Unlocking Your Potential: Redefining Goals with Bob Proctor's Wisdom- PART 1
Welcome to Season 14 of the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast! Join Andrea Samadi as she revisits past episodes to unearth profound insights from experts like Bob Proctor. As the podcast embarks on a journey of reflection, discover how to connect science with social and emotional learning for enhanced well-being, achievements, and productivity.
In this episode, Andrea dives into episode 66, exploring life-altering lessons with the legendary Bob Proctor, who challenged her with the pivotal question: What do you really want to do with your life? Through the lens of practical neuroscience, learn how to craft huge goals, venture beyond our senses, and tap into the higher faculties of mind to transform those dreams into reality.
Discover the essence of interconnectedness and the profound truth that we are souls, not just physical beings. This episode is a roadmap for anyone yearning to refine their goals and elevate their understanding to new heights. Don't miss this exploration of timeless wisdom that promises transformative growth.
In this first part of our series, we’ll explore:
How to ask the right questions to uncover your real desires.
Why you must go beyond your five senses and tap into your higher mental faculties—like imagination, intuition, and will—to create a life you love.
The mindset shift that transforms vague wishes into powerful, crystal-clear goals.
Bob’s wisdom wasn’t just theory—it was a challenge to think differently, act boldly, and believe in possibilities far beyond my comfort zone. And it all begins with one question:
“What do you really want?”
Watch our past interview here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHWMCzfODU4
Watch our YouTube Short here https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_npFmt6zVE4
BE SURE TO SIGN UP TO SEE THE NEW MOVIE Bob Proctor's Legacy https://www.bobproctorlegacy.com/
On the EP 366, and PART 1 review of EP 66 we will cover:
✔ Top Lesson from Episode 66 – Refining the question: “What do you really want to do with your life?”
✔ Sage Advice #1: “We have been given the mental faculties to create our own environment.”
We explored how to go beyond our five senses and tap into the six higher faculties of our mind.
✔ Sage Advice #2: “There’s only one mind.”
We looked at how our actions matter because we are all deeply connected.
✔ Sage Advice #3: “We are a soul—we don’t have one.”
We reflected on the perfection within each of us, and how it continually drives us toward bigger and better possibilities.
Welcome back to SEASON 14 of The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we connect the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning and emotional intelligence training for improved well-being, achievement, productivity and results—using what I saw as the missing link (since we weren’t taught this when we were growing up in school), the application of practical neuroscience.
I’m Andrea Samadi, and seven years ago I started this podcast with one big question that I had never thought of in the past: If productivity and results matter to you—how exactly are you using your brain to make these results happen? Most of us were never taught how to apply neuroscience to boost our productivity, results, or well-being. That’s why I set out to bring you the world’s top experts—so we can learn the intersection of science, and social and emotional learning skills, putting what we learn into action every day, for predictable results.
As we kick off Season 14, I’ve been revisiting past episodes and reflecting on the incredible insights our guests have shared since we first launched in 2019. This reflection started when a young filmmaker, Vishal Sharma[i], reached out to me and offered to create YouTube Shorts[ii] from past interviews. When I saw his first example, something clicked. As I reviewed older episodes, I realized I had only scratched the surface of the lessons inside each interview.
I started re-listening—not just to refresh my memory, but to deepen my own understanding. And honestly, I was surprised at how many ideas I had missed or forgotten.
So as we dive into this review of past conversations, know that this isn’t just for you, the listener—it’s for me as well. I’ve learned that slowing down helps us uncover even more wisdom, and I’m excited for us to walk this path together.
For today’s Episode 366[iii], we’re going back to Episode 66 where my journey began, with the legendary Bob Proctor—the first person who truly challenged me to think. Back in the late 1990s, he asked me a simple but life-changing question: “What do you really want to do with your life?”
I remember being completely stumped. I didn’t have a clear, well-thought-out answer. But looking back, I’m grateful he asked—because that question launched me on the path to understanding the mind, the brain, psychology, and neuroscience. It’s been a journey that’s had plenty of twists and turns, and where everything began for me.
As we revisit past episodes like this one, my hope is that together, we can create a roadmap for success—one that helps you take the lessons you hear and actually apply them in your daily life.
So going back to EP 66, and our interview with Bob Proctor, I think back and remember that it was easy to book time on Bob’s calendar back then, because this interview was scheduled June 2020, right at the start of the pandemic. Prior to this time, it would have been very difficult to have made this interview happen.
I had written out some of the most important life lessons I had learned from Bob, prior to recording our interview, and while all the lessons are important, I am going to focus on the first one for this review.
I learned how to set huge goals—goals most people might call “crazy”—when Bob asked me, “What do you really want?” When I gave him my answer, I knew I could have done better. I didn’t have my life all thought out at the time. I didn’t know what the faculties of my mind were, nor had I spent any time developing my intuition, or imagination. He met me where I was, and explained that there were specific steps I needed to follow. It began with writing my goals on a card he gave me, and I did what he told me to do. I actually put some of the goals into visual pictures that I drew out to go along with each goal. He told me that if I followed all his suggestions and truly believed in what I was doing, I could achieve what I wanted. I believed him—and I followed through. Looking back at the list of goals I set back then, in my early days of self-discovery, most of these goals were eventually achieved, and this “writing of goals on a card” became a yearly ritual to help me to keep moving forward.
This was 26 years ago, and while that “goal-setting” activity was an important lesson to learn, as we are revisiting these episodes, and planning out the roadmap for this review, I’m personally revisiting this question now, and refining my vision for the next 1, 3, 5 and 10 years.
What about you, the listener? Wherever you are tuning in from, around the world. Do you have a clear written description of what it is that YOU want? If we never think about this important question, and clearly write it all out, I’m sure you will agree with me that life will pass by, and our results will stay exactly the same.
