The Luminous Mind Podcast | A show about you becoming your best self through unconventional thinking

In this podcast, marriage therapist, Blaine Rindlisbacher talks about how he used classical works to help him discover 12 principles to successful, happy marriage. He goes through each principle and discusses how when applied they will create success and greater satisfaction in your marriage. Take his FREE assessment to find out how your marriage relationship ranks and where you might need help.

Since rescuing his own marriage, Blaine has become intensely passionate about what makes successful marriages work. These insights have driven him to study marital principles in the classics, complete a Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy through Liberty University and finally to found Adore Your Spouse and make the 12 Principles of Happy Marriages available to others – so that they can also learn to adore their spouse.

Show Notes for Episode 177

Quotes: "They talk about first principles all the time and first principles are like a declaration, they are self-evident. Everybody knows that you're not supposed to kill somebody, everybody knows that, even a person that kills somebody, it is just self-evident. Everyone knows that if you earn something, if you buy something, if you have property, that no one should take it. [Principles] are very obvious and so that started educating us on what principles are, they are foundational laws."

" My paradigm used to be, some people would say, "they're just lucky, they just happen to have a fabulous marriage, they don't even have to try." You will hear that from one couple out of 200 million couples, that never fought one time, they are yet to have an argument and they're in their 90's. But all the rest of us humans, it works a little differently and what happens is the more I've done this is, it's not just happenstance, it's actually almost like a conveyor belt. Meaning I stick people into the conveyor belt, and they go though the 12 principles, and they pop out a happy marriage. It's almost scientific at this point. I have yet to see a couple that live the 12 principles and not have a happy marriage. Every single time they say, "this isn't working." I said, "okay, well let's look at it" and we look at it and they are breaking some of these principles."  

"The paradigm change that I've had it is: when people live the principles, they get the results every time."

"When I say it is scientific,  you go through the 12 principles and it pops out a happy marriage. The problem with that is, someone starts going through the conveyor belt, then jump the wall and say, "this isn't working, I don't believe it." That is the harding part is actually believing that they [the principles] will work."

"The number one thing I would tell men is, so often they don't know what's going on with their wives, they don't understand the pain they are in. So that would be my number one advice is to just really hear your wife."

"The most important thing that I'd say women need to do, is meet their individual needs." He talked about needing daily exercise, spiritual, social and mental development. 

"The one thing I would encourage anybody to do...do something to help your marriage."

"Just do something to make your marriage better because marriage hold our society together. Our children are more likely to get married when we are happily married. It is so critical, not just so we have happiness in our own lives, but our children see our examples. " 

"When marriages stay together, society is stronger, society is healthier, society is better. So please do something to help your marriage, whatever that is."

 

In this podcast, Akilah Richards discusses how people of color can facilitate learning by using unschooling to create unique learning environments patterning their children's passions to better express themselves. We discuss the importance of freedom in education to better create self-expression.

Akilah Richards is a published author, digital content writer, and Self-Directed Education advocate who writes passionately about self-expression, womanhood, modern feminism, location independence and the unschooling lifestyle. She is a storyteller who believes in the power of expressed personal narrative and deep self-acceptance as tools for authentic self-expression and community enrichment. She produces podcasts, books, classes, and articles on radical self-expression in practice and in study.

Show Notes for Episode 176

Quotes:

"We have to be around people who are willing to have these discussions or to let us have these discussions without feeling like they need to defend it. You know like, my empowerment doesn't mean that I think you're less than. We need to start getting clear about that."

"There's no way if we keep it in the same school system...we're gonna get to a point where we can understand each other and everybody can feel free and empowered."

"Understanding doesn't mean that I agree with it or even that I get it, but I can respect, I can appreciate it, I can release the need to fully understand it....I say a lot but I don't feel like we have a lot of 'language' or even practice around this liberated way of being because all of us are dealing with some sort of master."

"One of the main reasons why school can't work is because it is very much a microcosm of all the same things we just talked about."

"To bring learning more into a space of 'community' then all people, including people of color, can be more connected to the community. We can solve things together, we can work together to innovate and pivot, and really do things that are serving what is happening now in the world. Instead of trying to maintain the structure that really didn't include US. It was designed to pitch us against each other, to compete." 

"We really need to get more comfortable with designing spaces where learning happens, where learning can thrive I should say, because learning happens everywhere. We really need to do that, and when we do that, then design organically emerges. Kids self organize, they know what they're interested in and they are very versed at finding ways to get to resources. Our job is to help them with that."

