August Reflection on the Neuroscience of Unlearning
What The Classroom Always Knew That The Boardroom Is Still Learning
THE SOIL CHECK 🌱
Greetings Beloved,
Every August, something in me returns to the classroom.
Not nostalgically. Purposefully. Because back to school season is a reminder that the most important thing I ever learned about leadership I did not learn in a leadership program. I learned it on the floor of an early childhood classroom, at eye level with a two-year-old in nervous system distress; in that moment I understood that my regulation was the prerequisite for their learning.
That truth has never left me. It is the foundation of every organizational consulting engagement Love Before ALL takes on. And this month, I wanted to bring it into the open to trace the thread from the classroom to the boardroom, from early childhood pedagogy to the neuroscience of adult learning, and to make the case plainly:
The brain does not stop needing safety in order to grow. It needs it at two, and it needs it at forty-two. The conditions that make learning possible are not a childhood luxury. They are a lifelong biological requirement.
This month we explored what that means for leaders, for organizational cultures, and for anyone who has ever believed, or been told, that it is too late to change.
It is not. The neuroscience is clear: neurons that fire together wire together, and new firing builds new wiring. The brain's capacity for genuine change, neuroplasticity, does not expire. It requires the right conditions. And creating those conditions is what Love Before ALL exists to do.
🫶🏾 THE RELATIONSHIP SPOTLIGHT (Talk to Me) 🫶🏾
This Month's Conversation: Gregory Caremans on Relationships and The Brain
"The brain is a social organ. It develops in the context of relationship, and it heals in the context of relationship."
This month's Talk to Me episode brings Gregory Caremans of the Brain Academy into the conversation on the intersection of neuroscience, relational health, and what it actually takes to build organizations where genuine learning and transformation becomes possible.
Gregory's work has been personally significant as the Brain Academy was a reprieve while searching for answers about my father's brain degeneration, and I became a Certified Brain Coach through the Academy five years after he transitioned.
💡 The "Gold Nugget":
"You cannot separate the quality of the relationships from the quality of the thinking. They are the same variable."
Episode 7 drops Monday August 31. Subscribe onYouTube orSpotify!
🌍 GROWING THE ME & THE WE 🌍
We explored four dimensions of the neuroscience of unlearning this month. Here are the key practices from our content for your ongoing work:
For Your Self (The ME): We began with what school taught your nervous system, the compliance curriculum that most of us received without a syllabus and carried, unexamined, into our leadership. We then explored the myth of the finished brain: that neuroplasticity, the brain's lifelong capacity to form new neural pathways, means that the patterns we have carried for decades are not permanent; they are simply defaults, and defaults can be updated.
And in the Season 1 finale of Love As A Strategy, we closed with the Learning Posture: the three-step nervous system practice for staying genuinely teachable when every instinct in the body is pulling toward defense. If you missed it, catch the full playlist here: LAS Playlist
For Your Leadership (The WE): In our blogs, we explored the organizational implications of everything above; what enriched relational environments actually require neurologically, what happens when the leader's nervous system is the dysregulated teacher in the room, and why communication problems in organizations are almost always nervous system problems wearing communication's clothing. If you missed any of this content, access the blog here.
🎯 STRATEGY IN ACTION 🎯
The Practice: The Curriculum Audit and the New Pathway
Two practices to carry into September:
Micro (Self): The New Pathway Practice. Identify one leadership default you would like to update, one automatic response that you know is not serving you or your team/family. This week, do something small and specific that interrupts it. Once, with intention. Because one new firing is the beginning of a new wiring. And beginnings, however small, are how everything changes. (Hebb, "The Organization of Behavior," 1949)
Meso (Team or Organization): The Curriculum Audit. In your next team meeting, track not the content of what is said but the content of what is not said. Notice the hesitations, the questions that never get asked, the ideas that start and stop. That silence is the compliance curriculum running. What you do with that information, whether you name it, create space for it, or let it pass, is the most consequential leadership decision you will make this week.
🌸 THE INVITATION 🌸
Transformation happens in layers
The most important layer this month is this one: you do not have to lead the way you were taught. Your brain is not finished. And the relational environment you build for your team is either expanding or contracting their capacity for genuine growth every single day.
Ready to root deeper personally?
Two offerings are available to you right now, and both are built on the premise that the most powerful thing we can do for our own growth is stop trying to do it alone.
The LBA Connection Circle is a free monthly 45-minute space for founders, executives, educational leaders, and HR professionals who are carrying the weight of leadership and need somewhere to set it down with someone who understands both mission and the nervous system. Come as you are. No performance required. Fill out the contact form for the details.
The Cultivation Circle membership is for leaders who are ready to build a sustained inner work practice in genuine community. Monthly practices, monthly connection, a home for the ongoing work of regulated, love-led leadership.
Ready to transform your organization?
If you are a leader seeking to improve your team’s effectiveness, let's schedule a Discovery Conversation.
With a teacher's patience and a founder's conviction,
Annie 💛
Your Curious Cultural Architect
Growing compassion from the inside out.
Producing results while caring for people.
P.S. — Season 1 of Love As A Strategy is complete. All 18 episodes are available on YouTube. Season 2 begins January 2027.