve our social and emotional skills, and experience success in our work and personal lives, it all begins with an understanding of our brain. For our FIRST Livestream event, I’ve invited my colleague, and good friend Katherine Alexander- Dobrovolskaia, the owner of Talent Investors, who is joining us from London, United Kingdom. Welcome Kate, thank you for coming on my first Live event. You know why I asked you to be here today, right? Kate: give me a guess…maybe something about the fact we are broadcasting from Hawaii…maybe because we’ve been friends for almost 10 years, meeting in John Assaraf’s forum, and now taking our Neurocoaching Certification together? You tell me…. Andrea: Kate, since June is the anniversary of when we launched this podcast (June 2019) and now that we are going into our third year of creating bi-weekly episodes, approaching 100K downloads, reaching over 143 countries, I wanted to do something different.  Then add to the mix that this month I hit that mile marker of turning 50, I knew it was time to shake things up. And you’ve always had an eye for innovation with the work you did with your Best Boss Series[i]. When you did that series, interviewing innovators in business, what do you think stuck out with leaders who rose to the top? What kinds of things did you notice they were doing differently from the rest? Kate: Answer about what you learned from your Best Boss Series. Andrea: Well, since this is Brain Fact Friday, I did want to share something we’ve recently learned from our Neuroscience coaching training that we are doing together, and invite the listeners to ask questions in the chat. Anything you’d like to know after listening to this podcast if you have been following us, from how we launched, to secrets of inviting such high-quality guests. What do you want to know? I’ll let Kate answer the questions, and I’ll sit back and relax on my balcony. Q1: Andrea to Kate: Kate, what would you say is something you have learned recently about the brain, as it has applied to your personal and professional life? Kate: Answer…something about the brain that’s helped you personally/professionally? What about you, Andrea? What’s something important that sticks out for you? Andrea: It was probably from episode #100 with Mary Helen Immordino-Yang “We feel, therefore we learn” and the idea that when we connect emotions to learning, what we are studying goes into long-term memory. This brings in Friederike Fabritius’ How the Brain Learns book and her work with peak performance with the idea that we must have FUN with our work to hit those highest levels of peak performance and productivity. Andrea: What about the listeners? Let me know if you have learned anything from this podcast, or any other area about the brain, and how you’ve used these ideas for improved results? Answer anything that comes in on the chat…. Q2: Andrea to Kate: I’ve known you for some time now, I think we were accountability partners at one point in time, helping each other stay on track with the projects we were working on. And then life hits, and you’ve had some extremely difficult times, in addition to the Pandemic. How have you been able to stay on track with life, positivity and look after everything that’s going on personally for you if you want to share w