Vertigo and Neuroscience of Music, Gerald J. Leonard
Do you suffer from vertigo? Gerald J. Leonard suffers from vertigo. Through neuroscience, music and holistic approach he 'rewired' his brain. Plus, one sure way to reach your goals.
Transcript
Gerald J. Leonard: Six weeks before that TEDx I had a major bout with vertigo.
Speaker:Oh.
Speaker:I was rushed to the hospital.
Speaker:, I was in the hospital for a day and a half.
Speaker:. Catherine: hello there.
Speaker:I'm Catherine, your host of this variety show podcast.
Speaker:Your positive imprint is transforming how we live today
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Speaker:Music by the legendary and talented Chris Nole check him out, ChrisNole.com c H R I
Speaker:S N O L E. Thank you again for listening and for your support of this podcast.
Speaker:Your positive imprint.
Speaker:What's your PI
Speaker:well, hello listeners.
Speaker:My guest today grew up during the challenging era of the 1960s in America.
Speaker:He has authored several books and cleverly has incorporated music
Speaker:terminology and scenarios, which for me, absolutely brilliant.
Speaker:I particularly enjoyed his work.
Speaker:In his book, culture is the Base Seven Steps to Creating High Performance Teams.
Speaker:One of his quotes really stands out to me.
Speaker:"Vision drives and develops values".
Speaker:He is a professional bass player and an accomplished expert in project management.
Speaker:He serves today as the CEO of Turnberry Premier, and is the founder of the Leonard
Speaker:Productivity Intelligence Institute.
Speaker:His expertise has been featured on NPR but I especially loved , his Tedx Talk.
Speaker:Loved it.
Speaker:Gerald, you are truly remarkable, and I'm thrilled to have you as a
Speaker:guest today on your positive imprint.
Speaker:Welcome to the show, Gerald J. Leonard.
Speaker:Gerald J. Leonard: Well, Catherine, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker:I'm really happy to be here.
Catherine:You are listening to part two with Gerald J. Leonard.
Catherine:Gerald J. Leonard: A big part of this whole culture and and values piece is
Catherine:also around the stories that you tell.
Catherine:Which is vision, values, buy-in and in stories.
Catherine:And having those high performance teams, so you mentioned
Catherine:your seven, so not in this order, vision, values, buy-in, best
Catherine:practices, stories and environment.
Catherine:And the stories,
Catherine:. So stories touch me and you use the scenario of the conductor.
Catherine:And the job of the conductor is not just, of course working with the
Catherine:musicians, but it's making sure that that emotion felt by the audience.
Catherine:And I want to go to one of your stories as a child regarding Wendell,
Catherine:your brother, because this, okay, this is a great little story.
Catherine:And you talked about what your dad did and, and the construction and
Catherine:so on, but he was a hard worker, but he was also a problem solver.
Catherine:And it was, Wendell was there looking at the sand.
Catherine:Gerald J. Leonard: Yeah, you remind me of the story.
Catherine:You have a lot of different stories.
Catherine:So in that situation, um, you know, it was a typical day at work for dad and because,
Catherine:, what dad did was it was very hard work.
Catherine:, and, and he was really good at it.
Catherine:And so one day, , the trucks that would bring the sand, 'cause whenever
Catherine:you're pouring the foundation of a home, , it, you set up the
Catherine:brick structure around it, right.
Catherine:Of how the, what the home is gonna look like and where the pipes are
Catherine:and all that stuff gets laid first.
Catherine:And then in Florida, , at least in central Florida, they would put
Catherine:sand on the, on the floor foundation and they would pack it, right?
Catherine:Well, they had a couple of dump trucks that came in and they had the cement
Catherine:truck coming, let's say around 11 o'clock.
Catherine:And it was probably around eight o'clock in the morning.
Catherine:And the.
Catherine:Gentleman who brought the sand, just put a couple of dump truck loads of sand in
Catherine:a pile in the middle of the, the bricks.
Catherine:And so it really was supposed to be spread out.
Catherine:And then they would use a trial of this tool that would go around and on top
Catherine:of it and the machine would, press the sand and compact the sand down.
Catherine:But that hadn't happened.
Catherine:And usually that has to happen by, let's say, , you're gonna start pouring
Catherine:it at, at 11, that's probably should happen around two, two hours beforehand.
