Curveballs and Clarity: Personal Readiness for the Year Ahead

[MUSIC] In times of rapid acceleration, high pressure, and general uncertainty, the reality is clear. Professionals are struggling. They have become more mentally and emotionally exhausted, less curious, more stressed, and less giving. Adding to this is the complexity around solutions, with the overabundance of protocols, supplements, and so-called performance hacks. The end result is leaders are more distracted and have less mental agility, poorer performance, and struggle to be the belief builder and energy multiplier for their teams. We don't want to accept that. Our passion is to help professionals be more. These conversations help illuminate your thinking into sustainable human performance, learning real solutions to improve your energy, focus, and ultimately increase your impact. This is the TIGNUM Thought Cast. Today's episode curveballs and clarity, personal readiness for the year ahead with special guest party pal, physician educator, and performance specialist at TIGNUM. We hope you enjoy it. [MUSIC] Hello everyone and welcome to our bold round table. And today we have, along with all of you, a very special member of our TIGNUM team, Dr. Parnit Pal, who I know is also a big fan of being in the kitchen and cooking. For those of you that don't know Parnit, she's a Harvard and Columbia trained physician, and she's working in the intersection of business, lifestyle, medicine, and behavioral change. As the founder of the Systematically Well Advisory, she works with global organizations to address workplace performance, stress, burnout, and loneliness, but using evidence-based strategies for physical, mental, emotional, and social well-being. So she's a rare breed that brings both the science and the medicine to all these big problems. Parnit's been a TIGNUM coach since 2020 and she brings her wealth of knowledge along with her deep passion for helping people tackle bold projects and helping them show up at their best, even when they're in the midst of their own crisis, or as we know now, this kind of multiple crisis, or crisis loop that we're experiencing. And today we're going to talk about how do you create personal readiness and clarity, even in the face of unexpected curveball. So welcome, Parnit, and thanks for joining us today. Thank you so much, Scott. Hi, everyone. I'm really excited to be part of the, or to sit with you at the table. Thank you. And probably a great place to start with you, Parnit, is to have you share your story, which I find fascinating. I mean, you started as a medical doctor, obviously planning on practicing traditional medicine, and then somewhere along the way it feels like you just discovered a different path. And now you have this passion for creativity, dealing better with anxiety, making a more sustainable planet. Like, how did you get to where you are today? Well, so the short version of that story, Scott, is that at the end of my medical training, I was just noticing that we were being trained to treat people after they fell sick, and there was very little attention being paid to prevention. And when you look at the data, most of our health care dollars go towards trading chronic lifestyle related diseases. And the data are also very clear that 80 to 90 percent of those diseases are preventable when we pay attention to our lifestyle, you know, what we eat, how we move, how we sleep. But perhaps most importantly, how we manage our stress, so our mental, emotional, social, well-being. And it was that data that really drew me towards thinking about, well, what can I do to help people stay well and not fall sick in the first place? And that helped me move, you know, pivot away from clinical practice to focus on workplace health, because, you know, this is where we spend the majority of our time. And then also along that route, you know, in addition to designing well-being programs, I got really interested in the science of behavior change, you know, why do we do the things that we do? Why do we not do the things when we know what we should be doing? And then somewhere along that journey, I also was really drawn to the climate and sustainability conversation and this connection between our personal and planetary health. So that is, you know, one of the, one of the topics that I'm exploring more and more in my work. But yeah, I think just in general, I'm really interested in helping people to be their best so that they can then go out into the world and have the kind of impact that certainly the crises that we're facing right now show that we need. I love the way you've linked so many things together. I mean, you probably could have even argue 80 to 90% of both the kind of cultural and environmental problems we have are also probably preventable. And one of the things you realize, which I love this link to behavioral change, is that it's not, it's usually not an element that I didn't know. It's really that I didn't do. And so it's about what we do. And so if we can't get people to change their behaviors, we really haven't done anything. So I thought I would ask you a question about the world we're in right now. We've spoken a lot about this crisis loop or what some people call the multiple crisis phenomenon, where there is no end. It always feels like there's one thing coming after another. We're right now in the middle of that. We have election season coming. We have a lot of political unrest around the world. We have Israel Gaza. We have Ukraine Russia. We have China, Taiwan. We have so many things that we're just facing at the same time. How does the brain typically respond in this type of situation? And how does that impact our ability to think clearly and actually solve hard problems? Yes, God. And as you were mentioning all of those different crises, you know, a one part of my brain just wanted to call back into bed and onto the covers because it can be really overwhelming. And I think one of the crises that we're also seeing is this the mental health crisis in the workplace as well beyond the big host COVID health crisis. But I think it's really important to also remember that when we are facing so much overwhelm, when we have so much information coming at us, I think where we can find a lot of solace and strength is our biology. So I'm a huge fan of understanding, you know, what's happening in my brain and my body? What is the design that Mother Nature has given us? And then how can I use that information to my benefit? So