"There it is again, this idea of trying to replace one master for another. We are not saying how can we mirror aspects of schooling at home, we are saying how can we facilitate learning. This reminds me of the idea of like missionaries and even abolitionist going into communities and saving the children, saving the families, by deciding what they should do and what they should and shouldn't speak. 'You can't speak your native language, you can't dress this way.'"

"There are many ways that [learning] can look. We don't need to design that in advance, we just need to have that collective goal of facilitating learning and listening to the kids in our community, seeing what they want and then tapping into the resources around us. You don't have to be upper-middle-class to do that, you don't have to be white to do that, and you don't have to be rich to do that."

"Personal leadership is at the core of a lot of pain for us. We don't know how to lead ourselves because we've never been trusted with ourselves."

In this podcast veteran educator, Peter Bergson, discusses his work in helping youth keep their natural creativity through understanding the process of learning and providing them space to continue exploring through partner-style learning instead of normalized dominance-style schooling.

Peter has had an almost fifty-year career focused on helping people of all ages develop their natural creative process. It began as a Peace Corps trainee, when he first realized that compulsory schooling leads most often to compulsory mis-education. A multi-year stint with a consulting firm specializing in creative group problem solving led him to see how that work was remedial--helping adults retrieve the thinking patterns that are natural in our youth and then get schooled out of us. Thus, in 1975 he and his wife started a non-profit called Open Connections for the purpose of reinforcing these skills in young people rather than discouraging them. Their original preschool/kindergarten program morphed into a center for self-directed learners up to age 18. In 2016, he opened a new center in inner-city Philadelphia to bring this approach to a less privileged population. He is the father of four grown unschoolers and grandfather to six more.

Show notes for Episode #175

Quotes:

"Basically there are two enemies of real learning: one is uninvited instruction, when somebody compels you to learn something that you haven't asked for. When they start giving answers to questions you have asked. Two, developmentally inappropriate instruction. We you don't have the skills  to make sense of content that we're expecting to produce."

"It occured to the two of us, that the work I was doing with adults was remedial. I was helping adults learn to think more like the toddlers that they used to be."

"What we discussed is, wouldn't it be interesting if we could develop an educational approach for young people that would reinforce these attributes rather then school them out of them."

"Usually what people mean by school and the way most schooling, certain public schooling and most private schooling is about the latter. It is about uninvited and developmentally inappropriate instruction."

"It starts with a redefinition of education. Almost exclusively, when people use the term education, particularly outside of the sphere of people talking about self-directed learning  and such, they are talking about content; reading writing, history etc. They're talking about the mastery of that content and the need for that content in order to be a productive member of society."

"More important then that is PROCESS and to sum that up, I would say that PROCESS DRIVES CONTENT. So what education is; is the process of learning, growing, thinking, problem-solving, and collaborating. Basically living the life that you want. What we need for young people to master in their lives, is a process that helps them create the life that they want."

"The purpose of each person's education is to help them enjoy life and develop a lifelong existence of satisfaction, personal fulfillment, and at least a measure of service to others." 

"We act in schools as if the adults know what the young people are gonna need to know. Then imposing that content on them, they interrupt the PROCESS of figuring things out and pursuing one's own interests and learning how to pursue one's own interests, and of inventing new content. Your brain gets worn out doing all of the memorization and regurgitation."

"People are different and we want different things, but where we come together is wanting our young people to have, "lives of purpose and fulfillment." We think that this is a path that increases that probability that they'll get there."

This podcast is based on adult subject matter so if you have children listening, you may need to remove them from the room before continuing with this audio program.

This is normally an educational:training podcast but I felt impressed to share these thoughts. This is my personal story of living my life with depression. As an advocate for mental illness, I want to share my struggles, what I've learned, and share a message of hope. This is an ongoing struggle, a struggle in communicating with honest transparency as well as a daily struggle towards "recovery."  I hope by sharing some painful experiences with you, it will help someone out there. With sharing this experience, I hope not to lose your respect or confidence in me but I wish to help you better understand depression and people who suffer with suicidal thoughts or self-harm. This subject seems to be discussed more often in our society so I don't think I'll reveal anything earth shattering but maybe just relate my own personal thoughts on the matter and things I've learned through these experiences.  I am really thankful to my friend, Meg that helped contribute to this conversation and all her insight. She is an AWESOME friend and I love her mentorship! Also, I can't give enough credit to a great, understanding husband who helps me through this challenge, every single day, he is AMAZING!

