1st Lead U - Leadership Development
This podcast, now in Season 3, is dedicated to self-development, self-awareness, and learning to lead oneself so listeners can lead others well. If someone cannot lead themselves well, it will be difficult for them to be an effective leader of others. This podcast will help listeners understand what it means to 1st Lead U and build confidence in themselves and their leadership ability. Personal Growth Coach John Ballinger has spent 35 years developing the knowledge and material he shares with individuals, business owners, and leaders from a variety of areas.
1st Lead U - Leadership Development
Three Experts Discuss Why Your Brain is the Most Powerful Leadership Tool You'll Ever Have - Ep 304
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This week we speak with two former guests as they sit down with John and Douglas to discuss the multi-faceted approach to helping individuals reach their full potential, through different treatments and training that can elevate their cognitive skill, reawaken neural pathways, and develop leadership abilities that tap into a new level of self-awareness and emotional intelligence.
The efficient and effective functioning of the brain is foundational to leadership excellence, requiring intentional development through a three-tiered approach: neurological optimization, cognitive training, and emotional intelligence cultivation.
• Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to build new connections, which can be enhanced through specific therapies
• Dr. Miller's neurotherapy treats the brain's physiology by stimulating dendritic growth, making the hardware more efficient
• Brain training at LearningRx develops cognitive skills like working memory, processing speed, and executive functioning
• Emotional intelligence requires daily practice through reflection, journaling, and processing reactions to stress
• Leadership development builds on brain optimization and cognitive training to unlock leaders' full potential
• Most leadership challenges stem from physiological or cognitive processing blockages that can be effectively addressed
• The "growth mindset" is essential for learning to do hard things and developing true leadership capacity
• Trauma causes neural lesions that can be repaired, allowing better emotional processing and decision-making
• Basic practices like adequate sleep, nutrition, and physical activity provide the foundation for brain health
• Learning to co-exist with stressors rather than avoid them creates greater emotional stamina for leaders
If you're interested in brain training, visit LearningRx.com, ScenicCityNeurotherapy.com, or 1steadU.com to learn how each organization can support your leadership development.
In my opinion, you need to put as much effort in your mental awareness and emotional intelligence as you do in your physical going to the gym and working out to stay in shape. If you're not one for wanting that in a leadership position today, you're going to get left behind really quick.
Announcer:Welcome to First Lead you, a podcast dedicated to building leaders, expanding their capacity, improving their self-awareness through emotional intelligence and developing deeper understanding of selfless leadership.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:Hello America and welcome to First Lead U where we believe selfless leadership is essential. America is suffering a leadership crisis. Self-awareness and emotional intelligence is the key to developing selfless leaders. Now here is personal growth coach John Ballinger. Hello leaders and welcome to First Lead you. My name is John Ballinger and I'm here with my co-host, mr Douglas Ford. Hello John, good afternoon to you. How are you, mr Ford?
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:Doing good. It's a beautiful day outside.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:Yes, it is, and we've got. Do we call this a beautiful episode? We could. It is, it is. I've always said the brain's a beautiful thing, so it just depends on how we unlock it and what we do with it.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:It can make things beautiful or it can make things ugly, different than the Beautiful Mind movie that came out a while back.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:Was that Russell Crowe that did it? Yeah, Russell Crowe.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:Boy, that's a flash, that's a throwback.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:Yeah, it is Go from a beautiful mind to the gladiator. But you know today's podcast has been taking us a little while to get it organized, because getting three people on the calendar is not always the most easy thing to do in today's time frame. But you did a yeoman's job of getting us all together in the same room. Each one of the individuals Dr Miller and Michelle Davis have been on independently, but we wanted all three of us in a room to kind of talk through the brain and what each of us do differently to get the brain to moving in the right direction so that our leaders can be the best version of themselves that they can be with for their team. And so today's episode with Dr Charles.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:Miller and Michelle Davis. Dr Miller with.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:Chattanooga Scenic City Neurotherapy. Scenic City Neurotherapy. And Michelle is with LearningRx. Learningrx, thank you very much, I'm having my own brain cramps today. Learningrx, and then myself and you, with First Lead, you we sat down and we talked through how to unlock the brain, how to exercise the brain and then how to continue using the brain through different challenges as a leader in order to really accomplish what needs to be done in today's leadership environment.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:So we hope everyone enjoys the interview that we did with the three of us. Hello everyone, welcome to First Lead U. We appreciate everyone being here today. We are super excited about having Michelle Davis back with us, dr Charles Miller back with us and, of course, john, our host, but I want to introduce everyone before we get into this discussion about brain training and therapies that can help open your brain and awake your brain and leadership development. So, first of all, michelle, thank you for coming back and being with us.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:For those who you may remember, michelle is the director of LearningRx, which is located her branch is located in Chattanooga, tennessee, and she is a master brain trainer and she's executive director of LearningRx, which is located.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:Her branch is located in Chattanooga, tennessee, and she is a master brain trainer and she's executive director of LearningRx and she's been thoroughly trained in the implementation of multiple brain training programs, including Liftoff Target for pre-K students, thinkrx, readrx, mathrx, comprehendrx, brain Booster for adults and also BrainSkill. So thank you very much for being here. We also have Dr Charles Miller Welcome. He's a graduate of the MTSA anesthesia program in Nashville and he started Cynic City Neurotherapy in 2019, and he's a top provider of the non-opioid, non-narcotic treatment for chronic pain in the world. He's personally administered probably the most ketamine infusion treatments as anyone else in the world. Of course, our faithful John Ballinger, who is a personal growth coach, who's also the host of First Lead you, and he graduated from the American Military University with a degree in psychology and he's worked with over 250 national and international senior business leaders, so welcome everyone.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:Hello, man, there's a lot in this room, isn't there?