when the brain confronts the kind of complexity, the kind of uncertainty that we're facing, all this information, we, you know, it naturally perceives that as a trigger for the stress response. Now, I'm sure every single person on this call is very, very familiar with the fight of flight stress response. But perhaps there are a couple of features about that response that are not well known that I want to emphasize. So, you know, we typically think of the fight of flight stress responses, you know, something that is useful to help protect you in extreme danger. So if I'm walking down the street and there's a car coming at me at top speed, absolutely, I want my brain and body to kick in unconsciously, quickly, and help me get out of the way. So in that moment, my heart rate goes up, my breathing becomes faster, my muscles tense up, and, you know, all the glucose in my blood is, it's been channeled to give me the energy to get out of that dangerous situation. And that's really, really important. But the, the problem is that these kinds of situations are few and far between. Most of the time, you know, when we're sitting in our offices or we're in a team meeting or we're trying to, you know, solve whatever business problem, we're trying to solve. We are, you know, the brain can't tell the difference between an oncoming car and what somebody says to us in a meeting or a media, you know, new story that we hear, or we, what we're seeing on our social feeds. And so what ends up happening is that, unfortunately, if we're not careful and intentional and mindful about our biology, we end up staying in the state of, of, of, fight-of-flight, you know, all day. And for the brain's perspective, two things happen. One is that we develop a sort of tunnel vision, right? So if you remember the evolutionary, premise for this fight-of-flight response was, you know, back in the wild, if there was a tiger coming at us, we had to have this, you know, very straightforward vision just focused on the tiger so that we could protect ourselves. But if we have that kind of tunnel vision, it also means that, first of all, we become self-focused, right? So this is not the time to think about who else is around me. I just need to protect myself in the moment. Now, if you extrapolate this to our business settings and, and all the complexity that we're facing, This means that right in the moment when I need to collaborate with others, when I need to trust others, when I need to have empathy and compassion for others, is exactly the moment in that state of fight of flight that I become extremely self-focused and I become closed off, which is not good for collaboration or creativity. So that starts the first thing. And then the second thing that happens is because again in that tunnel vision, the brain doesn't really care about your, you know, your top 10 ideas. It just wants to save itself from the tiger. And so exactly in the moment when you need to solve hard problems, we see changes in connectivity in different parts of the brain, blood flow, that take you away from the centers in the brain that are being, that hold your best ideas and that hold those insights that you want to have. So it's really interesting. And so I think just in that moment when life throws you a curveball or when you're feeling overwhelmed, if we don't learn how to navigate this stress response effectively, then we can kind of get stuck in this very tunnel vision state of mind. And this is definitely not a creative state of mind. Isn't it interesting how we have this kind of old physical and psychological response, but the challenges change. So the challenge is the world evolves faster than we can evolve. And I was thinking about this idea you have that you just shared around that it creates this self-focus. And we've also seen, and COVID was part of this when we had to go to remote working, this shift from a we to a me mentality. Now you add all these other stressors and it sounds to me like you even double down more on this me mentality. It's another one of those paradoxes that need to be solved. So how then in this time where my brain is being hijacked in the survival mechanism, and at the same time I need these new solutions. So how can we turn this around and help the brain think more creatively in a crisis or in chaos? Yeah, so I so there's obviously a lot of research around the neuroscience of creativity, but one useful way to think about it is that even when you think about what does creativity mean, it means coming up with an idea that is both new and useful in some way. And in order to do that, unfortunately especially in business settings, I think when people think about creativity, we often think of, oh, you know, am I a creative person or are we creating, a creative workplace or a creative product or a process like design thinking. And again, nothing wrong with all of those things. But I think what we need to hone in on is how can I prime my brain and create the conditions for that kind of creative cognition to arise? So the brain, now creativity is a really complex process, but I'm going to try to simplify it a little bit. I think, you know, before we get to talking about how do we create those conditions for these insights to arise, I think just a little bit of background around what are the parts of the brain that are actually involved in the creative process? I think just like understanding that a little bit is useful so there's, you know, this whole myth and by the way, it's Godlike, if I were to ask you, are you left brain or right brain? What would you answer me? I would say it's a myth. I'm going to say that now because I think you just set the stage. Yeah, right answer. Yeah, that's exactly. I mean, this and it's interesting because these myths often, you know, they kind of get ingrained into the zeitgeist and they're really hard to shake. So yeah, so that's a huge myth. I mean, of course, you know, the left side of the brain has predominance for, you know, language centers and analytical abilities. And the right side of the brain is sort of does have some more real estate given to non-verbal, spatial situations and abilities. But, you know, think about, so everybody who's listening, you know, think about the last time that you had a really hard problem to solve and you came up with a good idea. I would, you know, think about these four skills that I'm going to mention now and how they would have played a part into you coming up with that idea. So the first