Show Notes for Episode 174

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Peter Gray gives a short yet powerful summary of his book, "Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life." We talk about how important "free play" is to children in learning, healthy social growth, and gaining self-reliance.

Peter is a research professor of psychology at Boston College. He has conducted and published research in neuroendocrinology, developmental psychology, anthropology, and education.  He is author of an internationally used introductory psychology textbook (now in its 7th edition), which views all of psychology from an evolutionary perspective.  Much of his research focuses on the role of play in human evolution and how children educate themselves, through play and exploration, when they are free to do so.  He has expanded on these ideas in his book, Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life. He also authors a regular blog called Freedom to Learn, for Psychology Today magazine.

Show Notes for Episode 173

Quotes:

"I call it 'free play' elsewhere I just call it 'play' because in my view if it is not free, it's not really play."   "The first criteria for a activity to be 'play' is that it be freely chosen and self-directed."   "So in play, you're learning how to co-create rules which is an extremely valuable lesson for human beings everywhere because we are social animals."   "So the fact that play is a place where you're  doing what you want to do is means also it's where you discover what you really like to do and what you want to become good at doing."   "'Play among other things is where children learn to create rules, but to live by rules, to control their behavior, to control their impulses."   "In my book, I point out how imagination underlies all higher order human thinking that we think of, such as hypothetical thinking, scientific thinking, even the ability to think about tomorrow which hasn't happened yet, involves imagination."   "When you are 'playing,' your mental state is one of intense involvement very alert but not highly stressed."   "Your mind is active and engaged but not stressed and that is the frame of mind that some psychologist referred to as 'flow' and there's a lot of research showing that this flow state of mind is the ideal state of mind for learning new things, for thinking outside of the box, being creative, and doing a lot of the kinds of things that we think of as sort of the highest human intellectual endeavors."   "In the process and the name of education we are depriving children of the opportunity to do the things that children need to do, to educate themselves, to learn the really important lessons of life."   "If we really care about children and we really care about humans, because children are human beings and childhood is a good portion of human life. We need to make sure that we're guaranteeing to the degree that is possible, and we know it possible because it's occurred in the past. That children have the rights to be children, to play and explore, to do things on their own, and not be constantly micromanaged."   "Many, many kids are spending more time at their schoolwork then their parents are spending at their full-time 40 hour week jobs, that's a fact. Those kids would prefer the job at their parents have, they would prefer that. They would see themselves as more free if they have that job, than they have at school."

This featured podcast is with David Mead who works with Simon Sinek on the "Start with WHY" project. David Mead believes that every one of us deserves to wake up inspired to go to work, feel safe while we're there, and come home at the end of the day fulfilled by the work we do. He works with leaders to help them create an environment where people show up to work because they want to, not because they have to. Everything David does is designed to propel people to be a little more than they were yesterday so they can do more good in the world. 

Show Notes for 172

Quotes:  "We can control how we show up to any situation and when we know our own individual "why", the thing that inspires us, the thing that drives us, the difference we make to the lives of people, we can do that wherever we are."   "Exactly the point that we make is that leadership is a lot like parenting, you will always as a parent make sure that your kids are fed and clothed first, that's your first concern. Leadership is that, it is putting the needs of someone else before your own and parenting is a perfect example of that."   "The way that we help people articulate their "why" is in a very simple one sentence format, which is, "to___________, so that____________."  The idea is, that my "why" is to__________, the first blank is to make a specific contribution. So when I interact with people, this is the thing that I give, this is the thing that I bring to them. That perhaps I can bring that someone else can't, not to say that our "why" should be distinct and different from the anyone else's and were the only one that should be able to do this thing, it's just this is who we are and I might be other people out there that are like us and kind of do the same thing and that is fine too. But to ____________, to make that contribution, so that________, the last blank is the impact, that I have some sort of impact on their life."   "You're "why" is the reason people love you.  It's the reason your friends love you, it is the reason your colleagues love you, the reason your family loves you, it's because you give them this thing that you can't not give them."   "There is a distinction between the difference of 'doing' and the 'being.' We know what we do and we usually show up and do things really well because that's what we are used to, completing tasks and getting stuck in the "what" in the doing.  When we understand and begin to internalize our "why" it changes who we are being, it changing the way we show up, it changes the kind of person that we are, even though we might not change what we're doing. The way that we come across for doing those things, changes when we approach it from the context of "why."

