Paul Mohapel

With increasing stress in our lives come destructive emotions that can rob us of happiness and contentment. Through mindfulness, we can learn to turn our difficult emotions into our greatest teachers and sources of strength. Deepen the application of emotional intelligence skills by assessing ourselves on six emotional brain styles. Mindfulness strategies will be presented and practiced to help enhance each emotional style and cultivate more harmonious states, characterized by greater calmness and happiness.

As the pace of change and demands increase in our work lives, our ability to handle our emotional states becomes more important. Emotional intelligence (EI) has been linked to leadership and managerial success in the workplace. This introductory course gives you a sense of how well you are currently functioning and how you can harness EI skills to attain your professional goals. A complete personal EI profile (the BarOn EQ-i 2.0 ) is included.

Recent research has revealed that successful people invest more in developing their innate strengths and talents, and pay close attention to what intrinsically energizes them. Conventional approaches of fixing weaknesses have shown to be ultimately ineffective, leading only to individual and organizational mediocrity. This course offers ways for leaders to identify and leverage the strengths of their people to increase work engagement and innovation. You will learn to identify and advocate for your personal strengths using pragmatic strategies.

This experiential workshop explores ethics, attitudes and values associated with mindfulness practice. The current trend of practicing mindfulness-based interventions will be explored with an emphasis on awareness of one’s values, motivations, and assumptions around mindfulness. The course will integrate current research in neuroscience to explore the need for greater compassion for self and others, increasing our ability to make better judgments. An ethical framework for promoting mindful cultures in our families, communities and the workplace will be offered. The course will blend didactic instruction, self-reflection, and meditation activities.

Incorporating recent scientific findings, this workshop explores the relationship between the brain, psychology, and leadership. The session is designed to help build one’s personal and team leadership capacity by examining recent research about how the brain makes connections and changes itself. It will touch upon topics such as the role of emotions in decision-making, the impact of stress, interpersonal communication, and how social bonds are formed. The course will introduce five unique capabilities of the brain that are critical for effective leadership.

This evening session will report on recent startling neuroscience research about the negative impact digital distractions are having on us. Strategies to counter some of the negative impacts of these distractions will be explored.

What makes you truly happy? While this may seem easy to determine, research suggests most people are actually poor at judging what is deeply fulfilling. Happiness is in fact a complex emotion. Examine a wealth of recent scientific research that challenges many of our strongly held assumptions about what makes us happy. See how parts of your brain often deceive you into falsely believing something should bring happiness when in fact it does not. Learn happiness practices to take home.