“Reading is not for play. It is to gain knowledge” Stella Adler The Art of Acting[i] and she adds that “I, for instance, am very strict about what I eat and I’m equally strict about what I read.”

 
In keeping with our season theme of going back to the basics, and building the strongest 2.0 version of ourselves, I’m skipping to episode #199[ii] on “The Neuroscience of Self-Belief and Our Identity”[iii] from Feb 2022.
For those who are returning guests, welcome back to The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we cover the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning (for schools) and emotional intelligence training (in the workplace) with tools, ideas and strategies that we can all use for immediate results, with our brain in mind.  For those who haven’t met me yet, I’m Andrea Samadi, an author, and an educator with a passion for learning and launched this podcast to share how the understanding of our complex brain transfers into our everyday life and results.
On this episode #288 we will cover:
✔ A review of The Neuroscience of Self-Belief and Our Identity
✔ How Belief in Ourselves Develops and Changes Over Time
✔ Top 5 Lessons Learned from Stella Adler’s “The Art of Acting”
✔ Why Continual Study is Important
When I looked back to EP 199 on “The Neuroscience of Self-Belief and Our Identity” I noticed that we opened with a quote from the late Bob Proctor, and a meeting with my friend Patti, who worked closely with Bob’s seminars over the years. Patti and I met a few weeks after Bob moved from what he would say was the physical plane, to the spiritual, and we talked about some of the important lesson learned, and knowledge gained from those days working in the seminar industry, and how they’ve impacted our daily life since then.
Concepts based on our beliefs like:
“All things are possible if you believe.
“Our results are all based on our beliefs”
“If we don’t like what’s going on outside, we’ve got to go inside, and change our beliefs.”[ii] --Bob Proctor
These ideas were at the core of every seminar Proctor conducted, and he would travel the globe presenting these ideas in a way that would captivate and change the lives of his listeners globally. 
Now I sold seminars for Bob from 1999 to 2002 and every time he would come up with a new seminar, people would say the same thing. 
What’s new with this one? 

I’d explain that this new seminar had a different angle but some people would challenge this new angle and say, “that’s kind of what we learned in the last seminar” (belief in ourselves) to do xyz and the answer was yes… belief is behind everything we want to do… it’s at the heart of every seminar. 
It’s also something that takes time to develop. I’ve heard it described in different ways. It’s like pouring a drop of red food coloring into a glass of water, and you stir it once, and the red coloring disappears. We’ve got to keep putting the red drops into the water, to notice the change in color. It’s not easy to notice at what point the color goes from clear to red, as this change takes time.
Just like the belief we must have in ourselves that develops over time.
It’s difficult to put belief into words, or know when we’ve got it, or not, but it can be seen easily by others. I saw it while interviewing Ryan O’Neill on EPISODE #203[iv] on “Making Your Vision a Reality” because I knew Ryan BEFORE he achieved the goals he had set for himself, and remember when they were just ideas, written down.  Watching his success over the years has been nothing short of incredible, and the change shows up for Ryan on the outside. His knowledge, confidence, and success in his daily life, shows up clearly with his demeanor, as his work now is being showcased globally, on the Discovery Channel[v], and he himself agreed with me when I pointed this out to him. Over time, he could see it himself, but like the food color in the water, it is difficult to pinpoint the change as it’s occurring.
How do we change ou