Here are six takeaways to help you challenge your inner critic, handle tricky moments and bring out the best in others.

1. ‍Pause, it’s your RESPONSE-ABILITY. Creating space between feeling and responding is a key leadership skill. You don’t have to act on your first reaction. Take a breath, step outside or say, “Let me think about that and come back to you.”‍
2. Ask and include, don’t assume. Like our children and our dogs, we like our own ideas best. Lara highlighted the IKEA effect: we value things we’ve helped create. Invite people to contribute, it helps put brains in a reward state. And remember: if you have a brain, you are biased. Ask, “What am I missing?” or “What’s the empty chair thinking?”‍
3. WeGo not Ego, be a Chief Empathy Officer. Use SCARF: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness, to understand what people need and help put brains in a reward state. Do they feel valued, informed, in control, included and fairly treated? Strengthening your impact and influence starts with recognising that their priorities may differ from yours.‍
4. Your inner critic: Catch it, Check it, Change it. Catch the thought, check the evidence and change it to something more balanced and useful. “I’m no good at this” leaves little room for improvement. “I’m learning” gives you somewhere to go.‍
5. Your story: you are what you repeatedly do, read, say and think. Pay attention to the habits and thoughts you practise every day. Choose something that helps you grow: try something unfamiliar, ask for help or have a conversation you’ve been avoiding. As Lara puts it, striving takes you from 'Alive' to 'Neuro-Thrive'.
6. Striving takes you from alive to Thrive! All the physical challenges we do literally rewire the brain, increasing its assessment of what you can handle, increasing the real estate in your hippocampus and delivering vital BDNF for neurogenesis and brain health.
   

Lara’s suggestions for what’s next: Pick one idea and put it to work this week. Start small. Repeat.