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:There is, it's a big lineup, yeah, so I'm glad to have you all as well. Um, I think, uh, one of the things when we met Dr Miller and then, having gone through uh brain training, uh, with my daughter, zoe, which has been gosh I don't know how many years ago that was, but it's had to been five or six years ago, hadn't it, michelle? And then I found out, through an interview that we were doing with Dr Miller, that his daughter had gone through brain training. So not only did I become a fan of learning RX, and then I started researching more about what Dr Miller did as far as unlocking, maybe, pathways that were shut down. I likened it to putting a stent in an artery. That's one way to look at it.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:Yeah, and opening it up. So there's blood flow and this and this neuron flow going through there, and so those neurons and those pathways all are going through without much impediment. But what I see in whether it's DNA or whether it's life circumstances, trauma, variety of things the brain will tend to close itself off to things to to try and keep itself from getting hurt anymore further. Or it could be something that's DNA driven, like my daughter's was where she needs. She had an auditory processing problem and she needed help waking that up, and so what?
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:What you all do a lot of is wake things up and make things work better, and what we do at First Lead U is then, after that's done, then we make you work that brain out and we do exercises with you and we come alongside of you and we challenge you. One of the challenges that we have is when we start leaning into someone to help expand their brain and work it out, is they start resisting that, because it sometimes hurts their brain to read books, to journal things that are obstacles for them that they come up through leadership, and so before we got started with this, I said we've got to remember that our goal at First Lead you is to help leaders be better leaders, using their brains to expand capacity, and so I want to talk about that today, with what Michelle does and what Dr Miller does and what we do. So, douglas, if you want to start asking some questions so that we can go through the podcast, that'd be great.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:Absolutely so, in case people haven't heard, we'd like to just go around the table and give everybody a chance to briefly explain, explain their unique specialty and how it positively impacts those that you work with. Michelle, you want to start?
Michelle Hecker Davis - Learning Rx:well, there's so much more that we know about the brain and its capability now. So, just kind of going from where you're talking, there's things that we didn't know years ago about. You know, in this concept of neuroplasticity that I know you've referred to, dr mill refers to and we refer to is that the brain is changing and so when you can look at different aspects related to that and start to develop there, that's a key. You know, and our specific lane at LearningRx has to do with cognitive skills and processing performance, and what I mean by that is, you know, we have key cognitive skills that affect our process of learning and efficiency and that are they're sometimes called executive functioning skills, so working memory, processing, speed, attention and we have higher thinking skills that we're engaging in and using all the time, such as logic and reasoning, visual processing, auditory processing and, of course, long term memory and retrieval auditory processing and, of course, long-term memory and retrieval. And so, essentially what? Learningrx is a program that is utilizing about 40 years of research into specifically developing those skills through exercise. It's very targeted, it's very sequenced, and so if we struggle with processing speed, then, for example, we'll use a metronome to develop speed and make it faster.
Michelle Hecker Davis - Learning Rx:And you know I get into this conversation quite a bit where you think if my brain doesn't really work well with this type of task, it's maybe visual processing, or it takes more time, or I struggle to remember. So we're always looking for the thing our brain can't do very well and we're accommodating for that, or we're compensating by writing down or relying on another strategy, and that's fine to do temporarily. If you're also interested in addressing the root issue by exercising that, you can have to rely on the accommodation or compensation strategy or strategy a lot less, and so that's really what we like to do is, you know, start by identifying how does, where are your brain processing strengths and weaknesses. If we find weak areas, let's build them instead of focusing on strengths at all. But at the same time, you know there are other strategies and things available to develop strengths, and so, specifically, that's what we do at LearningRx.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:Excellent, excellent. Dr Miller, would you like to share with us a little bit about what goes on at Synapse City Neurotherapy?
Dr. Charles Miller - Scenic City Neurotherapy:Absolutely. It's hard to follow that. That was very, very clear and very, very informative. But one of the things that I love about what Michelle does here at LearningRx is it's a direct compliment to what we do. What we do is we work on the physiology, we're stimulating dendritic growth. We're not exercising the brain, we're making it capable of growing with exercise.
Dr. Charles Miller - Scenic City Neurotherapy:Because what we've found is that, you know, through neuroimaging we've found that there's this loss of plasticity, specifically in people who struggle with many different types of our frontal lobe mood disorders like depression, anxiety, ptsd. That's one of the commonalities that we see among all these different diagnoses is a dramatic loss of adaptability and plasticity. And so what we do increases connections, which is like upgrading the processor in a computer. It doesn't mean that the computer is going to run better. That depends on the programs we run and how it's run, in the order they're run. But that's where learning rx comes in, is it teaches them how to run the programs.
