Why You Can’t Focus (And The Brain Science That Fixes It) with Regina Sweeney

[00:00:00] Intro: You are listening to the seven-Figure Leap podcast. We're here to leverage rich relationships and smart strategies to take your business to the next level. Here's your host, Dustin Rieman.
Dustin: Do you ever struggle to stay focused and really lock in and concentrate when you're doing creative work? I know I do.
Dustin: And so I'm really excited today to be joined by a special guest, Regina Sweeney. I'm sure we'll get into how Regina and I know each other, but Regina is a current. Client of ours and the podcast Profits accelerator. And she's someone that I've already learned a ton from when it comes to the idea of concentration.
Dustin: And she has some really cool methods and techniques and a really unique background on this topic. And I know for all of us that are entrepreneurs, it seems like almost. Part and parcel with being an entrepreneur. You have at least a touch of some A DHD and some issues with concentration and [00:01:00] shiny object syndrome.
Dustin: And so I know I'm gonna get a ton out of this interview, and I'm really excited to unpack Regina's story and her business and then give you some practical help for how you can concentrate better when you're working on your business. So Regina, I'm grateful for you. Thank you so much for being here. please.
Dustin: Yeah, take a minute and just, introduce yourself to the audience and then we'll hop right into your story.
Regina: Sure. Dustin, thank you so much, first of all, for having me here. I'm so thrilled for this opportunity and just to be able to spend some time with you. As Dustin said, my name's Regina Sweeney. I am a mom of nine, still homeschooling the six who are at home.
Regina: And I'm also a concentration coach, so I work with people, high achievers of some sort usually, and I help them learn how to concentrate better
overall in the moment and making sure that they're concentrating on the right things in their business.
Dustin: That's beautiful. Well, thank you for your, role as a mom of nine.
Dustin: I know when we first met each other, online, we haven't yet met in person, but I'm sure we [00:02:00] will. Of course that's one of the things kind of stops you in your tracks and it's, it's powerful. It's amazing. And we share a lot of interesting things in our background that I think we, we connected right away on.
Dustin: And so I'm sure we will, get into that and pull some of that out. But I'd love to hear a little more of your story and. How you got into concentration coaching, coming out of this background as such a, an engaged mom and, wife and, someone who's really involved in their community and their faith life.
Dustin: like why concentration coaching? Like Yeah, just share a little bit of your backstory and, maybe give us some context for that.
Regina: So Dustin, I know that when we first met, you admitted to me that you did not know that Maria Montessori was actually a person. So that was, I did not know that,
Dustin: but I've learned a lot since.
Regina: So, some of your listeners may have heard about Montessori schools. people have different opinions about, oh, the Montessori kids are the ones who can do whatever they want. Other people think, wow, those Montessori kids are the ones who really have it together, and academic achievers and all that. My husband and I [00:03:00] found out about Montessori when our oldest was three years old.
Regina: as is happens in most families, you raise your children the way you were raised, and in our case, it wasn't going as well as we had hoped, and I wanted to start looking for a better way. So I prayed about it and I searched, and I read and read and read, and actually came across this old dog-eared copy of a book by Murray Montessori in the local public library.
Regina: And we were living in Arlington, Virginia at the time, and it was called the Child and the Family. And it made a huge impact on how I saw the relationship between a child and parent. And one of the things that really
jumped out at me is how we can allow our children to be a positive influence on us as parents and growing as people if we let it happen.
Regina: So an example of that is. As parents, especially of newborns and being sleep deprived and all that, we have a [00:04:00] lot of opportunities to practice patience.
Dustin: Yeah, that's true. Right? And when they get to be older, as you've experienced too. Yeah. Yes.
Regina: And that's something that we can either let us, benefit us in a.
Regina: Amazing way, or it can break us, right? And push us to the opposite extreme of anger, frustration, you know, and then that's when you hear the really heartbreaking cases of child abuse and, and whatnot. And so that was a, a really big takeaway for me, with Montessori. And then it so happened that our parish at the time where we were attending, had a catechesis program where they were using the Montessori program to teach the children.
Regina: catechesis and we enrolled our daughter in it. She was three years old and she just blossomed. And at the time, it's amazing to see a group of really well-focused, earnest, well-behaved children, you know, two to four, five years old. So engrossed in what they're doing because they had [00:05:00] such a love for the work that they were doing.
Regina: So that was the first year at our parish. We were so enthralled by Montessori in this regard that my husband and I spearheaded the effort to start a full Montessori school at the parish. Wow. So at the time it was probably one of less than five, I think, in the entire country at the time. And we had such a, group of dedicated people.
