SUMMARY

Is your wounded inner child still in charge of your emotional playlist? Maybe it’s time to update the soundtrack of your life! Host Chris Schembra’s amazing guest on this episode of Gratitude Through Hard Times has developed a powerful program based on an interesting trifecta of tools for growth. As Susan Drumm explains in her new book, "The Leader's Playlist: Unleash the Power of Music and Neuroscience to Transform Your Leadership Style and Your Life," when paired with our most authentic selves, neuroscience and music can shift ingrained habits of thought with transformational results. Her concrete case studies illustrate how our brains can be highjacked – or healed – by the “anchor songs” we play in our heads. As CEO of Meritage Leadership Development, Susan’s mission is nothing less than ushering in a new era of enlightened leadership. How? By shifting often outdated ideas and associations embedded within our deeply grooved neural pathways, we can reimagine the background music that sets the tone for everyday life choices. Offering a detailed step-by-step methodology for forging new patterns of thought, Susan is inviting all of us to release negative narratives as old as those hit summer songs we loved back in high school.

You’ll learn in this lively conversation about how we function at our highest level – and, quite literally, at our most potent energetic vibrations – when we bring awareness, acknowledgement and a new frame of reference. The Leader’s Playlist is an innovative program that unlocks empowerment through one of neuroscience’s well-documented treatments for childhood trauma and other psychic injuries: Music. Susan is urging: “We all need to collectively look in the mirror and say: ‘Where are we leading from old wounds and what needs to shift and heal so collectively we can all get to a higher level of enlightened leadership?’ ” Ready to unlock the secrets of your own  "Leader's Playlist"? The time to start is now!

Click here to find out all about Susan’s debut book, "The Leader's Playlist: Unleash the Power of Music and Neuroscience to Transform Your Leadership Style and Your Life." And if you want to turbocharge, consider her upcoming master class, which you can register for here.

If you’d like to learn more about Chris and his 7:47 Virtual Gratitude Experience, please visit this link. And click here to listen to previous episodes of Gratitude Through Hard Times.

KEY TOPICS:

• If you could give credit or give thanks to one person in your life that you don’t give enough credit or thanks to, who would that be?
• About Susan’s framework, which is uniquely applicable to everyone because it uses music as a vehicle. 
• Want to motivate growth in others? It starts with authentically believing in them, which undergirds development through the toughest of times and steepest of learning curves.
• Turning Early Childhood Trauma into a Superpower: Susan shares what she’s observed and personally experienced when formative wounding triggers reactivity.
• About the metaphorical playlist that is the soundtrack to each of our lives and – whether you’re aware of it or not – may be impacting your efficacy as a leader.
• Adaptive Upside: When he was raging, Susan’s father could cast a long and frightening shadow. As a result? She developed a keen ability to read the room, intuit potential derailment and diffuse tension -- survival skills that are a great asset in coaching.
• When Stress Yields Gems: Trauma response can induce PTSD, but it can also spark skills that can be leveraged to create post-traumatic growth 
• Music As a Healing Tool: Susan shares how she unlocked her neural pathways – and deeply embedded, reflexively negative feelings – in order to move from seething resentment  to a positive orientation.
• Create Your Own Empowerment Playlist! It’s possible to choose songs that resonate in ways that bring optimism, healing and connection. 
• Redirecting old neural pathways that do not serve, and carving out new ones that are more life-giving, can make permanent mindset change. That doesn’t mean, however, that you’ll never again find yourself defaulting to those old “neural highways to hell.”
• About Micro Interventions: One strategy for creating a desired shift is intervention in thoughts through the introduction of music.
• The Music of Healing: Susan helps her clients recover and shift by working with them to identify where they’re stuck internally, usually rooted in patterns of thought that do not serve but can be re channeled in empowering ways.
• Music Lights Up All Regions of the Brain: Sense memory is stimulated by sound vibration and can be harnessed to shift energy.
• Higher versus Lower Emotions – Gratitude and peace vibrate at high levels while grief and sadness reside in lower levels. What do we do with that information?
• We can’t dismiss or ignore difficult feelings, which carry messages.
• Rather than dwell in negativity, we can opt to acknowledge pain and move on.
• Well-practiced patterns of thoughts can be redirected through intentionality.
• Do you have ingrained neural pathways you’d like to change? There are multiple methods:
• Hypnotherapy.
• Psychedelic-assisted therapy.
• Meditation.
• Music intervention.
• A Case Study: From Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird to George Michael’s Freedom.
• Susan deconstructs how she successfully coached an executive whose maverick leadership was alienating his team and stymying his business’s growth.
• 1) First she helped him excavate and learn how to interrupt his “I am Trapped” playlist – a medley of songs based on outdated beliefs that were not serving him.
• 2) She helped him put in place a new “I Won’t Let You Down” playlist to replace self-limiting, self-defeating beliefs with messages of stewardship balanced with freedom.
• Chris reflects on his longtime favorite “hype-up” song, Non-Stop from the musical “Hamilton” and how he applied Susan’s framework to understand that his associations to the song were inauthentic and unsustainable.
• Susan and Chris review steps towards revising our playlists, including recognizing “bellyful” moments and getting curious (rather than judgmental). 
• You are not alone if your playlist needs a refresh! Most of us are overdue to up-level our lives by re-envisioning the songs that provide the background music for our lives!