Dr. Charles Miller - Scenic City Neurotherapy:What we do is make the hardware more efficient, and so we've had many people that we've, you know, we've collaborated on, we've we've sent back and, you know, sent back and forth and and we've, you know, like we said, collaborated on, we've we've sent back and, you know, sent back and forth and and we've, you know, like we said I'm I met Michelle back when I brought my daughter here. Um became such a such a proponent of her program. Uh, using ketamine infusion therapy, transcranial magnetic stimulation, to get the brain prepped to take in, retain and reproduce uh knowledge and and and learning skills is just the beginning, but it has to have a follow-through with something like she does, and so it's just, it was a. So it was an unintentional connection, but it was a, it was a very valuable one, absolutely absolutely well.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:so you work on the hardware, michelle works on the software. I like it. So, firstly, you must do something with the programs and what they need to do to get it all moving.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:Yeah, I was actually kind of thinking through the process of what Dr Miller and Michelle do. Dr Miller and Michelle do, and so when they get handed to us. Like my daughter, I walked in the other day and she was reading this book about leadership development at 13 years old so cool.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:And I'm thinking so, wow. So I remember when she came over here, she couldn't read something and then recite it back to us, what she had just read, even though she had just read it and put it down. So what'd you read? So now she's processing that information and I said, zoe, you're so you're reading John Maxwell's book, and she's like, yeah, this is very interesting for a leader, which is really what we do at first lead you.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:We're trying to take a leader that's in either a leadership position or aspires to be in a leadership position and say what do we do to unlock your potential that you have? It's like that coach that sees that player and says you've got some natural raw talent, but you're not being fully coached in order to use that talent you were born with. And we'll identify that through a series of assessments. And it could be oh, you need to go here, dr Miller, or you need to go here, which I've referred several people to learning RX. You need to go here first and find out what's going on and so let us help it unlock you, and then we coach you, because there's going to be times on days that you just feel like you can't hit a shot and we've got to come in when you've had that bad day, and so now come on, let's, let's go, and so coaching that person to the full potential that they've got is what we do.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:Absolutely Well, uh, michelle, I know that, uh, you work a lot with um. People come in who have some we'll call them cognitive roadblocks. So what are some of the most common things that you see? And then, what are some of the processes you use to help them maneuver around those or redevelop pathways related to that?
Michelle Hecker Davis - Learning Rx:Well. So it's interesting because we do testing, you know, of course, so we can get an understanding of strengths and weaknesses. But we do. We do that throughout life, the lifetime. So I've tested adults. I've tested, you know, our oldest client right now is 83 years old and as young as five, and what we find is that if you struggle with a processing difficulty, the sooner you address it, the sooner you kind of rewire that process.
Michelle Hecker Davis - Learning Rx:Then you and a lot of business owners who have dyslexia or have ADHD, and it doesn't have to be a problem, in fact it's an amazing. There's other capabilities that are so amazing, but I'll give you a real life example of an executive that I worked with, who he was struggling with just his mental endurance. By the end of the day he couldn't sift through emails and understand what it was saying. Day he couldn't sift through emails and understand what it was saying, and so, you know, a goal became to develop his executive functioning is what it's called or processing efficiency. So we did a lot of processing speed exercise, a lot of working memory exercise, you know things where we're adding distractions and training you to handle those, and so he was able to report after, you know, a period of time of training that his mental endurance had improved. He was getting his work done more efficiently and quickly. He wasn't having to rely on, you know, his secretary, his assistant, to sift through things. He could retain information but some of my favorite improvements that he had because everyone has a unique brain, a unique reason for coming to us but in his case, auditory processing had been a challenge. So when he was able to report that he could read and comprehend and enjoy reading more and not avoid it, that changed things for him. You know, when he was able to report that he could actually understand accents better, which helped with his international interactions, business interactions, internationally. That has to do with auditory processing. So that made a difference for him. You know, being able to sit through a sort of high level strategy planning meeting and comprehend in real time as opposed to going okay, I'm going to go and think about this some which is fine, but he just was able to improve his efficiency, so that helps his performance.
Michelle Hecker Davis - Learning Rx:Now what we do is very sort of short term boost with the long term maintenance being more of things like you're talking about with, with not just maintenance but mindset and thinking about, you know, the role of mindset in. Now we have these skills, how are we using them efficiently and effectively? Now we have these skills, how are we using them efficiently and effectively? And certainly, if there's been any kind of, you know, struggle with and who doesn't have trauma, right? Is that if there's been any kind of trauma or struggle with, that you know, then you can get right back into old patterns very quickly and easily, which is why you know I love and refer to Dr Miller for that Because you know it's something that you can do short term anything. But if you're going back and defaulting into a pattern, then you, you know you have to go back further.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:Yeah, dr Miller, if you could. I know Michelle talked about different types of trauma that people experience and how that impacts the brain, and I know a lot of what you do is to help people address that in different ways. If you could tell us a little bit about that?