Regina: I was on one of the founding committees. I helped with the budgetary process and my husband was the chairman of the committee with. School. He was working with the diocese, with, public school system, so the district, because we wanted it now all in line with, the standards of the educational system.
Regina: And we were able to pull that off. We opened our doors in 2004. It's still helping families today, so it's thrilling. It's thrilling to go back and look at the website and see newer pictures of the, children that are there, you know, families that we don't know anymore since we moved [00:06:00] away. But it was just an amazing blessed time in our life.
Regina: Wow.
Dustin: You discovered 21 years before I did that Marie Montessori was like an actual person, an Italian woman, if I recall correctly, from the 18 hundreds. Yes. And that, these things that you drive around, you see Montessori school signs, or you know, your kids like play with kids and they're from Montessori and, yeah, it was like, I always just associated it with.
Dustin: Little kids and this sort of freeform version of learning. And I always had a lot of respect for it, but I, I didn't understand it, at all to the extent that, that you've educated me. And so I do wanna take a little sidebar here. Kind of a fun fact. So you're no longer in, in that home parish. You're actually in Wyoming now.
Dustin: Yes. And one of the things that Regina and I connected on immediately, she's like, I live in Lander, Wyoming. You've probably never heard of it. I'm like. Oh my gosh, actually I have because, of all the places. I've been there and I actually did like a really cool, you know, four day backpacking journey that started in the Lander through Wyoming Catholic [00:07:00] College, which turned out, you know, you and your husband have deep ties to, and it was like, oh my gosh.
Dustin: So the more we talked, the more we realized we had a lot of things in common, including this, this little town of Lander, which is super delightful. And, so yeah. Anything you wanna share about. The move there and like why you're there. And then we'll, continue the journey on with Montessori and how's that, turned into, entrepreneurial and executive coaching.
Dustin: But I'd love to hear a little more about the journey to Wyoming.
Regina: So we went to college with, some people who helped found the school. we were here kind of in the first phase of it, so it was pretty early on. And I mean, as you've kind of picked up, my husband and I are kind of in the pioneering.
Regina: Let's do something that's really been done before, like starting a, a Catholic Montessori school. And we were up for moving out here. We visited, stayed with some friends, loved the area, and it's been incredible the way that we've been able to raise our children. So one, one of the things that, a lot of people don't know about Montessori, she had [00:08:00] her theory of what is called the Four Planes of Development, which encompasses zero to around age 24.
Regina: Which is about the time that certain parts of the brain actually stop developing physiologically, they know now that that's the case. She knew this over a hundred years ago through observation. So she was one of the first medical doctors in Italy. quite groundbreaking at the time. She got her start in engineering, actually.
Dustin: Okay. I like that. Switched
Regina: to medicine. Yeah. and so Each of the planes was divided into six years. So you have the first, second, third, fourth planes. And in each plane she observed that children had certain needs and developmental periods. They called them sensitive periods. But in the third plane of development, the educational portion of that was what was called the erd kinder, and it was very earth-based.
Regina: So instead of children studying chemistry in a lab, they would go and study the chemistry of the water in a pond. See the interaction of [00:09:00] that. Instead of studying biology in a classroom, they'd actually go out to the barn and study the animals. So it was very, very hands-on, sensorial based In reality, we never got our children to that point in Montessori education.
Regina: Although I, could have seen us starting in herd kinder at some point. We gotta kind of live out our own er, kinder here in Wyoming. So our children have horses. there are three currently. People think that that's like kind of this big deal, but in Wyoming the context is people kind of give them away, like stray dogs and puppies and, and things like that.
Regina: So, you know, you often hear, if we're trying to get rid of this horse, do you want it? which is how we got our first horse. we got it from a breeder whose mare got pregnant and they didn't know how, and. When you're a breeder, you're not interested in that. You just want the bloodlines. Right. So we met them when this particular little guy was full, was four months old, and he boards at a local ranch [00:10:00] and our children helped take care of him and train him.
Regina: And so it was, wonderful experience. So
Dustin: that's really cool. Alright, so yeah. So they still go
Regina: to this day, we've been here 14 years and they still go riding at least once a week. So That's
Dustin: amazing.
Regina: Yeah,
Dustin: it's great. Yeah, I, I mean, I promise the interview is gonna go past, Wyoming, but, I, I, when I got there and like two in the morning after driving literally like 21 hours or something from our home in St.
Dustin: Louis, we all, we drove in this like shuttle van and we got there and we met these, people from Wyoming Catholic College, and I found out really quickly, it's like really unique place like classical education and like when freshmen come in, like part of the. Experience of coming in, the onboarding if you will.
Dustin: Mm-hmm. as they spend like 60 days. Is that right? Like out in the wilderness? You know, when we, even first here
Regina: it was 21 days. I don't know if that's been shortened. Okay. 21.