Catherine:So my dad's there and it was just him and my brother.
Catherine:And my brother looks there.
Catherine:It's like, where's the help coming from?
Catherine:Because, , we got these two big piles of sand and, he
Catherine:just couldn't see it happening.
Catherine:He couldn't see any way around it.
Catherine:My dad was like, okay, you're gonna grab a shovel.
Catherine:I'm gonna grab one and we're going to straighten this out
Catherine:and , we're not gonna talk.
Catherine:We're just gonna do it.
Catherine:At first he was overwhelmed, but as he just started doing it and started
Catherine:spreading things out and getting the, the foundation ready for, for it
Catherine:to be poured with the concrete, he was amazed that they were within an hour
Catherine:had moved those two mounds of sand or dirt and had com compacted it so that
Catherine:by the time the trucks came, they were prepared and ready for it to happen.
Catherine:And it was a lesson that he never forgot.
Catherine:My oldest brother never forgot, and that I learned about through them.
Catherine:And that was no matter how big the challenge is, you can't
Catherine:just look at it and complain.
Catherine:You just gotta get started.
Catherine:my dad had a saying is just keep saying good morning.
Catherine:And that the idea there was no matter what's going on in your life and
Catherine:especially for now where we are in , this, this place , in the world where
Catherine:there's a lot going on, and there's a lot going on politically, socially,
Catherine:just in all different kinds of ways.
Catherine:, and taking my dad's advice, it's just keep saying good morning
Catherine:and doing the right thing.
Catherine:Listen to your positive music, listen to positive books, listen
Catherine:to positive affirmations, and just keep doing the right thing.
Catherine:As it says, this too shall pass.
Catherine:That's another major lesson in life, right?
Catherine:Life comes at you fast.
Catherine:It's kinda like the insurance commercial.
Catherine:Uh, and, and things happen.
Catherine:Um.
Catherine:And you have to take it one step at a time.
Catherine:And I'll share this quick story because, you know, you mentioned
Catherine:it, um, that you watch my TEDx.
Catherine:Yes.
Catherine:Gerald J. Leonard: Six weeks before that TEDx I had a major bout with vertigo.
Catherine:Oh.
Catherine:I was rushed to the hospital.
Catherine:, I was in the hospital for a day and a half.
Catherine:, I had to show that I could use a walker to move up and down the hallway
Catherine:because I had lost the ability to walk.
Catherine:And this happened six weeks before that TEDx talk.
Catherine:Oh my.
Catherine:And I'm an independent consultant and the sole bread winner of the family.
Catherine:I'm taken home.
Catherine:I can't look at my laptop, I can't look at television.
Catherine:I'm sitting there, I'm laying in bed thinking, is this my life?
Catherine:And I'm kind of rehearsing the, the TEDx talk in my head 'cause
Catherine:I've been practicing it for months.
Catherine:It's about what if practice is the performance, the neuroscience of music.
Catherine:And so that really drove me that I made a decision that once I got
Catherine:back up and once I could get up on my feet or at least just, you know,
Catherine:hold onto the walker and make it to my my room, I would go and practice
Catherine:because the idea that music when you're practicing, it activates the brain so
Catherine:much based on the neuroscientists, that if there's any damage into your neural
Catherine:network, the music and the activity of the music would start rewiring
Catherine:the brain, reconfiguring the brain.
Catherine:And so I just, you know, I just kind of took the books and my
Catherine:presentation for, its at its word and said, okay, I gotta practice this.
Catherine:I have no other choice.
Catherine:And within three weeks I walked into my doctor's office unassisted.
Catherine:I was very gated.
Catherine:You could tell I had been really impacted by what had happened to me.
Catherine:And afterwards he said, you know, uh, we're gonna try to get you
Catherine:back to close to where you were, but we're probably never gonna
Catherine:get you back a hundred percent.
Catherine:Uh, in fact, You have a disability.
Catherine:And in my mind, I translated that, that, okay, I'm not disabled.
Catherine:I have a constraint.
Catherine:I have something that's limiting me, but it doesn't mean that
Catherine:I'm broken or that I can't do.
Catherine:And so I rephrased it in my mind as a constraint.
