GA 489 | Understanding the Way We Think with Gerald J. Leonard

The brain needs time to incubate. And the reason it needs time to incubate an idea is that our conscious mind only perceives about 7% of all that we hear, see, taste and smell. Only about 7%.

Today, I'm excited to welcome Gerald J. Leonard to the show. Now, Gerald is a super interesting guy. This was a really fun episode. So Gerald has. He's an author and CEO of a couple different companies. He's got a lot of experience with project management and productivity, getting things done, that type of thing. But he's also a musician, he's a bass player. And so today's conversation is wide ranging. So we really speak about in the beginning. He tells a really personal story about a serious health challenge that he went through and how he was able to overcome that, and then how that situation really opened up a new way for him to think and, and to really help other people who are also navigating through, you know, change and, and difficulties, which is honestly all of us. So, yeah, it's just really interesting. I think you're going to enjoy this. Now, Gerald is familiar with Lean, but he wouldn't, I don't think, call himself a Lean expert or anything like that. But that's okay. I think it's good once in a while to have folks on who are in, you know, in adjacent spaces and. And I think that's exactly what what Gerald is, is all about. So show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 489. Again, gembapodcast.com look for episode 489. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Gerald, welcome to the show. How are you?

I'm doing well, Ron. How about yourself?

Doing well, man? Where are you calling in from?

I am calling in from Spanish Fort, Alabama, right near Mobile and between Mobile and Pensacola, right at. By the Gulf of Mexico.

Okay. That's a beautiful part of the country, man, right there. I think it's like this, like, hidden gem that a lot of people don't give y' all enough credit for what you got. Maybe you like it that way because, you know, everybody just want to go to Florida or whatever.

You know, I tell you what, I grew up in Lakeland, Florida, which is in central Florida. Lived all over New York, Ohio, Maryland. And when I came down here, it was totally different than what I had ever heard about Southern part of Alabama. They call it Laura Alabama. But it was. It is definitely a hidden gem. And I think, you know, that people from Alabama tend to like the fact that it is a hidden gem because there's so much going on here, it's really, really developed. They have an amazing community, amazing medical centers and things like that, and things that you wouldn't think about from what you hear on the news.

Yeah.

But when you come and visit and check it out, you're like, wow, this is pretty cool.

Yeah. Oh, I love it. I love it. Fantastic. All right. Well, Gerald, as you know, we like to begin all of our episodes with our guests sharing a quote. So what do you got?

Well, I always say, don't just go through it, grow through it. And it's better to get better than bitter, because life can be challenging and difficult, and you can make a decision to get better or better. So always make a decision to get better. And instead of just going through challenges, all my focus is to grow through the challenge.

Oh, I love it. I love it. One of my favorite books is more on. So the stoicism side of things is by Ryan Holiday. The obstacle is the way. And very similar to that. Right. Like, you got an obstacle, that's probably.

The direction you need to go. There's a guy named Willie Jelen. It always says, your mess, your mess is your message.

Exactly. I like it. I like it. Well, hey, tell us a little bit about your background, Gerald. Tell us about sort of how you got into your line of work and then what you're up to these days.

Exactly. So my line of work is. I have. I'm a CEO of two companies. One is a project management program and an IT consulting firm. And the other one is a company called Productivity Intelligence Institute, which teaches people how to be productive in a very smart way. And productivity is not about just getting a lot of things done, but it's about getting the right things done. And I call it productivity intelligence because. And I'll go back, not all the way to the beginning of my career, but to a certain point that in the last five or six years has made a major impact on what my progress has been and has gotten me here on the show. And that was in 2018. I had a major bout with vertigo, and vertigo wiped out my vestibular system. Now, vertigo is one of those things.

I don't even know what that is exactly.