sort of capacity of the brain is a really good working memory and working memories, your capacity in that situation, which is really complex, to be able to just hold information and hold data in sort of a temporary parking lot in your brain, right? So you need, and this is important where you need to bring up certain memories and also hold like whatever data you might, you know, some financial information, for example, that you might be able to hold in mind. And to be able to manipulate that data, you know, just in that parking lot of your mind. So that's the first capacity. The second capacity when we think about creativity is the ability for abstraction, which is that not everything that we have to deal with is really tangible, like numbers or currency. There's a lot of intangible stuff that we have to navigate. So even for example, with AI right now, everybody's talking about AI and what the impact is going to be. And certainly as a business, you need to be thinking about, you know, the impact that it's going to have on the jobs created or the practical ways that you can enhance those AI skills for your task force. But at the same time, you need to also be able to grapple with intangible situations like what are the moral and ethical implications of AI or even sort of like the broader intangible questions of, you know, will there ever be a point where AI will become more conscious and so on. So again, this ability and you need to think through and have the capacity to hold these kinds of abstract ideas and work with them creatively. And then the third capacity or skill for creativity is around planning. And this is usually what a lot of us are really good at as leaders, right? So we have this capacity to set goals and make sure that we work in a meaningful way towards those goals in a stepwise manner. But that kind of planning is also really essential for creativity. And then finally, the fourth skill is cognitive flexibility. And I don't know about you, Scott, but I'm sure we've hope in a situation where as a team we're trying to grapple with a problem and somebody is just like so attached to one point of view and just cannot open their mind up to even think of something different or to pivot in a different direction. And so the ability to be cognitively flexible is crucial in order to be creative, especially when the world is changing so fast and we just have to sort of flip on a dime and pivot our strategies. So when you think about working memory abstraction, planning, cognitive flexibility, all of these capacities are really important for coming up with those creative solutions. And that's not just the left or right side of the brain. It involves all of your frontal cortex. It involves subconscious centers like your hippocampus, which are really important for your long term memories. It involves centers like the basal ganglia, which are really important for memory of motor skills, but also all of your automatic behaviors. And the white matter connections between the left side and right side of the brain are really, really important as well because that kind of communication is key. So anyway, so I hope that's useful to get away from the notion of the fact that it's only a particular part of my brain. No, there's many parts of your brain that are involved and that you need to engage and train in order to enhance your creativity. And then once, you know, so with that sort of foundation, I think the next thing to think about is, okay, how then can I prime my brain for my creative insights to arise, for my best ideas to arise? So maybe I'll ask you, there's God, like, have you is there sort of a situation or a particular time of day where you tend to have your best ideas? Oh, absolutely. There's a couple of that I can count on. One is exactly the time that I wake up and I'm laying in bed and my brain starts just connecting things that it never connected. Another is during exercise or movement is a huge one for me. Those are probably two of the biggest ones, but also when I read or watch something that is completely unrelated to anything else that I'm doing, I'm flooded by new ideas trying to apply those concepts to what I'm doing. I love all of that. So, you know, notice that you didn't mention I have my best ideas during a team meeting and maybe sometimes you might, but most of of us, that's not when we tend to have our best ideas. And I think it's really important to notice that, especially as leaders. And when you think about the cultures of creativity that you want to create in your organization. So when you start to think about it, this is very, very common. Most people report, as you mentioned, like it's like first thing in the morning or maybe last thing just as I'm drifting off to sleep at night, or when I'm after a good meditation, or when I'm out walking in nature, or if I'm doing sort of a mundane task or activity like maybe gardening or cooking or something like that. And this is important because there are three conditions that the brain needs to have its best ideas. It needs a quiet, inwardly focused mind. It needs a relaxed mind. And it needs to be in a state where it's not very effortful. So if we look at each of those things a little bit in detail, a quiet, inwardly focused mind. So this is because the brain is, we're being bombarded with so much sensory information and data, millions and millions and bits of information. So even right now, as we're having this conversation, most of the data that is coming at us, that our sensory system is picking up, we're not conscious of, right? Thank goodness, otherwise we'd go crazy. But all of that data is being processed by our subconscious centers. And I love how David Eaglement, who's an amazing neuroscientist and who's done some work in this area, he describes this as our subconscious centers, bending, breaking and blending, millions of bits of information. So it's really cool to think about that right now. All that groovy activity is happening in my subconscious centers that I'm not even aware of. But as an assos bits of data and information collide with one another and they collide with your previous memories and life experiences, the neurons that are involved in those kinds of collisions, they are sort of limited. So there are just fewer neurons that are doing that in many different ways in your subconscious centers. And so the signals that they produce are slightly weaker in that amplitude compared to the signals right now, even as you're paying attention