Self-Understanding, Flourishing & Flow

In this episode:

ABOUT THE GUEST:

Dr Jonathan Beale is Lead Researcher and Teacher of Philosophy at Sevenoaks School, & an Academic Visitor at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire; a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; and a Research Fellow for ‘BrainCanDo’ – an educational neuroscience research centre. He’s previously held positions as Researcher-in-Residence at Eton College (2019-21) and Fellow in Philosophy at Harvard University (2011-13). He is the co-editor of three books for Routledge: Wittgenstein and Scientism (2017), The ‘BrainCanDo’ Handbook of Teaching and Learning (2020) and Wittgenstein and Contemporary Moral Philosophy (2022). He has published articles on education and philosophy in academic journals and media outlets including The New York Times, and has given invited talks at universities including Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, UCL, Sheffield, Yale, Ottawa and Zaragoza, and for organizations including the Royal Society of Arts.

Dr. Brent Hogarth is a Sport and Clinical Psychologist from Vancouver, Canada. He is an expert in training flow-state, mindfulness, and self-control for both sport and corporate athletes.

Brent has significant training and experience providing performance enhancement and mental health counseling. This includes, but is not limited to, working with Olympic and professional athletes, serial entrepreneurs, members of the USA military, computer engineers, authors, hedge fund managers, and more. Brent's clinical counseling experience is vast, and he sees everyone as having the ability to be a high-performer. He completed his doctoral fellowships at the University of Texas, at El Paso, and at Lehigh University, in Bethlehem, PA. In both of these placements, Dr. Hogarth worked with Division 1 student-athletes, their teams, coaches, and athletic admin.

Before entering graduate school, Brent earned an undergraduate degree in Kinesiology. After a short stint as a fitness trainer, he traveled to India where he lived in a Buddhist Monastery and completed a Yoga Teacher Training Course. It was at this moment - sitting in meditation on the hills of McLeod Ganj, India - that Brent committed to becoming a psychologist.

Dr. Hogarth is a Humanistic-Existential psychologist. His theoretical orientation is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). ACT uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies, together with commitment and behavior change strategies, to increase psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility means contacting the present moment fully and based on what the situation affords, changing or persisting in behavior in the service of clients chosen values.

Brent is an avid athlete and aspiring author. He represented B.C in gymnastics as a youth, loves to ski (ask Steven if he's any good), and plays basketball. Recently he completed a full Ironman and is training for his first 100-mile ultra marathon. He is currently building on his breakthrough dissertation - Shining Light on the Dark Side of Flow: is Mindfulness in High-Flow-State Athletes Predictive of Improved Emotion-Regulation and Self-Control? - into his first book.

RESOURCES:

Jonathan Beale

Brent Hogarth

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Steven Kotler: Steven Kotler is a New York Times bestselling author, an award-winning journalist, and the Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective. He is one of the world’s leading experts on human performance.

He is the author of nine bestsellers (out of thirteen books) and has appeared in over 100 publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Wired, Atlantic Monthly, Wall Street Journal, TIME and the Harvard Business Review.

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