That's what I'm going to do. But what vertigo is, it's when you know, like, you're. It's like either the fluid in your ear or the crystals in the ear get off, like, a balance, and. And you're totally off balance, and you're the room's just spinning. Well, it felt like somebody had picked me up and threw me into space and I was spinning and falling. That's what it felt like. I was actually rushed to the hospital. That's how bad it got. I was rushed to the hospital. The emergency room had to give me a shot. Of what? Something to make it stop. I spent a day and a half in the hospital. They couldn't do the normal things that they would do to someone who had vertigo to get them to make it stop or to get them back. And they looked at me and says, okay, this is more than vertigo. And. And they. My test to come home was I had to use a walker to slide my feet down the hallway to show that I could at least walk with a walker because I had really lost the ability to balance myself and to walk. Well, long story short, that happened six weeks before I was to deliver a TEDx talk. I had been selected to do a TEDx talk, was perform, practicing for it, develop the talk, and everything. Well, long story short, I delivered that talk, and it's that my talk is called what if Practice Performance? The Neuroscience of Music. And so by. By having that as my topic, I had done a lot of research about me as a musician and playing music. And what I discovered was by playing a little bit every day, once I could get back on my feet, took me about a week to get just even out of bed and even able to, like, just sit up. I played my bass every day and slowly started taking small steps. Within a couple of weeks, when I walked into my doctor's office, I walked in very gated and deliberate, but unassisted. Three weeks after that, I walked on stage and delivered my TEDx talk. Wrote a new song for it because I played bass and I delivered the talk. And that concept of what I went through, setting a goal, working through the adversity, figuring out how music impacts my brain, figuring out how goal setting and listening to positive affirmations to positive music, and really every day deliberately focusing on that goal of delivering that talk. I started using those principles in my life. And even though I still have a disability called that's a vestibular disability, so I still have an issue with my balance here and there's. And so. But I don't. I don't have a disability sticker. And I don't call it a disability. I call it a constraint. Because when something is a constraint, you can work with that. You can take it and say, okay, if this is constraints, like using a water hose to border Your garden, you know, if you put a constraint, a nozzle on it, you get more spray, and you're able to water more of your garden with less water. Well, by looking at this as a constraint and leveraging the intelligence part of it, I have become more productive. I've written three books. I have two companies. My companies have gone from six figures to seven figures, and we're heading towards eight figures. And there's been so much that's happened in my life because of it, and it's really about being productivity smart or being productivity intelligent.

Wow, that's pretty powerful. I. When you sent some information over a few days ago, I saw that you were a bass player, and that really did intrigue me. And I would just be curious to hear a little bit more about how you feel. You know, was it sort of like a neurological, like, neural pathway type thing going on when you were playing your music and just sort of, I don't know, sort of retraining your brain how to. How to learn or something? Like, what do you think that's all about?

So, so what happens there is when you're playing a musical instrument, the brain gets. Gets active, right? And the brain oscillates at different frequencies. Well, music pushes the brain, depending on what you're playing, pushes the brain to oscillate at a very high frequency. And the brain, even as we get older, our brains, all of our brains, have something called neuroplasticity, which means the brain can create new neurons and. And it can rewire itself. At any time in my life, Even if you're 90 years old, you can still create new neurological pathways and new neurons. So by using the method of playing my bass to force my brain to start figuring out that, hey, something's wrong, and we need to work through this because it impacted my inner ear, my right inner ear, I had lost like 86% capability in that ear, and I only had 14% capability. The doctor looked and said, hey, I don't even know how you hear in your right ear. But by practicing and playing music, it forced my brain to rewire itself. It forced the brain to leverage other parts to do things that, you know, the parts that were damaged, if you will, compensated for. And once I started the vestibular therapy, which is a form of physical therapy that you do small body movements that actually, at the time, starts growing new cells in your brain. So there's things like something I learned, something also called brain gems. And there are movements that if you do them, they will optimize your brain. But they will also grow new neurological pathways and new neurons as you're doing the exercise. And so by following that process. And it really came together with my business, where I just took the ideas of productivity, you know, doing project and program portfolio management types, things, working as a consultant and helping companies with their culture. Being a musician and in the neuroscience, I've just combined those four things into my practice. So every one of my books has one of those. Has those four elements in it. It's usually using music as a metaphor. And I have information in there about the neuroscience of what I'm talking about, the productivity tips and things where it's like, how do you get things done when you have limitations or you have a constraint? How do you be more productive? And so. And things along that line. So to answer your question, it was the brain's ability to rewire itself and to grow even through the challenges. And we all have that capability. That's what's so cool about it.

Yeah. So I. I don't know, Gerald, what your familiarity is with the whole lean movement, that most of the folks listening here, we're all into this thing called lean manufacturing. Are you familiar, sort of with.

Very familiar with it. Yep.

Okay. And so obviously, we're all down, man, with that whole idea of. Of experimenting your way through obstacles and. And trying to just learn faster. In fact, even today, I was talking to one of my. One of my team members here, again, like Adam, a new sales team member. And, you know, when you're new, you sort of nervous, you know, about, you know, oh, how do I do it? And all that, you know, what do I say when I answer the phone and all that. And I'm just like, my whole thing was, there's no need to have any pressure. Just relax. You know, first of all, they know how to sell.

