 and welcome back to the Creative Life Show from the American Creativity Association's Austin Global Chapter. And we are produced by Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Phyllis Beas. Joining me today is our guest, Diane Dean. Diane is a master certified coach, and she is a co-founder of this Austin Global Chapter of the ACA. Today we're talking about how to work into your brain. And we'll be looking at Diane's unique approach called the learner's learner's edge. So let's meet Diane. Aloha, Diane. Hello. Glad to have you today. And this learner's edge, could you give us an introduction into what that means? Well, I think that when we try to learn things and we aren't able to, we need some help. And so I discovered the edge, the way to get into my brain and learn better. And I was able to frame it that way so that people don't think that we're just making something up. It's really a phrase that we use. I've got the edge on that. You know, I can do it better. And so it was sort of a positive frame for helping people learn and made you learn at the time. Okay, okay, that's helpful. And I'm going to be a little pedantic here. I'm going to let the audience know that in this half hour, we're going to cover five modalities that you become an expert at to help unlock creativity in people. One is a horse course. One is psychotherapy. Another is neural linguistic programming, which many may recognize as NLP. Another is academic coaching. And then another area is corporate learning and professional development in business and the corporate area. So we have a lot for you today. And Diane, the intriguing one, of course, is that horse course. And we've been blessed with a short video of a little bit that see you in the field with this. So if mine could show it to us, let's start with that. In the early 90s, I was teaching. I was teaching communication to people. I was also riding. And so I was noticing how similar some of the things I was teaching for good communication were the same things we had to do with the horses. So I said, how can I use this? How can I play with horses all day and get paid to do it? And to teach people through horses. People and teams get to experience how their energy affects others. And their feedback comes from a 1000 pound non-judgmental animal. We make each course for each team unique. We start with getting to understand oneself, getting to understand horses, how we're similar, and some differences. It's amazing how good it is to interact with the horses and become aware of what's going on inside of you. My ultimate goal for the program is for people to understand themselves through horses. Okay, well, I wish you were out there right now. The horses. And when we were first prepping for this show, I thought of you as a horse whisper. And you said, no, that's not quite what I'm trying to do here. And I thought that your explanation of how, because we've all heard about horse whispers, right? No, that's different from this course. Could you explain a little about that? The way I see it, the horse whispers, there are many, are the ones who have a way with horses and really, quote unquote, speak their language so that they can train them, manage them with less effort, no bullying, none of that. That's the word whisper. So when we do the horse horse, we're really blending what we know about how horses take us in, think about us. And we learn things about ourselves that pop up from our hearts and our brains and help us learn about ourselves. Okay, so how does this alchemy work? We get on the horse. Oh, it's all in the ground. We don't get on the horse. Nobody can come to the horse horse. Okay, about moving them around, playing with them, we play games, we get them to follow us, we get them to go over steps of things, by being in sync with them, we have to get aligned with them. And we have to pay attention to the small details that they give us. And people do that too, they give us small details, but most of us don't pay attention. I learned all about that with the NLP you mentioned earlier, modeling how people do communicate. Well, horses communicate as well. Okay, well, you told me about a man that was in one of your group training, he was a leader himself. He is. I think that was a slide to put us in the outdoor room with you all. Right. Could you tell us about, I never heard the story on this. Right, I do tell you. I know, I'm curious. We were in groups of three. And so Michelle was working with three and I was working with three, but one at a time. So we invited John up, I invited John up, and gave him the instructions to, without using a lead rope, without using a stick or anything, other than heartfelt communication, to get an alignment with this horse and get it to follow him, walk with him around this round. And so when he came up, the horse moved way back instantly. It's like, uh, no. And so he looked at me and I said, go ahead. And so he walked toward the horse again, the horse moved further away from him. He took a deep breath. John took a deep breath and said, you know what? I was feeling just like I used to when I'd compete with my twin brother. So he had his butt on, you know, his, I'm going to push this around kind of thing is what he said. And when he realized that he could maintain a more peaceful inner state, the horse relaxed and followed him. And it was amazing. He was so surprised and so surprised at what came to his mind and art, as well as how easily it