Dr. Charles Miller - Scenic City Neurotherapy:so you take somebody who's struggling the way michelle just described. Well it's, can you know, a lot of times it has to do with, you know just, either skills never developed, skills developed in an un like a, I guess, a less than optimal way, just because they've just they had had to to get through school and life. But there's better ways they could have learned, and then they can come here and see Michelle and get that taken care of. But then there's other people who you know actually have incurred what we call a neural lesion secondary to prolonged periods of heightened stress or trauma, that is, inhibiting their frontal lobes ability to process stimuli, meaning that no matter how much effort we put into it, there is a limit to how good we can get based on the physiology. It's just like if we have an injured muscle, we can exercise that muscle and more exercise is not going to help it heal faster. Sometimes it's rest, sometimes it's, you know, other times there's intervention that needs to be done.
Dr. Charles Miller - Scenic City Neurotherapy:It's, but in this case with the brain, with trauma. That's what I try to remind people is that think of it more like a neural injury, like a traumatic brain injury. It's just, this person was not hit in the head with a hammer or something of that nature. Prolonged periods of heightened stress literally unplug parts of our frontal lobes processing ability and our brain has a redundancy built into it that is designed to plug this back in. And this is where the work they do is so valuable, because they can do that, but it's a slower process to do this. Naturally, what we do is we're able to plug it back in within days to weeks and get them back to full functionality even after a lifetime of difficulty.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:What are some of the misconceptions about the therapy that you provide that people might come to you with, and how do you kind of address those to help put them on the right path so that it is going to be successful for them?
Dr. Charles Miller - Scenic City Neurotherapy:I think people look at a lot of the times when it's a thinking issue that they struggle with, or it's perceived as a thinking issue, that that's the actual problem. It's like the problem is their thinking. It's not, it's physiology is the. You know everything you think and feel and it runs through your brain is secondary to react. You know automatic, unconscious reactivity to stimuli as it's occurring around you. You know something happens around you, your brain takes it and processes it and and, through a cascade of events, spits out a feeling emotional, visceral or physical. It's something that you don't do a lot of thinking about, otherwise nobody would ever choose to feel bad.
Dr. Charles Miller - Scenic City Neurotherapy:What we do helps to upgrade that process. What? And then you know we hand them off to the next piece, which is the training of that process, to get those muscles strong so they can put that energy and that effort into anything they want and actually coexist, even when things get hard, even when you know, should trauma reoccur, it's not about avoiding the trauma, it's not about avoiding difficult, it's about coexisting with them. You know difficult isn't bad. That's how we grow.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:Right, right, right.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:So, John, I know that don't ask me this hard question, yeah.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:I'm going to, I'm going to ask you this very hard question, Doc have you seen that question he's going to ask me.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:Look at my first one. Good gracious.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:He wants to know how emotional intelligence and self-awareness. I'm going to read it right off the sheet, so I'll make sure I don't miss any of the words. What are some of the most effective ways people can increase their self-awareness and emotional intelligence in a high pressure environment? No pressure, no pressure.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:I was actually sitting here listening to doc and Michelle talking, thinking from an athletic standpoint. So just hear me out on from an athletic standpoint. A coach gets someone in high school and says, man, I see some raw talent, but there's some things I need to unlock right here, Dr Miller, I'm going to, I'm going to unlock that, Then I'm going to hand them off to, finally, college athletics, and that's Michelle comes in and she really is unplugging. I really look at what we do when it gets to. When they get to us is it's kind of like the professional. Now you've been elevated to professional. You have no option in today's society from leadership to be self-aware and emotionally intelligent. In today's society, which, when you get to that level of professional leadership, it's a lot of hard work, it's more, in my opinion, you need to put as much effort in your mental awareness and emotional intelligence as you do in your physical going to the gym and working out to stay in shape. If you're not, if you're not one for wanting that in a leadership position today, you're going to get left behind really quick. So when they get to us and we're talking about self-awareness, I talk about are you watching your own emotions when you react in high stress environments and how you react Are you going home or going to your desk?
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:And the journaling this just happened. It came at me fast. I either there was a fight, flight, freezer, fawn kind of scenario in my head and everybody was looking at me and I just froze and I need to find out why I froze. What in my past or what in my decision-making made me just stop and freeze? Was I afraid of making a decision that didn't work on the spot? And somebody looked at me later and said well, you know, John said to do this and I did it and it failed. Because a lot of leaders don't like somebody coming back to them and saying you know what that decision? You told me that it screwed things up. A lot of leaders don't like to hear that, but the reality is everybody's not perfect and as a leader, you're going to make mistakes. Mistakes turn into improvement in decision-making and so I have to work through that, with self-awareness, through emotional intelligence, which is one of the most difficult things to get leaders to do.