Dustin: Maybe I'm exaggerating it, but it was still pretty remarkable. Like, I think of my own daughter who just left for college, I'm like.
Dustin: She was scared to like walk into the dorm room and sleep [00:11:00] overnight in the dorm room, you know, let alone being out with the grizzlies for three weeks, as part of your, like first step into higher education. So it's a unique place. It's really cool. I have a ton of respect for it and I think that the spirit of that, you know, is, in the work that you do as well.
Dustin: So, so we've got a good idea now of like why you got into Montessori and how you raised your kids and you've got this experiential upbringing for them in Wyoming. So yeah, maybe like bridge the gap over a little closer to modern day, like concentration coaching. I know music is a big part of what you do, and so I'll let you kind of set us up before we start talking more about what you do as a coach in your day-to-day business.
Dustin: But sort of like what was the, pull over into helping other people apply Montessori as adults, and particularly with, you know, this kind of high achieving, people that you help now.
Regina: So my husband and I really took Montessori to heart and tried to infuse it into our daily living and how we raised our children.
Regina: And so when we moved away, I started homeschooling and I took those same [00:12:00] principles and used them in my homeschooling. which is completely the opposite of how I was raised. I went to four year college prep. All girls, you know, really high achieving high school, which I loved. I enjoyed.
Regina: It was exhausting and, and I'm not sure I would do it again, but at the time I loved it, and so I understood the power of taking those principles and applying them to different contexts. So I am a lifelong musician. my parents started me at classical piano when I was three years old. It's kind of what they do in Asian circles.
Regina: stereotypes are sometimes stereotypes for a reason, and I'm fine with that. I love it. Music, music has always been a part of my life. I don't, I honestly can't remember a time when I couldn't read music. It was just that early on and in Montessori, one of the hallmarks. Of a well run Montessori environment is concentration.
Regina: So what she [00:13:00] found when the children, you know, the little three year olds came into her classroom environment for the first time, they were kind of all over the place and she observed, she was a scientific mind and she was constantly testing different materials for the children to use with their hands.
Regina: Seeing what, what resonated with them, what they were drawn to, the kinds of things that they would do repeatedly. I mean, when I say repeatedly, I'm talking 30, 45 minutes of moving things, just, you know, moving. They have these cylinders that they would move into place, out of place, different heights, different widths, and the children developed these powers of concentration.
Regina: What she noticed was, was as the children deepened in that their bad behaviors went away naturally. They didn't have to correct them as much. They were very engaged in the academic work. They became much more creative, a lot more higher executive [00:14:00] functioning powers, if you will, and those are all things that can apply to the business world.
Regina: So one of my loves other than music is reading business books. I like, I have double stacks of books on my shelves. It's kinda like you
Dustin: share that love. Yes. I love it.
Regina: I just love reading business books, entrepreneurial stories. one of my favorites is called The Unfair Advantage. I saw the posts that, that you had about, mm-hmm.
Regina: A spouse with, Michael Dell. Yeah. And that's the name of the book. And just reading the stories in there of how people took experiences from their own lives. And applied them in different contexts and then came up with these
amazing business models. I mean, everybody knows now what Stripe is, and that was, if I'm remembering correctly, it was two Irish brothers who were in their late teens, I think it was, or the origin of Canva was a young girl in high school who wanted to help her mom, who was in charge of the high school
yearbook.
Dustin: Oh, wow. Did you know that? I did not know that. No, I didn't know that. Yeah. I'm Judy Sure.
Regina: [00:15:00] That's the, that's the origin story of Canva. And so as I have been reading these books throughout the years, I realized that so many problems in business can be solved with Montessori principles. And that the reasons the problems exist in the first place is because certain habits were not formed in people when they were young.
Regina: And when we have these lax as children, the negative effects carry over into our adulthood. Absolutely. And so that's when I started in my interactions in coaching adults later on and I kind of started testing different ideas with them and found, yes, they, it works. Adults can change, they can learn, they can adopt new habits and behaviors and patterns of thinking to really improve their lives essentially.
Regina: And so I. My business basically marries different loves. So there's a music component, there's a Montessori piece, there's the business piece and the entrepreneurial [00:16:00] executive angle as well. So it's, it's just all these different parts of my life coming together now. It's exciting.
Dustin: I love it. Yeah, it's really awesome.
Dustin: I feel, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this because it's something we've talked about, in our different coaching sessions in, in the podcast Profits accelerator. You know, I think most people, maybe all people, think of like Montessori for kids, and.
Dustin: I think we lack the connection to what it makes possible, even if you do adopt parts of these principles and some of the, best practices later in life. But I know that you've shared some, remarkable people that, were Montessori educated and they've given a lot of credit to that and some of their creativity and their entrepreneurial endeavors.