worked when he got himself together. And leaders have to do that when they're managing people. That's what they're putting out. Yeah. He did see, I mean, the horse was really obvious. It took steps back. You know, your staff is not necessarily going to take a step back. And yes. And one of the things that I do teach is how to watch the smaller details that humans give off. Okay. And so that's again part of the NLP model. All right. Well, we want to talk about that. Do you, I think you have another slide to share with us today with one on one and what more playfulness with the horse and yeah, look at you and Liz or Liz and the horse. Liz and the horse and the people on the other side of the horse who were short. What are you doing there? You're drawing on the horse or we're doing two things. One is she's noticing what intimidates her. A lot of people are intimidated by horses. And can she manage that? She's a very, very powerful leader in her own right and has a very good business. And there's times when she needs a little more strength in her heart and her mind, you know, just to step out, especially in what often is a world of people who are running their own business. So they're all bosses, they're all owners. So the horse represents that for her in one way. So she was, you can see she's standing back a bit. Yeah, for the aunt and that that's when we took it because she's like, I don't know about this because I mean, people don't paint on horses. They don't know what's going to happen. And so it's a surprise that the horse just kind of relaxes and she could hear the horse releases breath and she started to get closer to him. And at the end was patting him and that sort of thing. And first it was just out there with the pen or the pencil or the pay brush is what it was. So she really enjoyed that. Yeah. Well, and just for the for those who don't work with horses, this is not at all unkind to the horse. It's like going to the do the carnival and getting face painting and we all laugh and watch it all. Absolutely right. Thank you for bringing that up. We don't do anything that's not kind to the horses. I mean, that's, that's just the way it's done these days in the world of playing with horses, we call it. Right. So does this do the, I mean, we're talking about unlocking our creativity, hacking into our green are the reports coming back to you and through I'm sure I'm sure you're replicating the model that do they have take away our haas from this feel learn more about themselves. All right. You know, I'm just to say how many times do you need to do this and what's different things and you have different things to learn. So what we do is we play games and then we process it in some of the workshops will have the right journals, you know, what came up for you and then they process it. And that's where I bring my original psychotherapy background into understanding what they're talking about. Because all my things that I do for creativity is layered on each other in my work. So psychotherapy and you were a psychotherapist, you went to school, you got it. Well, tell us about that. I think, you know, you said I the horse course helps my clients and students and me. Yes. So there's a me story here that I'm sensing into. Well, me story started a bit earlier than the horse did. The horse thing did. Because when I was wanting to go get my master's in psychology, I had been a poor learner. I flunked algebra twice. I flunked French. I was on scholastic probation my freshman year in college and I barely got out of college with a D plus because I was a graduating senior. However, I just didn't know how to hack my brain to speak that language. Yeah, I didn't know how it worked. So I went to a therapist therapist was learning one of the first people learning NLP. And he taught me the layers that I could access that make people, quote unquote, smart. Some of them do it naturally. I did not. My older brother never brought him a book and made all A's because he had the pattern of smart people that was natural, that's more natural. Okay, so I can just to just stop for one second. So we're talking about a big word. Yeah. Because you said pattern. I know programming is in the name of this of this modality. Neuro linguistic programming. Hey, don't mind if I haven't interrupted your thought. No, if you could, what is this thing that the therapist brought forward for you that put you back on a par with your brother doing it, you know, having these patterns automatically, you have to know they're there. And one of the patterns are there. And so one of the things that created NLP was several people are two in particular, Richard Baller and John Grinder started modeling people who were excellent communicators, or excellent therapists, or excellent anything. And they started looking at their patterns long before neuroscience came along recently as said, Yeah, this is the way it works. So what they the simple part of it is, we have lots of different ways that we remember that we think that we create in our minds. And we have different levels of consciousness of them. So my brother was not conscious that he made pictures in his head and could remember anything. I didn't make pictures in my head, because I was usually talking to myself and criticizing myself and worrying myself. And so I actually got in my own way. And the interesting thing for me was that I didn't know what I didn't know. And in LP, this therapist was the one