Dr. Charles Miller - Scenic City Neurotherapy:That's an excellent point.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:Well, we're going to take a short break and then we'll be right back and we'll open up for some general discussion on a couple of questions we have. Welcome back to First Lead U. Today we're here with Michelle Davis, Dr Charles Miller and John Ballinger as a host of First Lead you. So we've been talking about how the brain interacts in a variety of environments, right? So first of all, let's come back with a question about how do all these things connect. We talked about a little bit before the break, but how do we make the connection between cognitive skills, between emotional intelligence and some therapies, therapies that might help and also leadership development? So I'm just going to open the floor up and everybody can kind of pitch in and we'll go from there well, my perspective of it is that what we do is very early phase, like we're the base.
Dr. Charles Miller - Scenic City Neurotherapy:You know we get the baseline unconscious functioning of the brain optimized to where we improve connectivity, improve emotional stamina, auto-regulation of emotion, cognition and just general functionality overall. So what we do is we get everything working so when they go to do the work, the work sticks, they're able to make the most out of the effort they're putting in. If they're putting in level 10 effort by getting a level 2 reward, that's frustrating for people and they're not going to keep going. And so that's where I see kind of like we come first. It's like we get the baseline, get everything up to snuff from a physiology perspective, and then beyond that, there's skill sets and weaknesses that have to be addressed.
Dr. Charles Miller - Scenic City Neurotherapy:And that's where you know what Michelle does with Learning Rx is kind of helps get everything up to par to where it needs to be, to where we're getting not just you know a functional person, but the best version of this person. And then you know and how that translates into leadership, like saying earlier, is you know when we're off the air was this is you know what you guys do with leadership is y'all take you know a optimally functioning individual now and y'all guide that in a very directed way towards the skills that leadership requires, and that's something that is, you know, incredibly valuable, because I think that's where people get lost. It's like, once we get to our baseline, we can do anything. Now, what? Now, what do we do?
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:And then Michelle.
Michelle Hecker Davis - Learning Rx:Well, I view it kind of like as a pyramid, you know.
Michelle Hecker Davis - Learning Rx:So you have the base layer of the pyramid being literal physical functionality, and you could even go as far as saying you know, are you getting enough sleep at night?
Michelle Hecker Davis - Learning Rx:Are you eating a healthy diet and getting regular physical exercise? There's other things involved in having a physical foundation that your body needs to be able to be optimal, right. And then when you get up to the level of cognition, in cognitive skills and processing skills, where I work, then now we can say, okay, we're, you know, hopefully, our brain's working the way it needs to be, we're getting the sleep we need, we're getting the right diet and exercise that we need. So now, how are we exercising our memory and increasing our processing speed so we can think and use our brain more efficiently? Then when you specifically, you know, get closer to the top of the pyramid, in your case and it could be in leadership, or you could say this in academics in school, or you could say this in whatever field you're in, how are you optimizing that? And as a leader, you're right, it's all about taking those skills. And then now it's not just for you, it's for your team, it's for your customers. It's for everyone around you, and so it is almost like a pyramid.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:Yeah, I was thinking through this and we've got.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:One of the courses we talk about is the speed of leadership.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:One of the courses we talk about is the speed of leadership and we talk about starting football, for example, early on in Peewee, and how you're moving slowly as a Peewee football player and you go into elementary school and then you go into middle school and then high school and every step up in football the speed of the game increases and people that can't move from high school to college from a speed standpoint and that's a lot of it's mental.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:So we know, we know physically, but that that quarterback and that running back and even those linemen are constantly the center is having to their speed, of which they react is sometimes just mere seconds before they have to react or to something that's going on. So I liken what Dr Miller does is all right, we're in high school, we see the development, that it's needed, the coach sees it and now he's going to unlock potential and that potential then goes to the college level with Michelle to really work on it. And if somebody can truly unlock their full potential and go into the leadership position, then it's on first lead you, then we take them to that next level, which would be a professional style of leadership that's needed in today's society that has a strong emphasis of emotional intelligence and self-awareness.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:So what are some practical strategies that people might be able to use to increase their self-awareness, some cognitive skills they're not in official training, or just to start to open up some new pathways and do some things that, uh, help them move better through life.
Dr. Charles Miller - Scenic City Neurotherapy:Well, the, you know, from a physiology standpoint, you know it. You know it sounds kind of elementary, but you know, michelle just touched on it. Breakfast, get good sleep, take care of your body, because your brain is part of your body. When the body has what it needs, so does the brain, and typically vice versa. It's like we have to. You know it's. We look at our brain like it's this very, very separate thing and like mental health is.
Dr. Charles Miller - Scenic City Neurotherapy:Mental health is not a thing. It's our perception of our frontal lobes, communication with the rest of our brain and our body, and feelings that we feel, the thoughts and feelings that we feel come to. You know, they just, they just happen. We don't choose them, otherwise nobody would ever choose to feel bad. But what's the? You know, as far as you know taking, you know it's. It seems so basic when I explain it to people, but it's like it's. It's not that hard. Everybody's made to do it. You know this is. There's not a magic secret to good mental health, apart from just making sure that you, the basics are being met. Now, when the basics are being met and we're still falling behind, that's where we come in from a treatment perspective is trying to get things caught up. So what you're doing is what you feel, instead of you know the way you've been feeling.