Dustin: You wanna share a story or two on that front, and then we'll dive a little more into the actual work that you do.
Regina: Sure. So I would love to invite your listeners to imagine a little boy. He was so engrossed in his preschool classroom of the work that he was doing, that his teachers actually had to pick up the chair.
Regina: He was sitting in to move [00:17:00] him. So the next thing that they wanted him to do, that little boy was Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. We also have. If you've ever heard of Google
Dustin: a few times. Yeah.
Regina: It just couple times. Most of us have used it here and there. The two co-founders, Larry Page and Sergi Brynn are both Montessori educated children and they, there was an interview, that they did, gosh, probably in the.
Regina: Nineties at some point, with Barbara Walters, if you recall that name. And she asked if the fact that both of their fathers were college professors, had anything to do with their entrepreneurial spirit, and they said, no, we actually think it's because we both went to Montessori schools.
Dustin: That's amazing.
Dustin: So, you know, maybe some of our listeners had the gift of. Having like your children, you know, the Montessori experience as they grew up and went kind of through the four planes all the way up into their young adulthood. Mm hmm. But for, those people who may be left some of that behind, or for the [00:18:00] majority of people who haven't had that experience.
Dustin: Yeah. Like talk a little more about the work you do now and how we can, benefit from the kind of, the best parts of Montessori as it, pertains particularly to our business. Mm-hmm. So maybe talk a little more about. You know, what is concentration coaching and what does it do for people?
Dustin: And then like, how do you actually, apply this with your clients?
Regina: So I have a few different areas of work, that I focus on. One of them is the actual brain training of the concentration. So. rewinding a little bit back in 2013 when I was already homeschooling one of my children was having a hard time reading.
Regina: She was nine at the time, and we actually pulled her out of our Montessori school, you know, several years prior because it just wasn't getting better and which was, it was hard. It was really difficult to think about what are the. Societal [00:19:00] community, ripple effects of if founders of a school pulled their own child out of the school.
Dustin: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Right.
Regina: And so it was, it was a lot of, a lot of consideration. But in the end, you know, we, we were determined to do what was right for, for our daughter. Pulled her out. you know, I started diving into all these different programs to help her, but one that I came across was a music program that actually uses.
Regina: it's science-based music where they acoustically modified the different frequencies so that they pass them through filters so that we're isolating a certain band of frequencies at different parts of the music program. In order to stimulate different parts of the brain. Oh, wow.
Regina: Fascinating. So, so the way that music can help us therapeutically is, and get, get a little sciencey here on you. In high school biology, we study about, you know, the cochlea, the little spiral shaped part of the inner ear that has hair cells in it, and different parts and the different [00:20:00] hairs in the areas are stimulated by different frequencies.
Regina: Those. signals are transmitted to different parts of the brain. Yes. And so we can focus on stress release, creativity, academic performance, decision making, all these different areas. And so. Living where we did in Wyoming, and this was long before virtual things were going on.
Regina: there were no providers, certified providers within hundreds of miles that could do this for our daughter. So I became one. and my intent was always only to do it for our family. but I, I went through the training, I became certified. We used it for her and. Our success was so thrilling.
Regina: So as I mentioned, she was nine not learning how to read by the end of her eighth grade. So spring of eighth grade, she took a standardized test. and she scored post high school in all of the reading and comprehension and spelling
sections on the [00:21:00] test. And I was just. Blown away. Like I cried when I saw the results 'cause I was so grateful to God and just so moved by the power of something so simple.
Regina: Yeah, music is something that we take for granted and it's kind of always in the background and, and we don't really, most people don't understand that it actually can be used therapeutically in a very, very effective way.
Dustin: Yeah. And we're gonna a little sneak peek as we, move towards the last part of the interview here.
Dustin: pretty soon Regina's gonna give us some more specific insights on that and. Actually give us a resource so that you can use music and different, different types of music, different frequencies to aid you in your concentration, creativity. Some of the things that she was able to do for her daughter as a pioneer, as, as the theme of the interview here, she now is able to bring to bear and help people with, as adults and as again, entrepreneurs and executives using music.
Dustin: So music's a big part of this. We've talked a lot about the Montessori. Influence on you and, and some of the methods that you've [00:22:00] carried forward into your work. So if someone comes to you, maybe this is how I'd like to, frame this. So when should someone come to Regina to get help? So they say they're, running a business and they're just like, man, I can't get anything done.
Dustin: I feel like I'm scattered. I'm not productive. Is it those types of things, like what are some of the symptoms I guess that would be, improved? With the types of methods that you're able to, bring to bear for people.
Regina: So let's get a little bit left brained here, with some stats. There was a, a study done engineer.