that helped me start to understand how to approach learning, thinking, and got me even public speaking, because I couldn't do public speaking if I couldn't remember what I was talking about. Right. So, yeah. So you went inside your brain. So I imagine there's learning about the brain and how the brain works and totally. And then you became self aware that you were the self top was was just blanketing the air with a distraction, a real bad distraction in between you and your incoming. So you have incoming cross I know and create creativity work. I do you, we talk about input, processing and output. And there's a fourth level input processing. And I like to think about it, taking it to a deeper level, bring not just processing what came in, but adding to it at the alchemy of being it. Yes. And this emerging knowledge that then there's an output. And I guess in those four different stages, if we stick with four, you've learned all about that and NLP and more and more like like what you talked about touch in the body. What? Yes, it's your body. I mean, a lot of people who can't learn need to be moving more, they get distracted by their bodies discomfort, for example. And mine was a negative self talking wasn't just the self talk interrupted my trying to remember my French words. It meant that I was interrupting the whole thing. Distracting myself. Right. Do that. I have two colleagues who've just gotten standing desks. And you know, you made me think about that. It's yeah, your body gets in the way. I mean, it's interesting. I mean, one of them was in her 60s. And she said, I'm standing. I hope you can tell on the zoom call because I just but I had lawyers in the law firm that I worked with in Honolulu in the 1970s. He had a standing desk built by by the firm so he could stand. So I don't know in the early days of that being something that work. Well, yeah, I've worked with a lot of ADHD kids because I started working with kids because the people I was working with two psychiatrists and a social worker didn't want to work with kids. And so after I learned how to learn, I said, well, I'll take the kids because the parents would come in, if I'm not telling you too much, they'd come in and they'd have a characterization of this child. This was way early in the ADD period of time. But they'd say desk doesn't try. She's too social, very few women. I was one of the few girls that could have been in that category. So if he just try harder, he just doesn't care. Well, I found out that the kids would say out of care, because that was better than saying, I'm not smart and I'm failing. And so I taught them what I had learned. And I called it Brownbrain 101. Okay, so hack the brain, if you will. Yeah, how to use their design memory, their image making process in their minds, how they could coach themselves before coaching was cool. In fact, they didn't even want to come to me because I was a psychotherapist. And I said, Oh, no, I'm not a psychotherapist. I'm an academic coach. And that was just made up so I could reframe it and get in sync with these kids that were suffering. And I talked to one of the guys just today that was the president, he was the head of Pace Academy in Atlanta. And he started my work off by sending me more kids when he heard me speak about it. Yeah, you told you told me when we were preparing, you know, I was talking about the psychotherapy that you brought forward for your work. And you said, Yes, and I don't, then I talked about what do you call the people who work with kids tutors. And you said, you said, I called I don't call it psychotherapy, I call it academic coaching. And that was important. It was huge because I had to get just like we get in like, in sync with the horses, I had to get to sync with those kids so they trust me. Oh, right. And all the same process. And yet it wasn't stigmatizing academic coaching. So you're coaching somebody who's already smart. You're not a tutor teaching them something they don't know exactly. You're coaching them to bring their creativity, their, their understanding, their wisdom out, you're just there. Yes. You know, as an adult, we are more people I I talk one when I meet somebody and I think you should go to counseling. And you know, no one wants to say I'm going to go to a counselor. But today, if you say, well, you know, there are a lot of coaches, executive coaches, and this idea of executive coaching is is much more palatable. And you seems like maybe 20, even more years ago, you were already over 30, you refrained this to academic coaching. So we've got academic coaching on the table and the horse course, and a little bit about NLP. And then in psych, I'm not sure we've plumbed the depths of what house psychotherapy unlocks creativity and innovation in us. I mean, it's, I know it seems self evident. And yet, well, it's, it's, it's another, it's another way of them getting to know themselves. As long as this therapist, the psychotherapist isn't interpreting what they say. So coaches are trained to ask questions to help people discover themselves, which was very different than the way I was taught psychotherapy. Okay. And you know, and, and so how were you taught? How was that different back in the day when I was learning my masters and getting started, I worked at it for five and a half years. The model was you just listen and you go, I'm exaggerating for the sake of effect. But this one guy was teaching about psychotherapy and he says, you