to this conversation in your conscious centers. So in our daily activity, the conscious brain activity in terms of the meetings that we go into or the conversations that we're having or thinking about what are we going to have for lunch. All of those activities, there's a lot of the amplitude and the number of neurons that are involved in those kinds of activities is much, much greater. So those signals are really loud in our daily, our day-to-day activity. So these subconscious bending, breaking, blending, signals that actually collide with one another, we're actually producing tons of ideas. So even right now your brain is generating tons of ideas. And not that all of those ideas are brilliant. They might be really lousy as well. But there's just a lot of them happening right now. But the problem is that in order to detect those weak signals, we need to quieten our conscious, our normal day-to-day conscious activity. So it's kind of like if you're at a party in this really loud music and your cell phone rings, you won't be able to hear that cell phone. You have to move away to a quieter place to hear that ring. So in a similar way, if the first condition that we need to prime ourselves for or make room for in our daily lives, are those moments of quiet where we have the opportunity to let those subconscious weak idea filled insights come to the surface. And in addition to thinking about those quiet times, this inward focus, the research shows that is really important as well. And what that means is that you want to get away. We're staring at screens all day. There's a lot of cognitive load that we're exposed to. We're constantly this outward focus and doing these external tasks takes up a lot of our real estate in the brain. And so the more that we can create those moments of inward reflection or just mind wandering or the day-dreaming or we sort of have a soft focus even if we're looking outside. So creating more of those moments means that there's more opportunity for your conscious brain to pick up those quiet insights. So that's kind of the first condition. The second condition-- Can I pause here for a second? Yeah, of course. So I'm curious, everything that we do, we talk about bio-individuality and that we're all different. And you use terms like bending, breaking, blending. And they don't sound calm. They sound chaotic. And so-- and in many ways, when you look at the research like from Eric Burlow on creative diversity and some of that that they talk about, people seeking novelty, multitaskers, this constant reframing. So it starts to feel to me like I need the storm before the calm because just the calm alone doesn't really create that many great ideas. It's when my brain's been shaken up, which brings back which I love the term bending, breaking, blending, that which is where my brain feels most of the time. Then when I create that moment of quiet, inwardly focused after that, I maximize it. Is that true? Or-- and also, are we all different? Well, it's definitely all different. But I think there are certain basic principles that apply to all of us in terms of the basic processing mechanisms in the brain. And absolutely. So I think the bending, breaking, blending, which not my words, you know, David Eaglement's words, that refers to that activity that's always happening in our subconscious centers. And it's precisely because as you mentioned, we are being exposed to many different novel situations. So that storm that we're being exposed to is precisely the data that is getting into those subconscious centers. And that's then being churned around. So that's happening in any case. Yes, the storm is happening in any case. But I think what we need to remember is that if we're constantly stuck in the storm, and if we don't create those moments for the sort of the output of all that bending, breaking, and blending to come to the surface as novel ideas, then we kind of miss out on some aspects of our creativity. I hope that made sense. Yeah, that makes total sense. So now I think you're getting to the relaxed mind. And what's great about that is how do you create a relaxed mind when you're in the middle of this crisis or in the chaos? So I know this is where you're going to really enlighten us because this is one of the things I think you're brilliant on. Oh, thank you, Scott. But I think it's actually something that we speak about at Tignum a lot of the time. And these are all different aspects of recovery, right? So we talk about cognitive, emotional, physical, kinds of recovery. But before we get into the actual mechanism there, I think just to remember that a relaxed mind, we know-- and sometimes I think leaders are or as high performers-- we can get stuck in this idea that of constantly producing or constantly being on the go. And we just need to remember that all of us have a window of tolerance in our brain, right? And the window of tolerance is that zone where any kind of problem or challenge or stress that you face. That's the quote-unquote good stress. This is a zone where yes, you bring it on. You feel like you can meet that challenge in very meaningful ways. But then any kind of stress that tips a balance outside of that window of tolerance is where we can get into either a high-per-aroused state. So that's where we get into panic and anxiety and overwhelm. Or a high-po-aroused state, which is when we feel cut off and numb and disconnected and depressed. So really, and the whole point here is that all of the strategies that we talk about at Tignum and the recovery strategies and what I'm going to mention now, the goal is how can we sort of broaden or widen that window of tolerance so that you build your capacity to meet even tougher and tougher challenges and they don't throw you off in that moment. And I know that's something you're really good at, Scott. So having a relaxed mind is really important just based on everything that we talked about about the stress response, right? You need to widen that tunnel vision in order to be able to trust others, to collaborate with others, and then to get the blood flow and connectivity going to tap into those subconscious ideas. ideas. And then you can ask you something about that because we had we interviewed Deb Bubb, one of our founding members and she started this brilliant project called 20 Summers. And one of her ambitions is to bring creativity and curiosity back into the forefront of leadership and leadership discussions. And she uses art. And I was just at