Regina: There was a study done by Microsoft, which was rare at the time because they actually did it in, they call it I, mm-hmm. May be pronouncing that wrong, but they, it took them six years to find a company willing to participate in this study where they installed on. The employee computers task, task switching software, they found that the average switch was [00:23:00] every 40 seconds.
Dustin: Oh my gosh.
Regina: So the takeaway there is that the average executive slash knowledge worker on a computer screen is losing concentration every 40 seconds. Then there was a different study that came out, I think it was, University of California Irvine, that it takes on average 23 minutes to come back to a focused state and return to the original task.
Regina: I think somewhere in between there, people were interrupted two to three times. So you're actually getting pulled off in this, this chain before you actually get back. So if you're better than average and you added up all of your distraction times, you could actually take a two month vacation. Every year and still get the same amount of work done
Regina: So, so people who come to me, one of my favorite, client success stories, I'll call him Tony, because I work with my clients on a confidential basis. When he came to me, he was working from home one day a week. [00:24:00] And he said that honestly, pretty much every afternoon, Chung, from lunchtime till the end of the day, he spent watching YouTube videos because he was so distracted.
Regina: He couldn't focus. He had plenty of work to do. It wasn't that there was nothing to do. There was plenty. And after two weeks of working with me and ha using faithfully the the music protocols, he found that. Those videos that have previously so engrossed him were not even attractive anymore. He started putting together an internal white paper that focused on a project he was working on.
Regina: He identified some major problems that needed to be fixed before the project would actually make any kind of real progress. He had already written 4,000 words on this paper and wasn't done yet, and 1500 of those were done in a single sitting session. So he was, thrilled with his ability to just get just [00:25:00] work.
Regina: And he found great satisfaction in that because people often feel valued for the contributions that they make. People want to be contributors, they wanna feel like what they do matters. And he realized how he could provide, a real, real direction and guidance for his team in this regard. And that was as a result of being able to concentrate in a more, more intense manner.
Dustin: And there's that, you know, sense, like you said, sense of contribution, sense of progress, sense of meaning and purpose. Like all that's tied into your ability to be effective. and if you're an entrepreneur, I mean, time literally is
money, right? Like, if you're losing two months a year to productivity, you're losing whatever percentage that is, 15% or something.
Dustin: Or, or I guess more than that even, 20% of your year to just lost time. Basically just time that you can't even account for time. That was sort of meaningless, that you could have at least if you had chosen to not use that time at work, you could have been doing something you enjoyed more [00:26:00] or spending time with your family.
Dustin: So this isn't like. Time that people are intentionally choosing to lose is just lost in the noise of a lack of concentration, a lack of focus, a lack of productivity. I think everyone, including me, who's listening to this, can relate to that, right? Mm-hmm. And, even though studies that you cited. I'm sure they weren't, this year.
Dustin: So they didn't even account for TikTok, slack, no shorts, every notification in the world, you know, popping in and all the distractions that come. and, and I used to think I worked in an office. I was like, man, if I just, these people would leave me alone. I could get some work done, right? Because I felt the distractions then were people opening my door and asking me questions.
Dustin: Well, now, I think we work from home and we think, well, I don't have all those distractions. I'm here for me, I'm here most of the time by myself in my home office. I'm self distracting. Right, right. Because, this is something in my,
in my head that like, doesn't allow me to focus. And that's really what you're addressing, right?
Dustin: You're helping people's brains work better, like at a [00:27:00] neurological level. Am I overstating that?
Regina: No, you are not overstating that at all. And the way that I like to explain it is if you think about an open field of grass that is not very trodden. You decide to start wearing a path in that and you're constantly going over the same place, back and forth.
Regina: Well, what happens? It becomes easier to traverse the path because it is born. It's the same way with our neural pathways. So when we're brain training for a particular functioning, and those neurons keep getting strengthened, the neural pathways are constantly stimulated in the right ways, repeatedly in a, you know, very disciplined manner.
Regina: They become stronger, they start to work better. So our thought processes actually speed up. We start making connections, right? That's what the creativity piece comes in that maybe we hadn't noticed before. And so it concentration, I like to call it the tip of the Montessori iceberg because there are all these other [00:28:00] wonderful things that follow from that.
Regina: But because that's the most foundational piece, that's what I typically address with first when I'm working with clients.
Dustin: So concentration is sort of like the first principle. You gotta fix that before you can open up even deeper, rewards for correct. addressing this and going down this path. Yes.
Dustin: And it's, you know, I think of it too, it's like, sort of the infinite gift. Like if you could get, an hour a day back of just effective thinking time or an effective concentration time, like. What would that unlock for? Mm-hmm. Your business or your, effectiveness as a leader, as a parent, as a spouse, like, it literally transcends into all parts of life because you, you take your brain everywhere, right?