Michelle Hecker Davis - Learning Rx:I love the way you said that because it it reminds me of when I talk about practical tips for brain exercise. It is very it sounds very basic, like doing something fast or remembering a list instead of writing it down or instead of following your GPS. You know, get somewhere and use your visual processing. Challenge becomes is that when we have a particularly weak area, we want to avoid that thing, we want to avoid using that skill. So if we struggle with visual processing, we're going to use a lot of natural compensations and workarounds and we're not going to use that skill as much. So I get a lot, you know.
Michelle Hecker Davis - Learning Rx:Oh, my mom does crossword puzzles every day and I think that that's fantastic, but she's probably really good at crossword puzzles. It's probably not a weak area. That's going to necessarily train her brain. You know, if she hates Sudoku, that's the one I'm going to say try that one. And that's the trick is that, you know, and that's when you start calling in a professional to say, oh, basically, make me do this thing that I don't want to do and is not a default for me to do, and that's how you strengthen that.
Michelle Hecker Davis - Learning Rx:And it's not the approach that everyone wants to take, which is okay. Some people want to find workarounds and they will steer to their strengths, and that's great. It's just that we know that we have the capability to develop weak areas and we haven't always known that, and so it's finding what those weak areas are and targeting it in a way that pushes yourself beyond even brain games and apps, which I love, pushes yourself beyond even you know brain games and apps, which I love, and it's like, of course, do brain games and apps. That's great. What's going to happen when it gets too hard.
Michelle Hecker Davis - Learning Rx:95% of the time you're probably going to stop doing it. You're going to lose your motivation to do it, and you know, especially if it's a particularly challenging area that's not to say that everyone will. There are some amazing things that we can do on our own, but just sometimes having that person to make you do the hard thing for longer than you want to is how you develop that skill. Just like a personal trainer at the gym, you know you can't lift a five-pound weight constantly. You have to increase. You know you have to make it harder, and someone else sometimes can successfully push you to do that.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:Well, you were talking earlier about mindset and growth mindsets.
Michelle Hecker Davis - Learning Rx:Yes. So one of the things that's a natural outcome of training, the hard thing on a regular basis is that you start to develop this understanding that doing hard things is how you grow, and we've touched on that. But really this research out of Stanford through Carol Dweck, who wrote a book called Mindset, is all about really two categories of mindset that you can be in being fixed or growth. And fixed mindset will say this is the way my brain is and it's never going to change and this is just how I am. I'm not a math person and I never will be, or whatever. And so when you're in that fixed mindset, you go oh that hard thing, I'm not a math person and I never will be, or whatever. And so when you're in that fixed mindset, you go oh that hard thing, I'm not going to do it.
Michelle Hecker Davis - Learning Rx:And it's very easy to get in a fixed mindset, especially let's talk about kids who do really well in school and then they go to college and all of a sudden it's hard for the first time and they go I need to drop that class, I can't do that Well, they're smart. It has nothing to do with intelligence, it has to do with mindset. So when you're in that fixed mindset of not being willing or able to do hard things, you'd rather just quit then that's the opposite of the growth mindset, of hard things actually help me grow and so challenges or opportunities, mistakes are not a bad thing. It's okay to fail, and that is at the core of our training and its effectiveness is developing that growth mindset while we're working on these hard things constantly. It really goes hand in hand.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:Thank you for sharing that with us, john. Have you got some success stories that you could share with us that really illustrate how deepening your self-awareness can can help you grow and move forward?
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:Yeah, this, this one success story, excuse me, uh was a gentleman that I met that had moved out of the country, uh, and started a, an organization, and about a year into it was struggling. And uh flew back to America to meet with some of the folks that sent him to this country to start this uh and was talking through it with him. And he said I really I'm having some roadblocks, I'm having some challenges and I don't know what to do. And one of the gentlemen there said well, you need to meet this guy, which was me, uh. I flew to where he was at uh that week and sat down with him, sent him through our battery of assessments and found out that he was capable everywhere, but his emotional intelligence was extremely low and kind of just delved into that. It's like why are you at this level that he had been before he left America to go over to do this in this country?
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:And I have a. I have a original question to ask people is what's your earliest childhood memory and how old were you? And the minute I stop asking that question I start counting and the longer it takes to answer that question and the age they were when they answer that question, and what they did sets a tone for me to where they're blocked at. So it took him two minutes, which is too long, tell me that at seven years old. And I said stop, what was going on between three and seven? That took another few minutes and he just started crying and he said I was abandoned when I was three and he had locked everything from three to seven back in his subliminal brain, part of the brain, and had just blocked that completely out.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:But what it had caused in his life was anger, bad temper. He would snap at the least little thing, and so it's difficult to run an organization as a leader if the least little thing's going to set you off. But it could have been six other things happening before then, but that one little thing is what happened. And so for the next 18 months I coached him over zoom from africa to america and within the next two years but we're actually a year and a half His organization went from two employees and himself to 21 employees, and his customer count went from two fit 250 to 15,000. And 18 months. I mean we truly unlocked this guy's brain and he leaned in on it Every bit of homework that I gave him every other week. He came prepared, I mean, he leaned into his self-awareness, he leaned as his emotional intelligence and he did his homework. And the proof was in the results of his leadership. And he trained two effective leaders too, so that he could take the organization to the next level as the CEO of the organization.