a place called FS Investments in Philadelphia and they have art everywhere in the building. I mean beautiful art. And then I was thinking of myself how I use nature, how I use now, you know, looking at art or how I use music. Or for me, you know, going to sound kind of sappy, but I love writing and reading poetry. Are there techniques that you have found that do somehow quiet the mind almost naturally or quickly? Yeah, I and those were really great examples, right? So and that's precisely and I love this project that you mentioned around art or even music, which are also used therapeutically for, you know, anxiety disorders, but also just for the rest of us in order to be more creative. Yes, absolutely, you know, spending time in nature, right? So just going on a hike or walk or even looking at photos of natural settings, you know, in case you're stuck in a building or even having a, you know, a plant in your room, all of these. And again, this is because we we evolved with nature around us. And so our bodies tend to relax a little bit more when we are surrounded by those kinds of natural settings. Definitely exercise. And I know you mentioned that as well. So when we're outside and we're moving and we have the blood flow going to different parts of our brain, that's really, really important. You know, we get the brain derived the or tropic factor being produced in increased amounts. And that's really good. That's really especially good for our hippocampus. You know, again, that remember that was one of the parts of the brain that's important for creativity. And I'll, you know, the specific technique. So and of course, you know, I mean, there are many, you know, there are many things you can do here. So we'll a few of them are, they include parts of our daily routine that I think that we need to also emphasize. You know, so getting adequate sleep is really, really key because sleep is the time where your brain, again, remember all that information that you've taken in through the day. It's not whatever, whatever you are trying to learn. Because it's not going to be useful if you don't give time to your brain to process that information. So, you know, there's this, you know, everybody knows about neuroplasticity, which is the the fact that our brains are constantly evolving and learning and growing based on the information that you're exposing them to. But neuroplasticity usually tends to happen during time periods of recovery. So if, but so if you're not giving your brain enough time for recovery, then even though you might be learning new things during the day time or exposing yourselves to great tons of information, unfortunately, the brain doesn't have time to integrate that information enough if you're not getting enough sleep. And it's, sleep is also really important for creativity because this is where you metabolize your emotions that you've been exposed to during the day. And again, that kind of integration of emotion, but also to make sense, like a brain needs to make sense of what happened during the day, to put it in the right place, to say that, you know, to store it as an important memory that you can count on, you know, in the in the future moment when you have a difficult challenge, but also just to relegate that information to, you know, now, you know, this is not this, I don't need this information, so it's not important. And then, you know, beyond sort of nature, exercise, you know, you're journaling and free writing is a great way to relax the mind as well or any kind of repetitive hobby and, of course, being attention to sleep. And then a very specific modality that the research clearly shows has improves many different aspects of creativity. So one is it helps to strengthen, you know, relax your mind, but it also helps to decrease that kind of rigid thinking in the brain. So it may in other words, it makes you more cognitively flexible. But it also increases your capacity for divergent thinking, which is your ability to come up with those brilliant, you know, many different ideas when faced with a problem. So the technique that I'm talking about is mindfulness. And again, there's a lot of misconception about what mindfulness is. But what the research and data show is that all mindfulness techniques are good to help you sort of relax and calm the mind. But a particular mindfulness technique called open monitoring has been specifically shown to improve that kind of insight problem solving, that capacity to have kind of on demand, almost the ability to pick up those brilliant ideas. And an open monitoring is quite simply, even right now, we can just sort of do a quick exercise, which is if everybody wants to kind of think about as you're listening to my voice, instead of being the protagonist of your experience right now, can you just step back a little bit and become the observer of your current experience. So just notice that even like shifting your mindset to okay, like you just relax, you know, even as I said that, I felt my shoulders relax a little bit, my body relaxed a little bit as I kind of like just step back and say, okay, what's happening? What is the totality of my experience right now? And a great way to think about your experience is to divide it into sight, sound and sensation. So with sight, you know, just think about like what's coming up visually for you. So maybe you're staring at a computer screen. There might be other things that you're noticing in the room that you're in. And if you would close your eyes, you would still have a visual experience, right? So I mean, everyone you can go ahead and just close your eyes for a second and you'll notice sort of like the darkness behind your eyelids. You might notice some, you know, flashes of light or other shapes. And so as you start to sort of just become this gentle, neutral observer of your experience, you can start to label different aspects of this experience. So this is the whole idea of open monitoring is literally as the name states, we're just simply monitoring what's happening in my experience without getting caught up in the details of the experience. So that's really key because if we get caught up in the details, that's when we can kind of go down a, a room in a dev loop. But so that's just, you can just label it sight. You can just like literally name the things that you're seeing in your mind. You're just observing it. You're noticing it. And yeah, you're just gonna, you know, letting it be or letting it go. And then you can