Dustin: So if you can improve the function of your brain, it's going to improve all aspects of life. And for those listening that are. they not only want to be more effective and be able to sit down and get things done, they also wanna be creative because, you know, we have our own unique ideas, our ip, the things that we want to teach and share with [00:29:00] others.
Dustin: And to be able to make those kind of loose connections, and then be able to convey that in an effective communication is super valuable. Like, that's what people pay us for as coaches and, content creators and things. So that's awesome. So give us a little snapshot on how people can work with you.
Dustin: Like is this all custom one-on-one work? Are you, you looking at other, forms of how you want to make this transformation possible for people? so let's camp out here in your business for a minute and then we'll kind of, turn the page
over into this like, music protocol that you have and, and we'll educate people on that.
Regina: I would love to do that. But first I just wanna make the comment that you said, you know, that the study was done years ago. I love to point out the fact to people that Maria Montessori recognized this about concentration in the early 19 hundreds. people were still sailing from Italy to America.
Regina: We didn't have airplanes. Yeah, we didn't have computers and cell phones and all of the things connected to the internet that we do [00:30:00] now. And yet, even if you can strip all that away and think about. How many distractions could have possibly really been existing at that time, and yet she could see the profound changes and the profound need that human beings have to be able to concentrate.
Regina: So I just, I just think that's
Dustin: a great point. I kind of geek out on her
Regina: and, and yeah, I, we can kind of dismiss
Dustin: it and be like, philosophy, not much I can do about it. It's just the world we live in. Right. But like, this is a. I guess innate human condition and innate human problem. And the good news is, though, it's, it's fixable.
Dustin: I, if it's fully correctable, but it's, I provable, right? Mm-hmm.
Regina: Yeah. I dunno. I might even go so far as to say that, that it is fixable. I mean, people, people overcome, the temptation to distractions and things like that. I do like to make also a distinction between focus and concentration. So focus.
Regina: Seems to fall more into the realm of time management. Mm-hmm. How you block your [00:31:00] calendar, how you set aside times, you know, you prioritize how you deal with your email inbox and things like that. turning off notifications, all of those external things that if we're discipline is fairly easy to do. For the most part.
Regina: Concentration is developing the ability to turn off the noise in your own head.
Dustin: Mm.
Regina: I think that no matter your area of expertise, your ability to concentrate is your most valuable skill. It impacts everything else that you do, and there really isn't any area of life that I can think of that doesn't benefit from greater concentration because in the end, the way I see it is that concentration directly leads you to connection.
Regina: And that's connection with your work, you know, in, this context that we're talking about to your family, to [00:32:00] your community. You know, one of the things that I find so sad is when I go out to eat and I'll see a couple, they're each on their cell phones. They have their child who's sitting there with
an iPad, you know, headphones on watching the movie.
Regina: Every once in a while, maybe the parents will show, you know, oh ha, look at this funny thing on my cell phone. But they're not connecting with each other. They're not concentrating on the relationship and the family time together. and in our experience, that's one of my favorite times is family time around the dinner table.
Regina: You know, we don't have cell phones. Actually, our children don't even have cell phones until they're ready to go off to college. We just, we just, that's awesome. We don't do that. And I think it's, for their benefit. Mm-hmm. You know, they learn how to communicate. I mean, remember growing up we had the phone landlines and we'd have to call.
Regina: Yeah. And you know, we have to say, hello, this is Regina. May I speak to Sally please? Or, or whatever it was. Most children these days don't have phone skills like that because they never [00:33:00] had to. Right? They, they hit the, name and the contact list. They don't even have to memorize their friend's phone numbers anymore, right?
Regina: So that that piece of memory is gone. And then they don't even have to be cordial in asking the parents, can I speak to your child? Right? Those are all things that, have been lost in our digital age. And in the losing of that, I think we've lost some of our humanity. And so for me it's kind of a quest to bring back concentration and connection to couples, to spouses, to families, to communities and the workplace.
Regina: Most people have to spend time working for their living. Like most of us are not trust fund babies.
Dustin: Yes.
Regina: You know, and so whatever happens in the work tends to spill over into the family. Into the community, right? If we don't have time for our family, we're not gonna be volunteering for whatever this and that, and, you know, important things happening.
Regina: And so I think that concentrating on making the workplace a [00:34:00] very valuable, efficient, place where people are happy and their, contributions are appreciated and people know that their work matters is. Very good work that has a wide rippling impact out to the greater society.
Dustin: Thousand percent agree from many different perspectives.