Chris has been involved in the homeschooling community for over 30 years. He is the former owner of the world's largest homeschool supply company, The Elijah Company and is author of two books on education. He has been a speaker at virtually every major homeschool conference in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Russia. Since 2001, he is the owner of an online travel agency taking families to tour Israel and Egypt.

Show Notes for 171

 Quotes: "I find that one of the most debilitating things in the life of parents, is that they're just afraid. They're afraid NOT to do what else is doing and so they just do what everybody else is doing, even though they know that there's something wrong they're not exactly sure what it is."   "Okay, what are the things that we learned in public school that we're really glad we learned? We need to be sure that we continue with that the there necessary. What are the things that we were required to learn that we're really a waste of time or that would have been learned just in the context of growing up? What are the things that we were taught but that we really wish we had been taught? We need to be sure that those things were a part of our children's education."   "Anytime that you make a decision based on fear, you start down the road that is not easy to get off of and it's not a good place to be.  One of the most obvious things and when people begin homeschooling is because they don't know what to do, they just replicate the public school in their home which is a real mistake."

Joel Hammon was a social studies teacher for eleven years in traditional public and private schools who tired of make kids do things they didn't want to do, until found a way to be a partner with kids as they create their own path. 

Joel is the author of The Teacher Liberation Handbook: How to Leave School and Create a Place Where You and Young People Can Thrive and is co-founder of The Learning Cooperatives, a group of self-directed learning centers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He is also a co-founder of Liberated Learners, an organization dedicated to helping educators create and sustain self-directed learning centers around the world. To learn more about Joel, go to theluminousmind.net

Show notes for Episode 170

Quotes: "As a teacher, you have a lot of authority in some ways or imagined authority, in terms of how you deal with young people. The idea that I definitely know better than you and it is more important what I have for you to do, than what your interests might be. The fact that I could control people's movements down even to like when they could go to the bathroom or not, which outside the context of traditional schooling just really a weird thing. There's just some of those aspects...that is just the nature of the system.   "To be able to step out of that traditional mindset and realize that learning doesn't have to look like school, they are two separate things."    "I would just talk to teachers, if the reasons you went into education and working with young people, if you find that you are at odds with that, on a daily basis. Or if your sense of "how to" correctly and properly support young people is at odd with what you do and you want to try something different. Really look into creating something like this, it is way easier than you think, it is something you can do.    "For me, it is like the stuff we tell our young people, 'Be the captain of your own ship,  have an idea of what out of your life and then take the steps you need to, to make that reality.'"

 

Kari Carlson is most importantly a wife to her adventure-junky husband, Jake who was a past contributor on Episode #164. She is a mom to three ambitious and strong-willed children, two girls and a boy. Prior to traveling full time with that adventurous husband and three strong-willed children she was a stay at home mom and worked as a personal trainer in the evenings. Running keeps her sane and energetic, good nutrition keeps her healthy, and really good desserts keep life sweet. We discuss how traveling is assisting her family's education and fostering healthy relationships. 

To learn more about Kari, go to theluminousmind.net

 

We start this year's podcast line-up with Stephen Michael Miller! Stephen is passionate about helping entrepreneurs, business owners, families, associations, organizations and youth to live better more productive lives. He teaches key principles and skills that can help you achieve more. Stephen is an internationally –known expert, speaker, and entertainer. We discuss Strongbrook's program "Limitless" and how they are helping others achieve their dreams.

To learn more about Stephen, go to theluminousmind.net

Quotes: "I learned that sometimes out of  the deepest and darkest experiences that we have, come the resourcefulness that we need, in order to create the life that you truly want, to improve that journey for us or get on different steps of that journey."   "We take all of the evidences from our past and we act as though that is the truth of who we are today. Well today is different from yesterday."   "This concept that you do have power over your life and your circumstances."   "You have the power of choice and choices is not to be taken lightly. It's such a powerful concept that if we truly grasp this idea that regardless of where we are now, that we can create something different, that no matter what it is that we're experiencing."   "Usually those fear stems from an experience from the past, we make a decision about ourselves and about our surroundings. We decided to create a belief around something here and that belief is typically rooted in some sort of fear."    "Because I have a choice at any given moment, with everything that I do!" I can either put faith in what I do want, or I can put faith in what I don't want."    "Are the words that you're speaking, are the actions that you're taking, are the thoughts that you have, are they putting faith in what you do want or are they putting faith in what you don't want?"