They're.

They're professional salesperson, you know, so I'm like, experiment, see what you learn. And then you get to see, like, the kind of the weight to sort of slid off their shoulders, you know, not just like, you don't have to have all that pressure, man. Just experiment, treat. Life is an experiment, really, and take a step forward and see what you learn. Adjust a little bit. That one worked. That one didn't work, you know, and just. You know what I'm saying? So I feel like we're all saying the same thing. And it's really beautiful to hear your story, like, how it unfolded.

Yes. And you know what's interesting, especially with lean, especially with the audience being so familiar with lean. You Know when we develop our plans and goals and strategies. If you look back a year or two after you develop a goal, it never unfolds the way you planned it to unfold. It never unfolds that way. But the planning is so important in the beginning to even just have a big idea. And then even if you do kind of like an Agile model, which is every two weeks or every week, you're looking at the plan and going, okay, what's important now? Where am I going to go? Developing a backlog of activities that's going to get you to where you're trying to go. But what I love about the Lean and Agile model is that it leaves room for intuition. Because sometimes, you know, I know for myself some of my best ideas around business come to me when I'm away from business. Right before the vestibular thing, I played a lot of golf and I remember working at a major law firm and I was trying to figure something out around automation and I was, you know, I had been planning it out, working the whole thing through and I went and said, yeah, I'm just gonna go ahead and play. Go, go play nine right by myself. Go play nine holes while I'm out there. I always took a notepad and kept it in my back pocket. The idea of how to automate reports and automate a system, it's like it just flooded in and just came to me. So I pulled, stopped playing, pulled out my pen, wrote down all my notes and put it back in my pocket and had a meeting with my team member on Monday. And by Tuesday or Wednesday we had to report, develop the automation built. And it really took my department and the things that we were doing to a whole different level. But you have to be open to be for that intuition. And one of the ways of doing that too is also just releasing stress. Because sometimes when we're so overwhelmed with stress, we don't give room for intuition or to hear that small voice are those new ideas that can come from, you know, when we're doing some form of an Agile ALIM project or really engaged in some work. And this is stuff that I write about as well in my books to really teach these kinds of principles around, whether it's doing yoga or giving yourself time to practice or collaborate, but being open to having that free time to get away from work and do something else and be open to the ideas coming and be prepared, right? Because I know that that's when it comes. So I always kept a notebook with me when I was just out about hitting Golf balls, you know, going to the range or going for a walk or riding my bike at the time, I would always carry a notebook with me to capture ideas. Because some of your best ideas come when you're not right in front of that computer or at work.

What do you think the brain science is for that? Why is that? I mean, because I, I agree. I mean, you just, you're driving down the road and there's nobody. Like a lot of times when I'm in the car now, I just turn the radio off, you know, and I just drive in silence. And you know, I. And sometimes I don't even think about anything. I just sit there and drive. Sometimes I'll just, you know, maybe I'll try to be grateful one time or try to, you know, just whatever and, but, but to your point, different things will pop into my head and I'm driving, so I'm kind of famous for. I just open up my recorder on my phone or whatever. I can't drive or can't. I shouldn't be typing. I suppose I could, but shouldn't. Well, what do you think that is like? What is going on in that brain when we're not trying to think, but thinking happens subconsciously?

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But what do you think that is like? What is going on in that brain when we're not trying to think, but thinking happens subconsciously?

Yep, I gotcha. So here's one of the blessings that happened to me with the vestibular because I'm a really curious person and I love reading. And I also, because I'm a musician, I know the only way to get better is to find a mentor or coach. I started reaching out to anyone that was an expert in neuroscience or whole brain learning things that I was dealing with. And I found a gentleman after I did a interview with Jack Canfield for my second book. And through working with Jack Canfield and Patty Aubrey, I discovered a gentleman named Dr. Paul Schilley. And he's an expert. He has a PhD as an expert in whole brain Learning. And I've taken a number, I've probably studied with him now for maybe three or four years. And one of the things that I learned from working with him was that the brain needs time to incubate. And the reason it needs time to incubate an idea is that our conscious mind only perceives about 7% of all that we hear, see, taste and smell. Only about 7%.

That's not much.