Michelle Hecker Davis - Learning Rx:Wow.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:Yeah, that's, that's amazing. That actually leads into a great question. The organization Wow, yeah, that's amazing. That actually leads into a great question for Dr Miller. It's like when you reopen some neural pathways through different types of therapy, different types of interaction, but particularly in what you use with ketamine therapy, how can that enhance a leader's emotional intelligence, resilience, and what can those ripple effects be in someone's life?
Dr. Charles Miller - Scenic City Neurotherapy:I would like to remind everybody our brains are made to process stress. The thing is is that and we all know this because we all run our prospective businesses is that there's so much more stress than just doing the job when we're running a business. There's all of the background, noise, everything that comes with that, and these things take an emotional, psychological toll. Now the psychological toll is manifested in your physiology. That's why you feel it is because you have actually physically lost something. Now, with a, you know, with a leader, it's you know your emotional intelligence determines. You know, think of it like stamina. You know, with a leader, it's you know your emotional intelligence determines. You know, think of it like stamina. You know it's like the. The noise is coming in at the same pace all the time. And once we've solved this problem, there is another one right behind it and that is being the leader. You know your job is to handle these big problems as they come up at the little day to day they have. We have the people for that. This is for the big stuff that comes down, and there will always be another problem If you. It depends on how much that problem weighs when it gets to you, and how much it weighs is based on that emotional stamina or strength that you currently have at that moment.
Dr. Charles Miller - Scenic City Neurotherapy:If you're emotionally you know, like you were saying, like just emotionally stunted, or you know you have, you know that weakness is evident. You know, whenever those problems come up all of a sudden, something that should objectively not be that big of a deal, very much within your scope, can feel incredibly heavy. And what we do is by improving connectivity, it makes it not feel easy, it makes it feel the right amount of hard. By improving connectivity, it makes it not feel easy, it makes it feel the right amount of hard. You know it's about coexisting with stressors, coexisting with pain, coexisting with the difficulties as they come, processing them, working through them and getting to the other side of them. You know, if they, if something comes along and just knocks you over, then that problem you know it's.
Dr. Charles Miller - Scenic City Neurotherapy:There are very few problems. If you objectively look at, look at your day to day, the moment is almost always very manageable, even when it's a very difficult moment. And so what? What? Our goal for patients and our goal for leaders that we that we work with, is to help them be the best version of them. So when the problem comes. The weight is heavy, but they're strong enough to hold it and it's from from a purely physiologic standpoint. And to do that too there's obviously skills. You don't just walk out of the barn ready to go. This is where the rest of this process comes into play. But this is the first step is having the emotional stamina to take the hit and also still be standing and be okay.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:Wow, yeah, that's good, that's good. Well, I appreciate everyone being here today. I've enjoyed this conversation, but I want to give everyone kind of a last closing statement and tell people how they get in touch with you and what they can do to if they feel like maybe they're interested in brain training or some some neurotherapy that they need, or they want to work on leadership development skills. So uh, dr Miller, you want to start us off, sure?
Dr. Charles Miller - Scenic City Neurotherapy:Yeah, uh. So what you know, where we look for patients, where where we look for people that could use our services, is when you consciously know that your feelings and thoughts and the level of exhaustion you feel does not align with the objective reality. You see, you look out, you've built this life that you want to feel, yet you're not getting the good, or stress comes along and objectively it's not that big of a deal, but the feelings that come out are much bigger than what the actual stressor warrants. What we do helps the feelings align with the objective reality. It doesn't change the objective reality. We don't change the individual. We don't want to change that person. We like that person. That's the person who recognizes something's wrong. They're the ones that should be driving, but they're not.
Dr. Charles Miller - Scenic City Neurotherapy:So we help align conscious reactivity and conscious perception. I'm sorry, I take that back. Unconscious reactivity and conscious perception. I'm sorry, I take that back. Unconscious reactivity and conscious perception. We get those two pieces talking and starting to match each other in a very short amount of time, within a few weeks, which we can do with, you know, which can be done naturally, but it can take months, years even, to build these pathways. What we do is we add plasticity so this pathways can build within weeks. And how can someone get in touch with you? Um, best way, call our office, uh, scenic city neurotherapy here in Chattanooga 4, 2, 3, 2, 2, 8, 0, 5, 7, 9. Um, you can go to our website at sceniccityneurocom and uh, that's the best way to to find out more about our services. Excellent, excellent Michelle.
Michelle Hecker Davis - Learning Rx:Yes, yeah, I love hearing about it. You know even that, I think, who couldn't benefit from that you know everybody.
Michelle Hecker Davis - Learning Rx:I bet you probably think and I feel like brain training but I'm sure that there are people that Dr Miller sees that don't have a processing issue. There are people who I see that may not have a maybe severe or debilitating issue with how they're processing trauma or stress, I don't know, or leadership. We kind of have this niche piece, that all in the same way. But from my perspective, with processing skills, what that looks like is a lot of frustration when it comes to performance and that may be. You know, it's taking too long to do things, it is mentally exhausting, we're not remembering things easily.