do the same thing with sound. So right now you can say, okay, you know, obviously you're listening to the sound of my voice. But even during this conversation, I'm sure everybody has been hearing the sound of their own thinking. So that's sort of like the external sound, but also the internal sounds. And again, you can just kind of step back and say, okay, yeah, that's sound. And then sensation, which is, you know, how does it feel to be you right now? So maybe the sensation of just sitting in your chair or standing, maybe you're noticing the warmth or coolness of, of the air, you know, on, on your skin. Maybe you're noticing that you're hungry and your tummy is rumbling. So whatever the case might be, you know, just noticing these external sensations or the internal sensations. So as we, so hopefully, you know, even as I've been talking about it, you get, you can start to notice. And I'm curious, Scott, what, what that did for you as you were sort of openly monitoring your experience. And what the research shows is that the more, you know, you can do this as a formal practice, right? So one minute, two minutes, five minutes, more every single day, you know, maybe when you start the day, you can literally do it at any point of day, doesn't matter. So there's a formal practice of the open monitoring, but you can also do it very informally. And I think it's a great practice, even for teens, you know, before an important team meeting or especially before a brainstorming meeting because specifically the research shows that this, when you prime your brain this way, you are, you then can, when you open up the conversation in that team meeting, you're more inclined, everybody's coming to the table, a little more relaxed, a little more sort of in that neutral observer position, less anxious and feeling less effortful and sort of, you know, more able to tap into their insight problem solving. And it's a great game. game that you can play, I like to play this game. So anytime you're waiting, right? You're waiting for a Zoom call to start or you're waiting for a phone call, you're waiting for the elevator, you're waiting at Starbucks to get your coffee. Instead of turning to your phone and checking your social media feed or checking your email, just play the site sounds in the station game. Just kind of step back and say, okay, notice the site's, notice the sound, notice the sensation, the totality of your present moment experience. And just in that few seconds or a minute or two, you're actually strengthening the neural circuits in your brain, which will help you to be a little more creative during that day. - Yeah, that's super helpful. I'm a big fan of those moments when someone's five minutes late to a Zoom call. What do I do in that? And you're exactly right. Obitually, I wanna grab my phone, but I really try to call myself and use that moment to pay attention to what my thoughts are, to do exactly what you said, a little bit of metacognition. So I think that's super helpful. And speaking of thoughts, I would love to check in with our other people in the kitchen and ask Alexi, I'm sure you're being bombarded by questions. Any questions that are coming in, Alexi, that we can ask, Parnie. - Yeah, we have so many questions. Parnie, you mentioned cognitive flexibility as one of the four essentials, skills for creative thinking. And we have an audience member who wants to know what strategies or practices can individuals adopt to enhance their cognitive flexibility? And are there specific exercises or routines that are effective? - Yeah, great question. And actually exactly what we were talking about. So as I mentioned, if you wanna specific technique, the open monitoring practice that I just mentioned, I would really encourage you to try that out on your own, but do it in a very deliberate, intentional way. And if you're looking for sort of a guidance on this practice, it's very easily available on the internet. If you just look up open monitoring practice, you can find many different guided practices there. So I would say that's certainly something to do diligently. If you want to improve that capacity for cognitive flexibility, but beyond that practice, I think, and you know, all everything else that we were talking about. So just get even engaging your own creativity in terms of how can I give opportunities during my day for my brain to be more relaxed, not less effortful and quiet state of mind. And it might even look, so a couple of other strategies that you can use for cognitive flexibility per se, is one is just exposing yourself to different perspectives. So instead of just being stuck in like your usual echo chambers, right? So I mean, we curate our information. So I think it's really important to curate the media that we're exposed to, 'cause obviously you don't want to hear everything from everyone. But just making sure that you also create room in your life in your day to read something that you would not read typically, or to talk to somebody who doesn't look like you or do the things that you do, or to listen to a podcast that, you know, from, or that engages in an idea that is tangentially different from your own. So whatever that might be for you, as Scott was mentioning before, you know, just engaging in activities like art and music, it just opens your, just opening your world to a different perspective can help us to sort of loosen up, you know, just loose the grip that we have on sort of our own perspective to get a little more flexibility there. Yeah, so hope that's helpful. - Yes, thank you. We have another question about how creativity is often aligned to being artistic. However, can you describe how creativity can be shown and expressed in other ways? And also how as different people, we can harness creativity in our own ways, like being supposed to busy places, may harness creativity in some, versus quiet spaces for others. - Yeah, and again, that's like one of the bigger myths is that in order to be creative, you have to sort of be a musician or an artist or some kind. And hopefully, you know, the entire conversation that we've had so far, and we look at the capacity that we all have, those different parts of the brain to come together to solve problems, we are all creative. So even if you, so, you know, even if you're working with an Excel spreadsheet, you're being very creative in that moment. So it doesn't matter what kind of profession you are, in we use creativity to solve any hard problem essentially. So, you