Catherine:And so I kept practicing, kept walking, kept doing the things I needed to
Catherine:do, and three weeks later I drove up to Delaware and I delivered that
Catherine:TEDx talk, , with my constraint.
Catherine:And so if you go back and watch that talk, you'll realize that I am very deliberate
Catherine:in how I turn because I couldn't move.
Catherine:I couldn't make these movements because I would fall over.
Catherine:Oh my gosh.
Catherine:Gerald J. Leonard: But I felt like if this is the last thing that I do
Catherine:in my life, then I am going to give my whole heart to it with whatever.
Catherine:And then there was a lot of young people from high schools that were there
Catherine:and it made me think about my kids.
Catherine:And I thought, well, what if this is the last thing I get to say to my kids?
Catherine:What would I wanna say to them?
Catherine:So when you listen to that talk, it's me kind of sharing at that point, what would
Catherine:I say to my children about this topic
Catherine:if it was the last thing I had to say to them, and thank God it wasn't the last
Catherine:thing I had to say to them, but because I had the constraint I had to continually
Catherine:use those principles throughout.
Catherine:And that's why, you know, I ended up creating a podcast
Catherine:called Productivity Smarts.
Catherine:And, and a lot of different things happened that my company got invested in.
Catherine:And, you know, I wrote two other books and a bunch of other stuff started happening.
Catherine:But it all came from just keep saying, good morning, one shovel at a time.
Catherine:No matter what's going on or what's happening, just keep moving forward.
Catherine:Just keep moving forward and by keeping your mind focused on what's possible
Catherine:and not what's not possible, but what's possible and that we can do it.
Catherine:And then going back to the foundation of the gift that I was given as a, as
Catherine:a musician and, and the fact that not only did it direct my life and give me
Catherine:all these different foundational things in my life, it actually rebuilt my life.
Catherine:It saved my life, you know, this gift and allowed me to re rebuild, , something that
Catherine:was really, , had been really damaged.
Catherine:Wow.
Catherine:Wow.
Catherine:Thank you so much, Gerald, for sharing that story because that
Catherine:truly is inspirational and moving.
Catherine:And again, a story, let's, let's share the stories, which is what I do.
Catherine:I bring the stories to the listeners and try to bring positivity and
Catherine:, getting people active so people can now become more active if they
Catherine:have a business, if they have a family, if they're a school teacher.
Catherine:Building high performance teams with your seven steps.
Catherine:And then you've got your four values, which you've already talked about.
Catherine:And again, one of my favorites is enshrining those values into
Catherine:practice, the leader says, make sure the vision is hanging up in your
Catherine:office or your classroom or whatever.
Catherine:Well then what?
Catherine:What do you do then?
Catherine:Right?
Catherine:You have to continue to do something otherwise you're not putting those
Catherine:values and that vision to practice, and I like your dad's quote, looking
Catherine:at the sand is not going to move it.
Catherine:And so looking at that piece of paper, of the vision and the values is not
Catherine:going to put them into practice.
Catherine:Gerald J. Leonard: One of the, the biggest things that, that after the
Catherine:vertigo situation and as I kind of got back on my feet I remember spending
Catherine:some time with a good buddy of mine, Mike Ray, Bernie's a guitarist as well.
Catherine:And, , he does TEDx and he is done speaking all over the world as
Catherine:a musician, , and playing music.
Catherine:And one of the things he shared with me where he had been mentored by
Catherine:Brian Tracy, was that Brian encouraged him to write out his goals by hand.
Catherine:I. Kinetically every day, right?
Catherine:And I took it a little bit further and said, I'm gonna turn my goals
Catherine:into affirmations and then write them out on a piece of paper.
Catherine:I would, date it and then write out my goals.
Catherine:And it's transformed.
Catherine:I now do it digitally, but I still do it kinetically with a digital
Catherine:pen and digital paper, if you will.
Catherine:And I tell you, when I started doing that, after a week or two, some
Catherine:of these goals started happening or someone would recommend a book,
Catherine:and it's the exact book I needed
Catherine:to learn something.
Catherine:I kept focused these are my goals.
Catherine:And what it does, it, it reprograms what's called the reticular
Catherine:activating system in our brains.
Catherine:And it's a filtering system that we have in our brains that filters in what we
Catherine:want, and filters out what we don't want.
