The Kevin Miller Podcast

I continue to find and place value in Emotional Intelligence. I spent much of my life misperceiving social intelligence as emotional intelligence. I felt I could read and cater to other’s emotions, but I was very ignorant and neglectful of my own emotions, which took a toll on myself, and others. In this episode I brought on an expert who cites that emotional intelligence as the single biggest predictor of our personal and professional success. Scott Allender is an expert in global leadership and organizational development. He regularly teaches Enneagram workshops and conducts emotional intelligence assessments for individuals and teams who seek to become more radically self-aware and cognizant of the impact they have on the world. Scott has a book titled, The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence: A Journey to Personal and Professional Success. This is another installment in my continual pursuit of understanding and owning my own emotions.

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I appreciate people who help us paradigm shifts. I have viewed life as progressing to the next goal. The next destination. Focused on what I can add to my achievements. And yet as I’ve gotten older and dealt with more things that have humbled and tempered me, I’ve started wondering if there is as much or more growth, not from adding, but subtracting. Not from learning new things, but unlearning old things. In a similar concept, my guest today says, “Transformation is the power of departure.” DR. ROSENNA BAKARI is a psychologist, empowerment expert, and educator who has just published a book titled, Seven Exits: Leave Behind What No Longer Serves You. Rosenna had a childhood seizure at age seven and was misdiagnosed as “mildly retarded.” She went on however to be identified as mentally gifted. At age 17 she entered Cornell University and by age 22 earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology. For more than 25 years, Dr. Bakari taught psychology to graduate and undergraduate students, published peer-reviewed articles, and delivered presentations across the country with a focus on empowerment, healing, and transformation. Here is a quote I tuned into from Rosenna, “High-quality mental well-being displays positive characteristics, such as managing stress and recovering from adversity. It also includes emotional regulation, self-awareness, and cognitive flexibility. However, individuals with high mental functioning can still be disempowered.” I feel we have a culture that feels tremendously disempowered, even amongst the so-called, “successful.” So I dug into the issue with Rosenna.

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My guest is Dandapani. He became an ordained Hindu monk under the guidance of one of Hinduism’s foremost spiritual leaders of our time. For 10 years he lived a life of serious personal discipline and training at his guru’s cloistered monastery in Hawaii. Here he learned to control his mind. He learned to focus. And he believes this is the key to finding one’s purpose. We would probably all agree that it is easier to focus when you live in a monastery in Hawaii. Dandapani readily agrees. Yet he believed the teachings would work in the outside world as well, and now he’s proved it. He left the monastery and moved to New York where he started a business, got married, and became a father. Today he is a highly sought-after international speaker and leading expert on leveraging the human mind and the power of focus to create a life of purpose and joy. I just attended an event in LA with 5,000 attendees and spoke onstage along with Dandapani. I inspire myself to see him remaining centered and at peace, even as he endures the busyness of travel, work, and family like the rest of us. He has a book, The Power of Unwavering Focus. One concept from his message has changed my life. That of the mind being a vast space with many different areas and our awareness is a glowing orb of our focus that can only light up one room at a time. I invite you to settle into this discussion.

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“Could we really reduce your conscious mind to a set of underlying processes that, when composed, create the feeling of you, the view of right now?” This is what my guest questions and proposes. David Sussillo is a world-renowned neuroscientist, an adjunct professor at Stanford University and has been a scientist at the Google Brain group and Meta Reality Labs. In his professional pursuits, David researches brain-machine interfaces to develop the next generation of computers. He works to understand the ghost in the machine – how cells in our brain collectively give rise to the computations that determine behavior. But David is not just a researcher. He’s his own test subject. He had a difficult childhood, to put it mildly. He spent five years living in the Albuquerque Christian Children’s Home. A home for children who were basically abandoned. They had unfit parents, but weren’t up for adoption. This was near to my heart, as my family and I served at a similar children’s home in Gallup, NM, and I understand much of the heartbreak associated with such a place. My core interest was how David came from such a traumatic childhood, to be the high achieving adult he is today. His sister, who experienced much of the same lifestyle, killed herself. So again, what was different about David? And the point here is not David and his story. But you and me and our stories, and understanding how we imprison, and free ourselves. David discusses his journey in his new book, EMERGENCE: A Memoir of Boyhood, Computation, and the Mysteries of Mind.

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We have made anxiety a bad term. But anxiety is a normal response of the body to a worry or concern or perceived threat. Your anxiety in and of itself isn’t doing anything wrong. We just seem to be responding inappropriately. Britt Frank is a licensed neuropsychotherapist and trauma expert who is trained in IFS (Internal Family Systems) and SE (Somatic Experiencing). She is a speaker and an award-winning adjunct instructor at the University of Kansas where she’s taught classes on ethics, addiction, and clinical social work. She has a book, The Science of Stuck: Breaking Through Inertia To Find Your Path Forward. I brought her to us to discuss her research on anxiety and body based feeling vs thought based therapy. Britt ultimately points to anxiety as a cue from your body. Think of it as a dashboard light in your car saying something is not quite right. Like the “check engine” light. But instead of giving the light attention, our culture has primarily normalized anxiety, as it has many pathologies, and decided to just live with the check engine light on. I think what you will hear is some paradigm shifting information that will change how you view your anxiety and get you paying attention to your body's responses in order to better manage your mental state.

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