Toolbox for Thriving With Humans
An Expanding Collection of My Top Energizers, Exercises & Sources for Meaningful Collaboration & Personal Growth
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Silent Eye Gazing
This is a paired presence exercise that strips interaction down to its essentials. By removing words and roles, participants practice staying present with another person — without performing, fixing, or withdrawing.
Raisin Exploration
This is a simple attention exercise that slows experience down to reveal how quickly the mind rushes, labels, and disengages. By working with an ordinary object, participants practice presence, curiosity, and sensory awareness.
Hero’s Journey
The Hero’s Journey is a reflective storytelling exercise that helps people make sense of challenge, change, and growth. By mapping real experiences onto a simple narrative structure, participants uncover meaning, clarify purpose, and see how struggle often precedes insight.
Neuroscience of Leadership
A concise reminder that leadership suffers when analysis crowds out human awareness — and why great leaders learn to switch modes, not stay stuck in one.
Meditation’s Impact on the Brain
Compelling neuroscience showing that attention and emotional regulation are not fixed traits but trainable skills, with measurable brain changes appearing after just weeks of consistent practice.
Amy Edmondson on Team-Based Psychological Safety
You don’t have to change the whole culture to make a difference. Psychological safety is built team by team — and local leadership matters more than you think.
Satya Nadella on Empathy & Growth Mindset
A grounded, insider view of how real culture change happens at scale — through purpose, empathy, and leaders willing to confront their own fixed mindset.
Formula 1 Cross-Pollination
A gripping case study in cross-industry learning: how Formula 1 pit-stop discipline helped a pediatric cardiac team cut handover errors and make high-stakes work dramatically safer.
Ed Catmull on Pixar’s Brain Trust
This video shows how removing ego and power from the room creates the conditions where real creativity — and real progress — can emerge.
Mark Bertolini on Authenticity
This video shows why leadership isn’t earned through titles or polish, but through presence, authenticity, and the courage to lead without armor.
Loving Kindness
Loving-Kindness isn’t about being nice or soft. This practice trains compassion as a stabilizing force — reducing internal friction so clearer thinking and better collaboration can emerge.
Friend vs. Self
A short reflection exercise that reveals the gap between how we treat others in difficulty and how we treat ourselves. It helps participants develop a more effective inner coach without lowering standards.
Focus On The Breath
A simple guided mindfulness practice that trains attention by returning, again and again, to the sensation of the breath. It helps participants stabilize focus, regulate the nervous system, and reset presence.
Deep Listening
Deep Listening is a structured partner exercise that separates speaking from listening to train attention, presence, and empathy. It builds trust and psychological safety by letting people experience what it feels like to be truly heard.
Whose Bag?
What can you learn about a person without asking them a single question? This exercise trains empathy and collective sense-making by turning everyday objects into clues about identity, values, and meaning.
Coke Bottle Ideation
Creativity often stalls not because of a lack of ideas, but because of self-censorship. This fast-paced exercise breaks functional fixedness and helps groups practice speaking before ideas feel finished.
Healthy Skepticism vs. Cynicism
Cynicism often disguises itself as realism, but it quietly erodes trust, creativity, and collaboration. This episode shows how growth-oriented mindsets and empathy are trainable skills that shape healthier teams and more resilient leaders.
Love Questions
Love Questions uses carefully sequenced questions to help people connect beyond roles and titles. It builds trust, empathy, and psychological safety by pairing self-disclosure with deep, uninterrupted listening.