So not that much. And if you want to know the size of the conscious mind, if you're driving, don't do this. But if you're just sitting down, put your feet together and look at your feet and draw a circle around your feet that's the size of your conscious mind, that circle. Now put a dot in the middle of your feet and go out in your imagination 11 miles and do, and draw a circle 11 miles around your feet. That's the size of your non conscious mind. That's the size of the, of your mind that actually runs everything. And so what happens is when we ask ourselves a question about a problem we're trying to solve, or we're studying something, we're bringing it in and we, you know, there's things that we bring in that we are not consciously aware of. But the non conscious mind takes in every single thing that we ever have seen and heard, read or thought about. And so when we're processing that and we think, okay, you know, I'm working on this problem, this is important, I'm going to stop and just kind of go do something else. I'm going to go, go drive, take shower, go hit golf balls, go hit tennis balls, go for a run, whatever. The non conscious mind with that 11 mile circumference space starts working on that issue and it communicates with other minds. And so pretty soon you're like, okay, you're kind of doing something that's not related to it. And this, it's almost like your mind just kind of lends a flashlight to where that answer is in your non conscious database. And often it pops up and there it is. So a great problem solving technique is write down a problem that you're facing, think about it hard for a few minutes and then let it go, let it incubate. Because when you do that, your non conscious mind takes it and it's going to go and figure out what the answer is. And especially if you ask it, ask yourself that question, how do I solve this problem? Or how do I address this in my life? How do I get better at this? You basically ask yourself A question, a how do I or what can I do Type question. And then you let it resonate and you let it go and your brain will figure it out and it will pop up the answer when you're quiet and you're in a peaceful state. And that's what, that's why it comes to you when you're driving, because you're relaxed and it's like if the body's all stressed out, the spine's all stressed out, you can't hear that small still voice.

I think a classic example of what you're saying is, you know, how often do you, you're talking to someone and then, and they ask you a quick question, you're like, oh, I just can't remember. Oh, oh, I just can't remember. And you're like, okay, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. And we start talking. Oh, yeah, it was, you know, because, you know, as soon as you sort of like release it, then like you said, your, your unconscious, your subconscious mind says, just chill, I got this, man.

All the time. It knows it all the time, and it will work on it.

Wow. So what do you think then, you know, for us people working for a living and you know, all the rest of it and you know, we've got all kinds of problems, you know, whether they're work or personal or, you know, whatever in our lives, there's, there's no shortage of opportunities to practice this. Like, do you have any tips for people like to like, build in like time into your day to do nothing or what do you think? You know, how do we do that?

Here's, here's some additional things that I learned and this I learned from again, working with Jack Canfield, working with doctors Paul Shealy, and also another lady who has two PhDs, one in psychology and one in business. Her name is Dr. Boddy Stevens. She wrote a book called Unlimited Futures. And I actually, she's again one of my coaches. Again, I'm a musician. I knew that the way I grew as a musician was to find people who are much better than I and bring them on as my mentor. And so she's one of my mentors and she taught me a seven step process for basically creating the life that I wanted. And one of the main things of doing that was to get really clear, like to sit down and go, what is it that I want in my life? And then think of the areas of my life. What do I want for my relationships? What do I want in my career? What do I want in my growth in the area of growth, what do I want in my finances, and so on and so forth. And then basically write it out as a choice and write it out as an affirmation. Okay? So that, that way you're turning your brain on to saying these are things that are important to me. You then, you then focus on it, you get really clear about it, and then you give yourself time for that intuition to happen. And one of the ways that that happens is I usually do it. I can't say I do it every day, but I do it on a regular basis. And this especially, I didn't do it before the vertigo, but once I got into that state and needed to kind of release a lot of stress on a day to day basis, I started doing yoga. And it was a certain type of yoga where there were, it was releasing stress within the meridians, which is like your energy system. It was releasing stress within the spine, it was releasing stress within all of the energy centers in our body. And, and by doing that on a daily day basis, because everything that happens to us creates some form of energy deposit in your body, whether it's positive or negative. And if you have too much of that, you get the soreness in your neck, your, your, your, your back is hurting, your hips are hurting. I mean, your body starts hurting because it's holding all of that stress, all that energy, and then it starts affecting your muscles. But by releasing all of that on a regular basis and getting to the point where you are much more relaxed and you can be in a meditative state, be more mindful. Meditation is really big. But being in that state, it helps you to hear that still small voice. And by practicing reviewing your goals on a regular basis, being really clear about them, listening to that still small voice, kind of like that agile lean model of hey, I don't have to have a whole plan out, I just need to know what the big picture and then just focus on it on a regular basis. That starts bringing in ideas of things that you can do on a regular basis to make your, to, to see your goals come true. And then I do something that Jack Canfield taught me, which is identify five things a day that can move you closer towards your goal. Just five things a day, whether it's make a phone call, write a note, write a paragraph, read, read a chapter, just something so that you can end the day and going, I move forward. Even if it's a small, small thing that tells your brain I'm making progress. Yeah, that making progress releases all of the Positive neurochemicals in our brain. Dopamine, serotonin, gaba, all of those things. And so next. Next morning, we wake up and we're like, hey, I'm ready to go. Because, you know, I'm starting to see the goals that I'm writing out. I'm starting to see them come true, or I'm starting to see myself make progress, or I'm thinking different, or I'm seeing life different. So it's really about having a very purposeful mindset about life and where you're going. Because, you know, people, I think, can tend to live either as a. I would say either as a ocean liner with a destination or they live like driftwood. Right. They ocean liner with destination says, hey, I'm getting ready to go on vacation. I'm getting ready to go to this destination. Here's the. Here's the. Here's the big goal. Here's where I'm going. And every day I'm making progress. It's not going to get there overnight, but every day I'm making progress. Jeff Wood says I wake up and wherever the. Wherever the ocean takes me, that's where I go.