Dustin: Like we could spend an hour just talking about that last statement. But, but I do want to hear in your words like how you do this work. You know, it's like, what does it look like when someone works with you and what are the options for that? And then, like I said, well. we'll get over into the music protocol and some of the, the goodies that you have for us to take this and put it into practice.
Dustin: But I, I feel like we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about like, how does this actually work? how do people, engage with you?
Regina: So my primary one-on-one coaching program focuses on concentration. And I use two different music protocols. One of them is a very disciplined, focused use of music, which requires either [00:35:00] 15 minutes or 30 minutes a day of a commitment to listen.
Regina: And that is to the acoustically modified scientifically based music. So I do an intense intake with you. I find out what your background is. Medical history is I need to know about seizures, anything, head injuries, things like that. because we are talking about the brain. Yep. I learn about your goals, your struggles, and we pinpoint what it is that you'd like to achieve through this.
Regina: sometimes people have goals that they want to achieve, but in the talking I realize that there are more fundamental problems that I need to help solve and fix before we can move on to those higher things. a common scenario that I have seen with my clients is a lot of them want to be more creative and productive at work, but there's this underlying very, very poor stress response.
Regina: So the smallest things will set them off. They get upset very easily, though the way I like to think about it is, Do you remember [00:36:00] that that show The Price is Right? Do you ever watch that? Oh yeah.
Dustin: Yeah. We still watch that, yes.
Regina: Okay. I didn't know if it was still on or not actually, but we watched the
Dustin: old reruns of Bob Barker from like the seventies, which were, you know, comical in many ways.
Dustin: But yeah, we still like to watch it, so.
Regina: Okay. So do you remember that alpine climber guy? Yeah. One who would go up. Okay. And then if he got too close to the top and the prices were wrong, he'd fall over the edge.
Dustin: Fall off. Yep.
Regina: Right. Okay. So I kind of look at that, that alpine slope as people's base stress level, their level of stress response.
Regina: So some people, nothing bothers them. They're like, you know, water rolling off a duck's back. They're really low down on the mountain. It takes a lot for them to get all the way to the top and. Falling over the edge with anger or stress, right? Something like that. Other people, they're really close to that summit and any little thing can just push them over the edge, explosive behaviors, things like that, whether it's work related, personal, what have you.
Regina: [00:37:00] So our initial goal is to make sure that we are lowering that stress response as much as possible, because when the stress response is appropriate. People function better. it's like the fertile soil for a garden. That is the, first thing that has to happen. There's another protocol that I use which, oh, and, with that, there's a, a bone conduction part.
Regina: So the headphones have this vibrator that's at the top of their head. The purpose of that is it stimulates the inner ear with the vibrations at the same time that the audio sound waves are stimulating the outer and the middle ears. So the entire auditory system is being immersed with those frequencies at the same
time.
Regina: So that simultaneous stimulation is a very important piece because a lot of people will say, why can't I just get the, you know, $20 bone conduction headphones off of Amazon?
Dustin: Yeah, yeah.
Regina: Literally dust. In The first time I was asked that question, I looked at the first 15 [00:38:00] pages of the bone conduction, and they all were.
Regina: They didn't have that piece at the top. It's proprietary. It's it's patented. And those bone conduction headphones are for entertainment purposes. It's not therapeutic. Yeah. You're not going to get the same results. Yeah. Second piece is this really amazing headphone that is, it's a headphone set that has three sets
of sensors.
Regina: Across the middle of your head and it reads your EEG brainwaves in real time. Oh, okay. It connects to an app on your phone, as currently, it's only on the iPhone that it can do this, but the music changes in response to your brainwaves. So that music protocol is done during deep work. So I like to do it when I'm doing emails, paying the bills, things like that, that just continuously in real time are drawing your brainwaves into a state of deeper concentration.
Regina: And then the third piece is a method that I'm a certified practitioner in called Possibility [00:39:00] Thinking. So shout out to Cassie, she who's also in the PBA community.
Dustin: Yes.
Regina: Cassie introduced this into the community. I became a practitioner for it, certified practitioner, and we walk people through some very powerful, basically questions and a framework that has three pieces, desire, deserve and decide. Yes. So we go through some deep work because those are the areas where many people get stuck, whether that is in their work as a business, you know, trying to figure out what it is that they wanna do, who they want to serve, what their offer should look like, or there are mental blocks that are holding them back where they can't seem to break through a certain level of success.
Regina: we do that work as well. So with those three components, I work with somebody usually over the course of a 12 week period. Okay. And we work through all that. And so it's a lot of outside in and inside out work at the same time.
Dustin: [00:40:00] And then
Regina: another way that I'm going to start working with people is introducing a group cohort format, because as I have learned in a very powerful way in the PPA community is that group learning is wonderful.