know, if your child is having some problems at school, and you have a connected conversation with them and brainstorm some ideas to resolve that, you are being creative in that moment, or if you're leading your organization and you're grappling with what you need to do to overcome the mental health crisis for your organization, you're being creative, or, you know, when you're thinking about the impact that chat GPDI or AI is gonna have, you're being creative. So there are many different ways of being creative. And I, you know, there's the subtle balance, you know, when you mentioned in that question around the quiet spaces and the most stimulating spaces, I think there's just a balance, and I think this is where our individuality comes into play, you know, sort of like the mix, the percentage of how much stimulation you need versus how much relaxed time you need might default, but I think as long as you're paying attention to the fact that you're getting both, it's really the key factor. - Thank you. Next, do we have, you mentioned for main cognitive modalities for improving creativity. What is your opinion of the cognitive function of brain to create a sense of purpose? - I love that. I love that question because I think, I think, though it doesn't, it may not tie, you know, the, just sort of the four skills. And by the way, guys, I mean, I picked those four different creative capacities, those are, that's certainly not an exhaustive list. But purpose is, I think what can fuel the motivation for us to be more creative. You know, all of us want to have meaningful lives. And one of the ways that purpose can kind of align to creativity is when we think about building a meaningful and purposeful life has been shown in the research again and again to be a huge contributor to how happy we feel and the more happy we feel, the more relaxed we will tend to be. So there's, you know, there's a direct benefit there as well. But I think in terms of creativity, having a purpose also helps us to widen that window of tolerance that I was talking about, right? Because when we're confronted with something that's really difficult, when we have some skin in the game, when we know that yes, this is difficult, but because there is sort of a purpose that is bigger than myself that I can tap into, that can really help boost our sense of intrinsic motivation that we have to keep going to sort of whether that's strong and to be more resilient and not give up. So I think that's purpose plays a huge, can play a really important part in helping us stay the course through the strong. - Awesome, thank you. What about someone who finds that when their brain gets going creatively and they can't turn it off, which is not great at 10 p.m. or during a busy day? Do you have any tips for settling the brain and coming back to it later when you have the time to explore your creative thoughts? We've all been there. And of course, that can happen in many different kinds of settings. But one thing which I think is what this question is alluding to is a kind of rumination as well. So your mind is racing with a lot of thoughts. And of course, some of them are super useful and you want to think about it. But we have to be careful. So another way to think about two key ways and this comes to the way your brain processes attention. Can be, if you understand this, then it could be helpful to sort of break that loop of rumination. So just very broadly, and again, please remember, this is a highly, highly simplified way of thinking about attention networks in the brain. But a part of the one huge chunk of attention networks is a default mode network. And this is the default mode network in the brain. is part of the brain that you engage in when you're mind wandering or in that instance, you know, and mind wandering is good up to a certain point, right? So this is a day dreaming that we do when we have time for day dreaming. This is when day dreaming is good or the mind wandering is good where you're just going to your attention wanders off into the past, into the future. And this is really important for creativity. This is really important for imagination. Now, the problem arises where, and this is a situation exactly what you described there, is that you get so stuck in that kind of thinking that you can't get out of it because and come back to the task on hand, right? And that's obviously going to affect your productivity, but it's also going to get in the way of the quality of your attention. But more importantly, if we get stuck in that kind, in that default mode network for too long, this is the start of anxiety and depressive thinking. So this is when we get stuck in those ruminative loops and we just can't get out of them, right? So we keep thinking the same thing over and over again, and we're thinking about it in our sleep and then our mind is racing at 2AM and we can't shut that off. The counterbalance to that in terms of the attention networks in the brain are a different set of networks that are very present, they're very task focused. So the default mode network is a part of the brain that is very narrative focused. It's a part of your brain that gives you a sense of identity, you know, who you are, what your life story is, which is of course very important to navigate the world. We just want to be careful not to get too stuck on it or to get too identified with one particular story. So the way to get out of that is how can you again, based on everything that we've talked about today, when we engage our more task focused centers and task focus simply means think of all the times in your life when you felt so inflow or so present to what you were doing. Maybe it was a conversation that you were having with somebody and you were just fully absorbed in it. Maybe it was an ex-self spreadsheet, you were working on but you were fully absorbed in it. So anything, any situation where you're fully present and your mind is not wondering into the past and the future is when you're engaging that particular attention on network and that's a brilliant way to calm those kinds of ruminative thoughts but also to make sure that you're training your brain to move between these two different kinds of attention on networks. We need both the networks. We just want to make sure that we're not spending too much time in the default mode network and certainly, you know, if this is happening. So think about how can you switch your task in a way to something that brings you closer