Systematically cultivate the habit of questioning your own motives and deconstructing your assumptions about situations. This builds a ‘veto system’ to check your motivations against others’ experiences and fosters mental flexibility, protecting against negative human tendencies.
Create environments of trust where individuals feel secure enough to explore and deconstruct ideas, including their own assumptions, without fear of dismissal. Neurobiologically, safety is crucial for activating brain systems that construct meaning and self-awareness, enabling deep engagement and mutual understanding.
Recognize that your emotions direct your thinking and learning; whatever you feel strongly about is what you will learn about. To learn effectively, ensure your emotions are engaged with the ideas and concepts themselves, rather than solely with performance outcomes.
Engage with your knowledge in an open-minded, flexible way, continuously checking assumptions and rethinking what you believe to be true. This practice develops wisdom and mental flexibility, allowing you to discern when to question your own emotional narratives.
Advocate for an education system that prioritizes the development of the whole person and intellectual curiosity over rote learning outcomes. This approach fosters deeper meaning-making, supports mental health, and cultivates powerful, reflective thinkers.
When confronted with deeply problematic or hurtful ideas, actively take them apart to understand the underlying pain, power dynamics, and inequities. This deconstruction is essential for rebuilding understanding and preventing implicit negative concepts from persisting in society.
Intentionally follow diverse social media accounts, including those that express viewpoints you disagree with. This practice helps to challenge personal biases, avoid intellectual siloing, and gain different perspectives, ultimately strengthening your own understanding.
For students struggling or disliking a subject, identify their existing interests and integrate academic skills (e.g., math, writing) to empower them in pursuing those passions. This approach engages their emotional system with the subject’s ideas, making learning meaningful and self-driven.
Develop the capacity to tolerate and explore complex problem spaces without immediately seeking a single solution. This fosters intellectual growth, helps manage human capacities (both positive and negative), and encourages continuous self- and other-querying.
As an instructor, present material not just as established facts but by demonstrating your own process of ‘inventing’ and exploring the knowledge. This method powerfully ignites the emotional systems of learners, making the educational experience more engaging and impactful.
Engage in structured debates or discussions where participants are required to argue from a viewpoint opposite to their own. This exercise forces the brain to appreciate alternative perspectives and deepens understanding of opposing arguments.
Establish clear communication guidelines, such as allowing strong language but prohibiting personal attacks. Such decorum fosters open exploration of ideas by ensuring that criticism targets concepts rather than individuals, promoting constructive dialogue.
Drink an electrolyte mix (e.g., Element) dissolved in 16-32 ounces of water upon waking and during physical exercise. This ensures adequate hydration and electrolyte balance, crucial for optimal brain and body function and performance.
Use a meditation app like Waking Up to access various meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra, or NSDR protocols. This allows for learning different meditation durations and types to achieve desired brain and body states, and restore energy.
When ill, opt for hot showers, hot baths, or sauna-like activities, ensuring the heat is not so intense as to cause stress. This approach helps reduce overall stress on the body’s system during recovery.