So, as we walk through each interview together, digging into the lessons we might have missed, do this with your written vision of what it is that you want, right in front of you, to refine and improve along the way.
“What do you REALLY want?”[iv]
Now let’s visit some of the pieces of wisdom I missed in EP 66, by reviewing our YouTube Shorts and see if we can take our understanding to new heights.
VIDEO 1 Watch this YouTube Short
SAGE ADVICE 1 “We have been given the mental faculties to create our own environment.”
What exactly does this mean? In Episode 294, we explored these mental faculties in depth, revisiting the lessons Bob taught those 12 teenagers who forever changed the course of my life. That moment was the true starting point for me, and it began with this concept where I learned that if we can learn to live beyond our 5 senses (what we see, hear, smell, taste and touch” and begin to live through our higher faculties of mind (our reason, intuition, perception, will, memory, and imagination” we will take our results to unimaginable heights.
Much of creating what I truly wanted in those early days began with my imagination, one of our mental faculties. The vision I wrote down on paper back then wasn’t logical by any standard—but it was the understanding of these mental faculties that shaped my future. This is a good concept to revisit, to be sure that when setting goals, that we are tapping into these “higher faculties of our mind” and reaching for places, things, experiences that stretch us beyond what we know we are capable to achieving. These higher faculties are here to take us to these NEW heights that we can only see when we open up to the potential of new possibilities that we may never have thought of before.
REMEMBER: “Imagination is the most marvelous, miraculous, inconceivably powerful force the world has ever known.” Napoleon Hill
SAGE ADVICE 2
“There’s only one mind.”
When I first encountered this idea, it was in something I was reading that included a diagram—people connected like lightbulbs, all drawing from one main source. This can be seen as universal consciousness, or the collective consciousness, a reminder that we are all connected to each other and to the single intelligence behind all existence. It’s a profound concept, but to me it simply means this: what I do matters, because it affects the whole.
I believe our goal is to continually expand our awareness and deepen our consciousness—a feat that National Geographic describes as “the most astonishing act our big, complex, interconnected brains pull off, and scientists are only just beginning to understand” (The Brain, Julia Sklar).
SAGE ADVICE 3
“We are a soul, we don’t have one.” [v]
This concept suggests that “the essence of a person is their soul” rather than their physical body. We did touch on the mind/body/soul connection with Marie Gervais on EP 214[vi] and I will always work on seeing the “spirit” of a person, and look deeper, than just taking what I “see” at face value.
To better understand yourself and your goals, it makes sense to understand this concept that “we are a soul, we don’t have one.” There is “perfection” within each of us, and that perfection is seeking expression (with and through us). I could spend an hour talking about this one from Thomas Troward’s Dore Lectures of Mental Science where he explains that “My mind is A center of Divine operation. (think of a center of a basketball where there is power with movement, or so above/so below). The Divine operation is always for expansion and fuller expression, (we are always going to want more-if we are in sales, we will want more sales, if we are a runner, we will want to run faster. We will never be satisfied unless we are growing. We will always want to do what we do-better) and this means the production of something beyond what has gone before, (we have never done this thing YET) something entirely new, not included in past experience, though proceeding out of it by an orderly sequence of growth.” (this is HOW we move towards what we want, that thing that we imagined, something that takes us BEYOND where we have ever been…into a whole NEW place that in the beginning we could only see with our imagination, until one day…we are living this thing or live we imagined).
And with just diving into 3 tips of wisdom from EP 66, there is so much more still to cover.
REVIEW and CONCLUSION
To wrap up this week’s Episode 366—where we revisited a clip from Episode 66, our interview with Bob Proctor—we explored:
✔ Top Lesson from Episode 66 – Refining the question: “What do you really want to do with your life?”
✔ Sage Advice #1: “We have been given the mental faculties to create our own environment.”
We explored how to go beyond our five senses and tap into the six higher faculties of our mind.
✔ Sage Advice #2: “There’s only one mind.”
We looked at how our actions matter because we are all deeply connected.
✔ Sage Advice #3: “We are a soul—we don’t have one.”
We reflected on the perfection within each of us, and how it continually drives us toward bigger and better possibilities.
With that, we will close out this episode. I hope that reviewing our past interviews helps you to refine your goals this year, and work towards whatever it is that YOU really want.
I’ll see you next week with PART 2 of our review of EP 66. There’s a lot still left to explore from this one.
Have a good week and don't forget to sign up to watch Bob Proctor's Legacy Movie https://www.bobproctorlegacy.com/ RELEASED August 10, 2025
RESOURCES
Vishal Sharma Videographer
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/vishal_is_here03/
My YouTube channel https://youtube.com/@vishalsharma00991?si=Tj4CFHAy5CYrGgYU
Our Conscious Mind and 5 Senses
https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/brain-fact-friday-on-our-conscious-mind-and-the-five-senses/
NEW MOVIE BOB PROCTOR'S LEGACY RELEASED AUG 10th 2025 https://www.bobproctorlegacy.com/
REFERENCES:
[i] Vishal Sharma Instagram https://www.instagram.com/vishal_is_here03/
[ii] Andrea’s YouTube Shorts-created by Vishal Sharma https://www.youtube.com/@AndreaSamadi/shorts
[iii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #66 with The Legendary Bob Proctor https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/the-legendary-bob-proctor-on/
[iv] What Do You Really Want? Bob Proctor https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Gaf1uXjuPHc
[v] Bob Proctor We Are a Soul, We Don’t Have One https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFyBf8GDs3Y
[vi]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #214 with Marie Gervais on The Spirit of Work https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/marie-gervais-phd-on-the-spirit-of-work-connecting-science-business-practices-and-sacred-texts-for-a-happier-and-more-productive-workplace/
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