Let me throw a little caveat on that, though. I'm on the ocean liner. Maybe it's a big cruise ship, you know, one of these big, beautiful cruise ships.

Yeah, sure.

I never really been on one. I get seasick. But let's just say we were on and we got a clear heading where we're going. But maybe while on that, I should go float in that pool, kind of like driftwood, to release that subconscious mind, you know, so it's. Maybe it's not even one or the other. It's both of them, you know, in harmony with one another. So you got a clear direction, but you can drift a little bit once in a while.

There's definitely a hybrid from that perspective that as you have your goals and everything set out, you do need to have that time built into your schedule, your day that you are relaxing, allowing that. That. That time to, you know, to hear that still small voice. Yeah. To de. Stress and process the information. Yeah, that's really important. Yeah.

I love it. I love it. Very good. Very good. Man, this has been a fun conversation. Gerald, you mentioned your books a little bit. What are the names of your books?

Well, the latest one I have coming out is called A Symphony of Choices. And the Symphony of Choices is a book about decision making, project management, and workplace engagement. It's about career changes, and it's really the story of a musician that took the job of the orchestra manager. And he realized that he needed a lot of business skills. And so, like good musicians, he found a good mentor who was a little college professor. And they started meeting over coffee. And as he went through the challenges of his life, because he had a lot of different things going on, his spouse didn't agree with him on his decision. He had some challenges with his kids. He had a challenge with the conductor. He was still a musician himself, but working through all of that and with the coaching, he starts seeing these principles that he's being taught, you know, come true and being able to really, to really leverage them. And I kind of wrote it with the mindset as I watched Ted Lasso. So, so Ted Lasso was a big influence. And also one of my favorite books in the past was Elliot Goldratt, who wrote the book the Goal.

Yeah, the Goal. I was gonna say, man. Yeah, yeah, you know, Alex Rogel, man.

So it's, it's written in the same, it's written in the same vein that, that Elliot Goldrad wrote the Goal with Alex, who was, you know, and Herbie and the whole supply chain and having to reach out to Jonah the physicist who became a business guru and traveling all over the world. I love that book.

Oh, yeah.

In fact, I studied with D. Jacob in Connecticut and became certified in the theory of constraints as management.

Nice. Nice. Very good. Hey, if folks want to connect with you, Gerald, what's the best way they.

Can go to my website, Productivity Intelligence Institute, and when they get there, click on the link that says podcast and there's three freebies for you. There's a, an item there for an assessment. There's an item there that's a handbook for my new book coming out, but it basically teaches you the six basic principles that all great projects have. And it's best because now with all the technology, everything that's happened, everything that we do as humans is really goal oriented and our goals are really projects because they're multiple steps. And so there's a, there's a free workbook that can teach you how to what those six basic principles are. And if you want to schedule a 30 minute call to learn more about what I'm doing, there's a link on there. You can schedule a 30 minute minute call with me.

Nice. Fantastic. We'll have everything linked up. So folks, just scroll down on your app, whatever you're listening to, on, and we'll have all of Gerald's links there and assume you're on LinkedIn and all that kind of good stuff.

Exactly. LinkedIn and Facebook.

Fantastic. All right, well, hey man, I appreciate you coming on. Keep up the great work and keep on playing, man.

I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me.

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