QUOTABLE

• “Just because the world’s going through a pretty tough time doesn’t mean we can’t find meaningful moments of connection, of hope, of optimism and positivity!” (Chris)
• “There are only so many ways that you can help a leader be a better leader. We all have to have our unique element and original framework.” (Chris)
• “Those of you who know this podcast, you know that my whole schtick in life is gratitude – how do we help people become more grateful for themselves, for others, for their situations, to build better business and live longer, happier, more successful lives?” (Chris)
• “I had a neural pathway grooved to my brain that was like an eight-lane highway and it wasn’t just about this instant. I could trace it to the low points of my life and feeling frustrated, left out and treated unfairly.” (Susan)
• “I’d put a song on and it would shift my state. (My empowerment playlist) really gave me a choice not to go down the eight-lane highway to hell but to start to groove a new pathway.” (Susan)
• “The more I listened to (healing) music and the more I practiced that emotional resonance, the more it went from a country road to a two-lane highway to a four-lane highway and finally my own eight-lane highway that I can choose to go down.” (Susan)
• “We’re not just talking about using music only to shift state – which it can do and that’s the power – but it’s also to uncover some of this deeper wounding, deeper patterning.” (Susan)
• “Is non-stop what I aspire for my life to be? … Hustling that hard develops emotional impotence. It took Susan’s book for me to wake up to that.” (Chris)
• “Usually suffering is the impetus to make change. I wish it wasn’t the case, but the reality is that it’s not until … we get these wakeup calls and they are gifts from the universe to help us know it’s time to make a shift, it’s time to grow.” (Susan)

LINKS/FURTHER RESOURCES:

• Summit Series – Global networking for change makers.
• Click here to learn more about micro interventions and how they work!
• Here’s an infectious song that Chris has used to motivate himself at times: Non-Stop from the musical “Hamilton.”

ABOUT OUR GUEST:

Susan is a CEO Advisor and Leadership Coach as well as founder of Meritage Leadership, with over 20 years of experience leading teams and senior executives to achieve their potential. She has graduate degrees from Harvard Law School, Carnegie Mellon, and an M.A. in Drama from London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Combining her strategy and business background with experience as an actress in theater and film, Susan helps clients become extraordinary leaders and influencers. Her consulting firm, Meritage Leadership, focuses on leader and team effectiveness by helping leaders develop the capacity and mindsets to lead in today’s disruptive environment — while inspiring their teams to do the same.

FOLLOW Susan:

WEBSITE | LINKEDIN | PODCAST

ABOUT OUR HOST:

Chris Schembra is a philosopher, question asker and facilitator. He's a columnist at Rolling Stone magazine, USA Today calls him their "Gratitude Guru" and he's spent the last six years traveling around the world helping people connect in meaningful ways. As the offshoot of his #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling book, "Gratitude Through Hard Times: Finding Positive Benefits Through Our Darkest Hours,"he uses this podcast to blend ancient stoic philosophy and modern-day science to teach how the principles of gratitude can be used to help people get through their hard times.

FOLLOW CHRIS:

WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM | LINKEDIN | BOOKS