Catherine:And it's the whole reason why if you go buy a red car, a certain type, and
Catherine:you drive off the parking lot, you start seeing that red car everywhere
Catherine:is because now it's in your life.
Catherine:Well, if you do that with your goals, you, you'll literally
Catherine:start seeing everything that, that you need pertaining to that goal
Catherine:around you.
Catherine:And you may have been blind to it before, but now you see it, you also
Catherine:become the magnet for all the resources that you need to achieve that goal.
Catherine:And I, I do it to this day with all of my major goals.
Catherine:I sit down and I write out my goals before my day starts.
Catherine:And it keeps me focused on where I'm going and what I want.
Catherine:That's a good takeaway.
Catherine:Write out your goals.
Catherine:That's a great takeaway.
Catherine:I'm going to do that actually myself.
Catherine:You were talking about neuroscience so, , Mack Bailey, right.
Catherine:Who's been on my podcast a couple times.
Catherine:He's a musician like yourself.
Catherine:He's guitar.
Catherine:Okay.
Catherine:He does retreats with people with PTSD and music Rewires the Brain, and he
Catherine:does these retreats where they write exactly what you are saying, Gerald,
Catherine:he does these retreats where the veterans write songs based on their thoughts, their
Catherine:feelings, their PTSD, . And putting it into song and, and playing the instrument
Catherine:does something to rewire the brain.
Catherine:Yeah.
Catherine:Gerald J. Leonard: Yes, when you experience trauma or you
Catherine:experienced anything like that.
Catherine:Y it goes into the body, right?
Catherine:It goes into the body and it needs to be processed out.
Catherine:And it's not just , okay, I'm just gonna sit down and talk about it and,
Catherine:uh, it's, I'm gonna be all better.
Catherine:No, it, it literally gets embedded in our DNA, it gets rewired in us.
Catherine:And so you have to then use the same kind of mechanisms to wire it out or
Catherine:to reframe it or to restructure it.
Catherine:And understanding that, , we as human beings are so complicated and so complex
Catherine:you can't duplicate our brains with computers because they're so complex.
Catherine:, our bodies every organ is so complex, that's why you have specialists in each
Catherine:area because it's so many moving parts.
Catherine:And so when we go through a trauma, it's usually emotions, it's usually energy.
Catherine:And so you have to take a holistic approach to address it and get it out.
Catherine:And I know as I went through that trauma of the vertigo, and what
Catherine:actually came out of that was they could never tell me what the cause was.
Catherine:But one of the things that, that I did discover over time was, , when
Catherine:you're under stress, and I was in a, you know, the, the stress of just
Catherine:different things that were going on in my life at the time had allowed me
Catherine:to get to that place where my body was outta balance and overwhelmed.
Catherine:So what, what was the trigger?
Catherine:The vertigo.
Catherine:And what I found in, in research was that one out of five people
Catherine:in the United States suffer with some form of vestibular or vertigo.
Catherine:Why?
Catherine:Because we're outta balance, we're overwhelmed.
Catherine:And so I learned to begin to do yoga to de-stress my body,
Catherine:and then I learned to meditate.
Catherine:I learned to do the affirmations, to place myself in a place where
Catherine:I'm removing a lot of stress.
Catherine:I'm staying in , a positive, peaceful state of mind.
Catherine:I'm, using talk therapy or I'm using writing therapy and playing music to
Catherine:allow sound to vibrate throughout my body to help me move to another state.
Catherine:All of those things are really critical for people to be able to process through.
Catherine:Right.
Catherine:And many times it's not just when something like that happens, you can
Catherine:have a conversation or go to a therapist.
Catherine:Those things are great, but sometimes it takes more than that.
Catherine:And I think that's why the program that your friend, this gentleman has
Catherine:works is because he's using music, he's using the kinetics of writing and the
Catherine:mindfulness of writing to get them to reflect and bring up and face those
Catherine:issues so that they can then let it go.
Catherine:And then once they do that, the body's like, okay, now I can let this go
Catherine:because you've actually addressed it and you're beginning to understand why and
Catherine:we're not going back down that pathway.
Catherine:The Leonard Productivity Intelligence Institute.
