the origin of mindstyle

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I still remember the day I stumbled upon the question that would change my life forever. I had been working as a developmental media psychologist (a person who studies the impact of technology and media on human development), but found I was no longer feeling the passion and excitement that I had originally experienced when I began my long career. I began to realize that life as I knew it was being altered in slow and subtle ways, and there was something new happening in how my work and personal life were aligned. My passion and purpose in life had become increasingly altered to the point that I felt debilitated and overwhelmed at times. So, I began to ask the question - what has changed, and what is the missing piece of the puzzle that leads to sustained energy, excitement, and a strong sense of passion, purpose and power?

For more than the 10 years that followed, finding the answer to that question became my single biggest challenge – and so I started a journal called Lessons From 1000 Lives, asking people from all walks of life if they noticed anything different in the world around them that was affecting their happiness and wellbeing. Wherever I traveled…on airplanes, taxi cabs, trains, to distant locations, I pursued the same question, and it led me to focus on the relationship between the almost undetectable changes taking place in my surrounding environment and my newly emerging behavior patterns. I came to realize that slowly, without much awareness, I was spending more and more time on the computer and in the world of digital screens – focusing on higher and higher amounts of Outer information, and in the process, was neglecting important Inner information dimensions. As a result, my lifestyle was slowly becoming more disconnected from many of the basic Inner behavior elements that were beneficial to my wellbeing. Solitude, self-reflection, intimate relationships, physical activities, enjoying nature, music and quiet reading time had all taken a back seat to the Outer world of digital screens.

In short, the slow and subtle changes occurring in my life had rewired my brain to create a new “style” of thinking, one that was not as favorable to developing or maintaining a sense of balance and creativity – a “style” not aligned with my wellbeing. And so the concept of MindStyle was born.