Michelle Hecker Davis - Learning Rx:I do think everyone needs exercise. Anyway, I do exercise myself, you know mental exercise, brain training, but sometimes you need a lot of it and that's when you're really struggling and that's when there is help. And a lot of times when you're really struggling you're not sure that there there is something you know. So a diagnosis like ADHD and dyslexia or dysgraphia, dyscalculia, traumatic brain injury, executive functioning related to autism spectrum disorders, those are all things that we're very comfortable and confident with developing skill sets in those. So that's what you know, probably the most common types of clients that we work with, but it's all ages because you have this brain for your life.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:Yeah, no, I thought it was great when you said you had an 89 year old client. I thought that's awesome. So, john, you want to round?
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:How do we get?
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:ahold of. Oh, that's right.
Michelle Hecker Davis - Learning Rx:Thank you. We're over by Hamilton place mall, next to five below and behind Jim and Nick's barbecue, so we're in that shopping center. Um, we've actually just had our 15 year anniversary, which is a big deal. We've been in this location the whole time, but we're kind of tucked in the corner. Um, our website is awesome. It's learning our xcom and um, the particular website for us Chattanooga. Um, it is a franchise, so there are locations all over Um, but our website has our team, has local success stories, blogs, things like that that we like to share. Um, as well as our social media Facebook, instagram pages. And um. Jordan sits at the front desk. She's amazing. She is a wealth of information, so she loves to field phone calls and talk through ideas and make recommendations, even um, just from a phone call. Um, so our phone number is 4, so our phone number is 423-305-1599.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:Excellent, excellent, thank you and for those that are listening outside the Chattanooga area. Look for LearningRx franchise near you and see if there is one, because I highly encourage you to use that. If you have a child or yourself or someone that's challenged with some cognitive skills, find one. We do have Chattanooga Airport so you can fly into Chattanooga Airport and see Dr Miller. It's an easy in and out. We have some direct flights so you can do that Well, and I'll add, actually so.
Michelle Hecker Davis - Learning Rx:LearningRx has an international arm called BrainRx. It's a similar delivery, but we're actually in over 40 countries. There are more than 200 locations all over the world. So LearningRx, or brain or ex, internationally.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:That's great, great and and for firstly, juice. So we're in our third season. You can find us at firstlyjucom or you can download the podcast and learn season one and two. We're really unpacking leaders on how to learn to lead yourself so that you can lead your team, which is we feel like it's so important. Most people get into leadership but for the financial reason I'm going, I'm going up the corporate ladder because I want to get the corner office and I want to make six figures and I get there and I don't know how to handle the pressure and so I have to turn to some alternative things in my life to be able to comfort myself because I'm just stressed out all the time. We want to take those leaders who are in those positions and really help them leave work and not have to go to some kind of fix quotation mark, fix to be able to deal with what they've dealt with every day. So firstleaducom, social media, as well as our podcast.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:Excellent, excellent. Well, thank you everyone for being here and we look forward to seeing everyone on the next episode.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:Thank you all, thank you. That was a lot of brainpower, wasn't it?
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:Uh, it was. It was a great conversation. I really enjoyed just being in the room and participating. I mean, like you said before, we've talked to each of those people independently and they had some great things to share with us. And so, if you want to go back and hear their interviews and a couple of podcasts prior to this episode, but uh, it was. Uh, it was very interesting to hear the interactions and the and the sharing of information that went on. So it was, it was really good.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:You know, the one thing that a couple of things I took away from it, but one in particular is we all respect what each other does, because we all know that each one of us have a portion, uh, of the brain that we're working on in order to unlock it, to give it its full potential yeah, and this was referenced a couple times during the episode and the conversation.
Douglas Ford - 1st Lead U:But uh, the way dr miller talked about like so he upgrades the hardware and michelle really helps to implement software and then we kind of optimize the software, so uh, it was, that was a great, I thought, analogy to use and to help people think about, like what the different stages and components of things were yeah, so we, we uh I forget how many times apple's what, what version of phone they're on, but it's it's like 17 or eight or whatever it is.
John Ballinger - 1st Lead U - Personal Growth Coach:You know, on our part, we want to continue developing it, so we want it's. You know, if you're Sam leader 2.0, we want to get you to 3.0 and 4.0 and 5.0. And there may be some times that you've got to go back a little bit and develop and learn and then go back and lean into that. But I think they both agreed we got some tough challenges on our side to continue developing people once they install the hardware and upgrade the software. Our job is to continue developing that software and, uh, it is a challenge, but it's what is needed today for today's leader in in the workplace and, uh, in many levels, um, you know just yourself personally, your home and uh, friends, friendship, leadership and all those good things. So we hope you enjoyed uh, first lead you. And uh, the interview with dr, with Dr Miller and Michelle Davis, and myself with Mr Ford asking us good questions. And remember, in order to lead your team well, you must learn to first lead. We'll see you next time.
