The Neuroscience of Change

Personal Transformation Based on Mindfulness and Self-Compassion

What's your most important goal? Why does it matter so deeply? How will you overcome the obstacles? Answer these questions with sincerity, proceed with mindfulness and compassion, and you have just set in motion a revolutionary method for personal change that is supported by both the latest science and traditional wisdom. On The Neuroscience of Change, psychologist and award-winning Stanford lecturer Kelly McGonigal presents six sessions of breakthrough ideas, guided practices, and real-world exercises for making self-awareness and kindness the basis for meaningful transformation.

Practical Methods to Retrain Your Brain to Support Your Goals

Our understanding of the incredible power of the human brain is at an all-time high, with the emerging fields of neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and psychophysiology opening new possibilities for greater health, happiness, and freedom from suffering. Drawing on her training as a research scientist and longtime practitioner of meditation and yoga, Dr. McGonigal reveals these startling findings—including the clinically supported methods for training the mind away from default states and negativity that no longer serve us and establishing behaviors and attitudes aligned with our highest values and aspirations.

The First Rule of Change: It's Already Happening

As the world's wisdom traditions teach and science is now verifying, our lives are in fact defined by constant change. Whether you're looking to change a behavior, improve your health or other circumstances, or simply for a way to bring hope and resilience into your life as it is, The Neuroscience of Change will help you trust yourself and unfold your true capacities for personal transformation.


Highlights

Willingness, self-awareness, and surrender—how to nourish the seeds of change
• Focusing on the process, not the outcome
• How to overcome the "trigger-to-instinct" reaction
• The proven benefits of meditation—and how to start practicing yourself
• How to transform self-criticism into self-compassion
• Why your mind creates habits—and how to consciously create new ones
• Making values-driven commitments
• Visualization and the principle of "encoding prospective memories"
• The power of the vow
• "Deep activation" and the danger of rejecting what is
• Working with inner experiences as the key to making outward change
• Six hours of breakthrough science, practical wisdom, guided exercises, and mindfulness meditations for making positive change that lasts
Course objectives:

Discuss how to nourish the seeds of change and transformation by working with inner experiences as the key to making outward change through willingness, self-awareness, and surrender.
• Explain how to transform self-criticism into self-compassion
• Discuss the value of vows, "encoding prospective memories," making values-driven commitments and how to overcome the "trigger-to-instinct" in the process of transformation and change.
• Practice guided reflections based on breakthrough science, practical sensability, and wisdom traditions, including exercises and mindfulness meditations that for making positive change that lasts.