to that state of absorption or flow. Whatever that favorite activity might be and I will emphasize again that again in the research, this is also one of the many benefits of my deliberate mindfulness training. The research shows that people who practice mindfulness on a regular basis strengthen this part of the brain for that flow-based activities but they also strengthen the ability to switch between these two different kinds of attentional activities because we need both. Yeah, so I hope that helps. Yes, thank you. One more question. What qualities should leaders cultivate to foster innovative thinking in their teams? Oh wow, that's a big one and Scott, I would love sort of your input on that as well based on what you've seen. I think, for me, I think the the primary oneness of the leader is to just create the conditions in their teams and organizations for these creative insights to arise. So how can you produce a culture where people feel intrinsically motivated? So do they have a clear sense of what the company's purpose is and are they clear about how that aligns with their own values? I think it's very important. The second thing that I think is very important is to create cultures where that are not moving towards burnout and this is a huge issue in many organizations today because on the one hand, we have really hard problems to solve in very little time but on the other hand, the rates of stress and burnout are the highest they've ever been and from everything that we've talked about today, in that state of burnout, you are not going to be creative. So as a leader, I think it's really important to look at things like what are the workloads that your teams are engaging in? Do they have a clear sense of priority instead of just continuously being tactical about their day? How can you reprioritize so that they have enough moments to be strategic instead of just being tactical all the time? Are you creating an environment where multitasking is not the rule? So just inculcating and leading by example that it's okay to take time for your creativity and you need to block off your calendar to have those, whether it's 10 minutes or half an hour or an hour in your day or your week, usually first thing in the morning after a good night's sleep are usually almost creative times. But then do you give permission to your team to have those moments where they can just have that time to be at their creative best and really sit down uninterrupted to solve those problems? And then do you have a culture that promotes recovery? At Tignum, we talk a lot about recovery. But it's no point if you just know about the techniques but we're not creating or giving permission to our teams to have those moments to go recover in all the different ways that we've talked about. So yeah, I, you know, and again, we could go on and on about the kinds of qualities, but in my mind, those are some of the really important ones that come to mind. And I think finally diversity and inclusion, right? So we creativity depends on having different perspectives. So being making sure that we create moments in the organization where we hear from people who think differently from us and that we invite many different perspectives around the table is really crucial. Yeah, I think you nailed it. I was writing down some of the things that I would offer up and I think you've hit them all, but you know, I'm going to come back to the statement that your David Engelman Eagleman statement about bending, breaking and blending. And I was going to say the varied experiences that people bring in a team is the foundation, the building blocks of creativity and new ideas. But one of the problems and you hit so many great things about recovery and about, you know, psychological safety, taking away the risk of failure. But one thing that teams, I think, failed to do, everything is so scripted and agendas. You know, every Zoom meeting we have this much time to get these five bullets, but that's not where creativity happens. Creativity happens in an open discussion where we've taken away the boundaries and we've allowed people to throw ideas out and explore them and to go down paths and come back. And although that can be very frustrating for some, I've seen teams, I just came from a team with a biotech company that we work with where we did that. And it was unbelievable to see the different conversation. And then the other piece I might add that you talked a little bit about, um, change the environment, like get out of where your normal meetings are so that the brain sees something, feels something different. The emotions are different. Would you agree that that could be super helpful? I love it. I love everything that you just mentioned, Scott, so important. And you know, one of, I especially loved your point about the agendas and like sticking to the five bullet points. And I think one way to sort of tweak that is to just give people a little bit of a heads up ahead of time, right? Like just let them know what the agenda is beforehand, but maybe pose a question that you want them to go away and think about because again, remember that if we, if you just kind of forced or tried to force people to come to some kind of conclusion during a team meeting, following an agenda, that's precisely the moment where everybody's trying to be really effortful and stressed and you will not come up with your best idea. So give them a little room to think about, you know, pose a question, let them go away, think about it. And so that by the time then they come back to that meeting, they've had, they've given their brain that opportunity to bend, you know, break and blend all that information and hopefully come up with some brilliant ideas. Yeah, I want to thank you so much, Parni, for joining us today. Your insights were incredible. I'm going to remember that purpose fuels motivation to be creative. That's a great statement. It's going to be etched in my brain. And I also want to thank all the members who joined the conversation. We had excellent conversation, excellent question. So thank you, Parney, and thanks to everyone. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Scott. Thank you for listening to the TIGNUM Thoughtcast. If you've enjoyed this or any of our other Thoughtcast episodes, please subscribe so you don't miss out on future releases. If you'd like to get in touch with TIGNUM, please email us at [email protected]. Until next time, be bold, be more, and keep ruling your impact.