Extraordinary Wellbeing: A Vision for the Future of the Human Mind

Engineering the Future of Human Possibility

Transformative Technology is tech designed to positively support human psychology, i.e. the inner landscape. People don’t typically think of technology when they think of their mind, emotions, and ability to know themselves and one another — but they should, because the capacity exists today to use technology to understand, amplify, enhance, and deeply connect humans.

What does this future look like? What could be possible for us if we all had tools that made mental and emotional wellbeing learn-able, accessible and affordable? This article doesn’t cover clinical concerns, but rather the question of “What if?” for the rest of the population. Just because you aren’t sick, does not mean that you are thriving and deeply engaged with your life.

Level 1: We could put the fires out.

When people are stressed, anxious, or afraid they cannot access their full genius. When employees are stressed and depressed, they are not performing at their best and they leave or generate higher healthcare costs. When students are stressed, they might pass tests, but after that, are they able to create a future for themselves in this dramatically changing world?

In the best case, while they might be able to access motivation, resourcefulness, and the ability to grind — I’m not convinced they can access their full genius and the place where the solutions most deeply needed by humanity reside. In the worst case, we lose them to burn-out, despair, or even suicide.You can look around to see the effect of fear on the social fabric and how while the volume of commentary escalates, the implementation of real solutions to some of our biggest challenges, stalls.

So what if people had training and tools to proactively prevent or manage stress, anxiety and fear?

• Today, that looks like breathing apps, stress wearables, meditation apps, chat support (human or bot), amplified therapists, vagus nerve stimulation and more.
• Tomorrow, that looks like precision guidance on food (food is mood), environment, gut biome, neurostimulation, mood subscriptions delivered via your smart home and car. amplified mentors, and your personalized AI dedicated to your growth and development (with privacy in place), and more.

(For a detailed list of tech, read this)

Level 2: We could get the skills in place.

Economic uncertainty and change are very stressful. We cannot underestimate the impact of this. But how one reacts to these factors in between what governments do or don’t do, or what people on Facebook understand or don’t understand, has a direct impact on your health and choices. Learning the ability to emotionally self-regulate, manage the fear response, and develop empowered meaning making are among the most critical to success in life. Not having an empowered reaction limits the ability to access available resources, and makes the ability to envision completely new options unlikely.

These skills are essential because not having them gets in the way of higher order skills like communication, collaboration, and establishing trust — all of which are at the root of group creativity, productivity, and other capacities estimated to be at the core of the jobs of the future. These skills are known as “Essential Human Skills” — and we don’t teach them institutionally.

We expect people to pick these skills up from culture. So, the current framework for teaching a big chunk of these soon-to-be-required skills is based on luck. Did you have skilled parents? Did you have a mentor? Are you in the right network? The right neighborhood? Did you have a teacher who taught you? Did your company teach it? And mind you, in the future, simply having these abilities won’t be sufficient to be compensated, you must be good at them, because these abilities will be a big part of your value to the system. Think about that for just a moment — a key requirement for compensated work in the future, which means it is also a proxy for social stability — today is driven by luck.

So what if we could use technology to teach Essential Human Skills outside the current educational framework?

• Today this looks like HRV training, behavior self-tracking and analytics, voice mood journals with analytics, meeting word analyzers, pattern recognition, emotion recognition and more.
• Tomorrow, this looks like amplified mentors, AI role-playing for social-emotional skill training, chat (human and bot) delivered in the moment training scenarios, peer-counseling amplified by tech and more.

Imagine even a single generation, so deeply resourced. What could they discover? Imagine what they could create?

(For a detailed list of tech, read this)

Level 3: We could Unlock the Bonus Levels

I spoke to someone yesterday who runs a global innovation team for a Fortune 500 company and she said, “I need my people to envision things that no one has thought of yet, and for that to happen, I have to help them access the best, most creative part of themselves.” On her team this looks like working hard to get her Millennial staff trained past Level 1 and Level 2 into becoming creative leaders in their own domain — both in work and life — as the two reinforce one another. Find a deeper capacity in your life — and you’ll bring it to work, or find a deeper capacity through work, and you’ll bring it home.

So what if we could use technology to take people beyond the borders of what is “normal skill levels?”

• Today, this looks like VR team training like Jensen 8. Jensen 8 is a VR based team-building systems where teams run scenarios in VR, learning to work better together. The rigs get set up in your office, the professional trainers observe and coach from “God” mode, and the results have been outstanding where teams report feeling more connected and more effective. Employees are asking their companies to set up permanent rigs so that they can have this bonding experience more often. There’s more tools like this coming quickly.
• Tomorrow, I believe that we will use technology to witness and thus understand the cascade of group biosignals that underlie group flow. I believe that group flow, and pair drift, will be among the most coveted skills initially and then become common place enabled by technology. This is only one example of the new skills and abilities that will become widespread among the human race.

The Transformative Technology Academy

This is why we have created the Transformative Technology Academy — to connect the entrepreneurs and innovators who are building, or want to build, products in this space to help humans:

1. Reduce stress, anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, and fear
2. Develop strong self-awareness, resilience, sense of happiness, emotional wellbeing and social skills
3. Embody purpose, surpass self-actualization, increase joy or elevate consciousness
4. Expand mental and emotional intelligence
5. Experience transformation and deep connection

Apply at www.ttacademy.co for the online program Sept 15 — Oct 15, 2018.

Who Am I?

In closing, bringing peace to the human mind is key to addressing the wider issues that we face. We can’t bypass addressing the root cause of many of our problems — the level of human consciousness. And where answering the fundamental question of “Who Am I?” was once a luxury, it is now a requirement. The answer to this question for every person will be the cornerstone, not only of their Future of Work but also of Putting Out the Fires.

For a full description on why we cannot rely on traditional 1:1 old fashioned training, read anything else here.