Just as brains gravitate to gambling addictions when we pull slot machine levers for unsure results, we also compulsively flip channels for feisty news clips that hold us captive in a toxic grip.
Both addictions come with the same inner craving for indeterminate wonder. Both can lead to disaster, by bankrupting our brains and crimping creativity. Choice decides if we will burn out or burn strong. For example, do your words d-escalate raging rhetoric around you, or do they contribute to brainpower down the drain? 
Our news media and our country’s current divisive climate comes mired in conflicts that imprison our brains on toxic minefields. Sadly, the danger of tanking brainpower through hate-laden habits rank up there with holding grudges and then hoping for kindness and care back.
Simply stated, kindness and constant grudges cannot co-exist – just as conflict fixations cannot harmonize with innovative adventures we crave. If you wonder why this is so – check out the innovation drain posters below.
It’s quite straightforward, if we focus on consistent bad news, divisions, anger, resentments or other negative emotions we tear down innovation. In contrast, if we deliberately turn our mental dials toward possibilities, we contribute wonder to help shape creative forces that can move mountains together. Or consider the mental dividends of even one small gesture to help a stranger?
Three simple steps can propel us from mental problems created by conflict into new directions with life-changing possibilities. How so? 
How would you respond to the two-footed question, What one risk will you take today to learn something new? Toss ideas back and forth with another person, and you’ve already directed your brain away from conflicts caused by a bad news focus.
OK, now toss in a brain fact such as serotonin, which is the brain’s wellbeing elixir, by trying to increase your SEROTONIN fix and then watch your brain’s amazing ability to change itself into new zest for the innovation you chase.
One more step can literally transpose you from that bad news cycle into it’s innovative opposite – your multiple talents or intelligences to invent, create, solve, or play your way through even the busiest days. Oh, by the way here are your multiple intelligences that become engines toward innovative solutions to challenges you’ll face along the way.
Looking for a place to get started toward a new day? I have an idea. Why not SURVEY your hidden and unused intelligences so you find more unique tools to build innovations beyond bad news and divisions. Do let us know the results …
Or register at St. John Fisher College’s graduate school Online class, LEAD INNOVATION WITH THE BRAIN IN MIND.
St. John Fisher College Course now available Online – Lead Innovation with the Brain in Mind
Lead Innovation with the Brain in Mind – Implementation of Brain Compatible Leadership Strategies
The purpose of this graduate level Master course is to gain clear understanding of basic growth mindset approaches to lead and learn in the 21st Century. Participants use case studies, research from leadership and learning literature, the Mita Manifesto for Leader and Learner Renewal, and new neuro discoveries from cognitive and neuro sciences. In active learning, shared decision making and innovative practices such as mind-guiding (or mutual mentoring) and, evidence based assessment, you will compare current ways of learning and leading with a growth mindset approach. In order to unleash more personal intelligences individually and collectively, you will implement new neuro discoveries into practical strategies and mitigate weaknesses encountered as learners and leaders.
Strong emphasis will include individual and collective experiences, observations and applications over fourteen weeks. Our emphasis will be on formulating learning and leadership techniques and strategies that benefit your practice and support all concerned.
One part of the 14 week course is discussion based, where you engage with the materials and with each other at least a few times per week to get the most out of the active, implementation experience.
The text that goes along with this course, Lead Innovation with the Brain in Mind, is available in digital copy.
You may read the text digitally or copy all or part of chapters along the way. The course addresses Mita brain-based leadership concepts, not intended for rote memorization, but which require evidence of successful implementation in the form of origin al innovations that address and explore new era approaches for tackling leadership problems with the brain in mind. For example, if you raise a workplace problem of incivility or exclusion, your brain-based innovation may include a specific meeting proposed to discuss leadership problems, and evidence that you apply brain-based strategies for civility where all speak up and feel heard.
At the end of this course participants will be able to:
1). Compare leadership and learning in traditional settings and in brain-based settings.
2). Demonstrate smart skills and knowledge from broad based leadership concepts to lead with tools for an ever changing work environment
3). Propose an original innovative leadership design that applies course content and improves a current leadership problem with brain-based solutions.
4). Incorporate and present evidence in a public forum, that you applied brain-based concepts, principles, and procedures of innovative leadership effectively and with the brain in mind.
YOUR TURN! Join our Brain Based Circles! Would love to meet you at any of the following!
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Created by Ellen Weber, Brain Based Tasks for Growth Mindset