never want to direct them in any way, you know, don't lead them. And he said, you could have two different things that they're, they're wanting to think about, you have this and this, and which one will it be? He led them with his non verbals. And I was like, yeah, that's an NLP thing I learned is that you can do that, but you don't want to do that in psychotherapy. They will need to listen and people discover for themselves. And it's much more complicated than that now. I am not putting it down. I'm just saying the way I learned it really didn't seem to fit with the other things I was learning concurrently, which was the NLP. That's really interesting. So what I'm hearing a theme here, just as a student of yours, lock my own creativity is, is I want to, it seems like we keep smashing on this show the idea that only a few people are creative. And, and many people thinking I'm not creative. And the theme from you is to learn to know yourself. What the word, oh, I have a, I have a Robert Thurman quote downstairs. And it says, I should know it because I have it pasted on my mirror. Don't ask how to make the world a better place. Out of Split makes you come a lot because what the world leads is people who have come alive. And a fall. Yes. And that is, you know, that's getting at this notion that you're saying, let's just get to know ourselves and the rest and creativity, innovation, understanding ahas and, and probably joy. You're right. We'll follow. If we don't, yeah, if we don't care. So in, in the, can you tell us a little bit about your corporate side? And I was, I was called that in, when I was in school, I was a business major. We, it was called learning and development. Right. It still is. It's still in development, professional development depends on the culture of the company. I was invited to join a company. Oddly enough, because I'd worked with one of the kids of the HR person. And she wanted me to come in and, you know, tell me what we could do for learning and development to teach the stuff that I'd talked to her about. And so there were interviews and there were three of us that were applying and they hacked me. And I never ever wanted to go to another corporation. However, Tokyo Electron is the name of the company and it's wonderful. I love the people and their, the leaders were interested in learning. Yeah. In fact, I had a whole gang of them come to the horse course at one stage. Oh, yeah. They had fun too. So you, they hadn't had a professional and learning development department before you guys. That was a young company. It was a lot, a young part of the company. Yeah. Companies out of Japan, but the sales and service is here. And they had only been in business a few years. When they hired me. I don't remember how many exactly, but it was, it was new to manage all of their customers like Intel is one of their customers. So when, so if someone watching the show is in a corporation that is blessed the house, an L and D department or a professional development department, that's another way to step into this space to get to know that know thyself. That's very secret. Even if they don't have a department, I mean, I just got a contract confirmed with some other coaches to work with an energy company that does not have their own. So they come to us and say, we'd like to have this, this, this and this, can you do it? And of course we create things with them in mind with their HR people with their leaders. And we will deliver it as I work with a lot of smart people. Well, and so for the viewers who are corporate leaders, business owners, this isn't new, we all know about it, but it's good to remind ourselves to, to the, this is, you know, I'm a financial person too. And yeah, what I like to, the way I see it, whether they do or not is that this is not an expense item on your, on your financial statement, but it's, it's, it's an asset. Yes. Money that is invested in the human sources of creativity. And then we're not resource because that's consumable and it can disappear. But we thought that in my work, we talk about human beings as sources, like sources of light, like the sun, not a, not a resource that can go away, but that this is an investment in themselves and their company. And it should be considered an asset. It should be, it should grow their investment in intellectual capital in their company. Absolutely. And then, you know, we could go on and on and on and I'm going to have to leave it there. We have more to cover, but for today's show, I only think I would say, Phyllis, is that what we do in learning, yeah, helps all the rest of the stuff work better. How do we get work done through people? Yeah, if you can't communicate and understand how people think in a lot of ways, you're not collaborating or communicating well. So what is going on? So anyway, I just love my work. Well, thank you. And I want to let the audience know you have been watching the creative life from the American Creativity Association's Austin Global Chapter on Think Tech, Hawaii. Today, we have been talking with our guest, Diane D., master coach, master certified coach. And we've learned how to knock our brain using the learner's edge. You can find more out about that going to thelearnersedge.com and Mahalo, Diane, for joining us. And Mahalo. Thank you very much. You're welcome. And Mahalo to our our viewers for being here. I'm Phyllis Blyse and we will be back in two weeks for another edition of the creative life.