Catherine:I created it is because of what I went through with Vertigo I had
Catherine:actually created it before the Vertigo thing happened because I had started
Catherine:studying a lot about neuroscience kinesiology, and then when this happened.
Catherine:It really took off as far as me writing about the importance of
Catherine:understanding the neuroscience.
Catherine:And I actually then met through some coaching programs, a
Catherine:lady named Judith Glazer.
Catherine:And, and sad to say in 2019, I believe she passed away from cancer, but she
Catherine:wrote a book called Conversational Intelligence and she coined
Catherine:the phrase, our words create our worlds, our words create our worlds.
Catherine:So in other words, the words you use is how you see the world, right?
Catherine:And that's why we go to school, we get educated and our world changes
Catherine:because the words we use changed the way we see the world changes.
Catherine:And so the way we experience the world changes, and it's through education
Catherine:and it's through how we're created.
Catherine:You know, our DNA is nothing but a book.
Catherine:Instructions for how our, how each, , protein and, and how the body works.
Catherine:And that's why words impact us so much because we're, we're, we're
Catherine:like little books that once we hear certain words, they get rearranged
Catherine:or we turn on or we turn off genes.
Catherine:And so the idea behind the Leonard Productivity Intelligence Institute
Catherine:is, Hey, we can learn to be highly productive without getting overwhelmed
Catherine:or putting ourselves into a place where we get burned out or our bodies have to
Catherine:give us a vestibular imbalance to say, wait a minute, you're out of balance.
Catherine:Wait a minute, there's something going on.
Catherine:And, , disease is basically a place of being in dis-ease, right?
Catherine:And so if we're constantly in dis-ease, we then come down with a disease,
Catherine:whether it's Crohn's or whether it's this, or whether it's that.
Catherine:It's basically our body saying.
Catherine:You're not in alignment.
Catherine:You're not going down the right road.
Catherine:You're, you're doing things that are hurting me.
Catherine:And so the body responds and lets us know.
Catherine:And so the idea behind the Leonard Productivity Intelligence Institute
Catherine:was to write articles through the podcast, through books, through music,
Catherine:to teach these principles of how to get an alignment with ourselves
Catherine:spiritually, emotionally, and mentally and physically in a way that we can be
Catherine:just as productive and get those great things done and make a difference.
Catherine:But at the same time, we're not burning ourselves out and putting ourselves
Catherine:in a place where eventually our bodies begin to break down because of that.
Catherine:I really appreciate the work that you have done
Catherine:for the global community
Catherine:I wanna thank your sister for having that red guitar and I, I really do
Catherine:love the books that you're writing and cleverly , using music terminology
Catherine:and music scenarios . So Gerald J. Leonard, your last inspiring words.
Catherine:Gerald J. Leonard: Yeah, I would say, no matter how old you are,
Catherine:no matter where you are in life, uh, just keep saying good morning
Catherine:and just keep, uh, a positive note.
Catherine:, my wife asked me all the time, why are you always wearing your headphones?
Catherine:Because I listen to a lot of positive books, or I listen to a lot of things and,
Catherine:, when, when life gets crazy, you know, we control what we put into our head.
Catherine:We really can.
Catherine:And, and so, , when, when things are crazy, , turn off the television, put a
Catherine:positive book on, listen to some positive music, go for a walk and, and just keep
Catherine:yourself grounded and just follow these principles that we talked about today.
Catherine:Like my dad would say, just keep saying good morning and, and whatever
Catherine:challenges are going on, they will go away if you stay in the positive.
Catherine:I thank you so much for being here.
Catherine:Thank you.
Catherine:Gerald J. Leonard.
Catherine:Gerald J. Leonard: I appreciate it.
Catherine:Thank you for having me.
Catherine:to learn more about Gerald, go to Geraldjleonard.com.
Catherine:which is G-E-R-A-L-D-J-L-E-O-N-A-R d.com.
Catherine:Your Positive Imprint.
Catherine:It is a free podcast.
Catherine:If you'd like to buy me a coffee to help fund the production
Catherine:of this podcast, here's how.
Catherine:Go to buymeacoffe.com/yourpositiveimprint And any support you offer
Catherine:will be greatly valued.
Catherine:Thank you so much for your support and for listening to Your Positive Imprint.
Catherine:Your Positive Imprint, what's your P. I.