Regina: Yeah. And in some ways can actually be better.
Dustin: Well, that's fantastic, Regina. I really appreciate you kind of breaking down your business and all the ways that you're helping people now with this really unique background that you have. And, you know, I'm a huge fan of group coaching. so podcast profits accelerator, we, we, we say PPAA lot around here.
Dustin: So. if the listener didn't catch that, that's what we were talking about. So I'd love to transition now and kind of in the closing chapter here of our time together. And I'd love to just give the microphone to the guest and say like, teach us something practical useful that we can, you know, take away from this.
Dustin: And I know you have some really cool things to share around the role of music and concentration. Ways that we can, you know, go put that into practice. So Regina, I'd love to turn it back to you here and just let you teach us about the role of music with [00:41:00] concentration and some things that we can do, to leave the interview on a practical note.
Regina: I love to do that for your listeners. So there is a phenomenon that most people have probably experienced, but may not necessarily know the name for, and it's called entrainment. So you have experienced entrainment. If you've ever gone jogging and you're listening to music, and you naturally find your footfalls getting into rhythm with the beat of the music.
Regina: It's very difficult to move your body in a different rhythm than what you're hearing. you may have experienced it if you've gone to a large sporting event and they're playing music over the loudspeakers and everyone starts clapping and according to the beat. And it's funny, if you've ever tried to actually try to clap offbeat when everyone around you is clapping on beat.
Regina: It's not easy to do because our body's naturally No, my wife thinks
Dustin: I am really good at that. She's like, you have no rhythm. You have no, but even, even I, have listened to music and found myself running at the pace of the music, [00:42:00] or like you said, being in crowd environment and. Kind of, you pick up the cheer, you pick up the clapping pattern really quick because it's in rhythm with music.
Dustin: I love that.
Regina: Yes, absolutely. our bodies are in rhythm, right? Our heartbeat is in rhythm. There is, there's usually something off if our heart rhythm is not regular. So it's, it's a very natural phenomenon. And so that's the way that the
music training for the brain works. So the way I like to explain it is, if you think about.
Regina: Greenfield that has just grass growing. Nobody's really trot in it very much, and you find yourself going back and forth from point A to point B continually, back and forth, back and forth. So what happens? You wear a path. And it becomes a lot easier to walk across because the path has been worn down.
Regina: It's the same way in our brains. We have the neural pathways, and so when we're constantly stimulating with the same frequencies, depending upon what it is in the brain that we're trying to train, those neural pathways become stronger and stronger. [00:43:00] And the signals that are going through our
brain, you know, through our ears into our brain, our thoughts throughout our body, it all flows.
Regina: Much more smoothly because those neural pathways are strong. So that's how music works when we're specifically brain training, and at a therapeutic level with the way that we do with the music here. So nice in order to translate that to just everyday use because obviously not everyone is going to undergo the commitment to, to do this kind of training is that we can still pick music according to frequencies and tempos to kind of match what it is that we're trying to do.
Regina: So for example, the low frequencies are very calming and grounding. They have a definite effect on our fight flight, freeze system. So one of my favorite pieces of music are the Bach Cello Suites performed by Yo-Yo Ma, which is kind of an interesting story because, you know, there are all these [00:44:00] things that go around on the internet.
Regina: I like to verify if things are true or not before I pass 'em along. I don't wanna pass along gossip or, you know, wrong, wrong facts, which wouldn't even be facts. But it has been said that yo-yo Ma was also a Montessori educated child. I have not been able to confirm that. So, Mr. Ma, if you are listening or anyone who knows, you can, can confirm or deny that you are Montessori educated, I would love to know that.
Regina: So, the Bach cello suites are very good for calming stress release. Anything that you are trying to do at a very, Relaxing pace. Try to put the children asleep. Mm-hmm. Or whatever it is, having a quiet night at home. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the high frequencies that are both in terms of frequency and tempo, so kind of a classic.
Regina: Example of this would be William Tells Overture, if you're familiar with that, [00:45:00] right? Yeah. it's very, very uplifting and there's actually a neighbor that we used to have, and that's the music they would put on when it was cleanup time for the children's playroom before dinner. Our children were involved in that cleanup quite a few times, but that was their theme song for, for getting the playroom cleaned up for dinner.
Regina: So those are examples of how we can use music to kind of get our brains into the functioning of where we want to go. So there are some tools out there, that you can use. One of them is a website called song bpm.com. I have no affiliation with this website. I don't know anything about the ads that they put on or anything like that,
Dustin: but you
Regina: can go in song
Dustin: bpm, like beats per minute, right?
Dustin: So song bpm. Okay, gotcha.
Regina: Bpm, yeah, beats per minute and just put in the title of the song and it will give you the tempo, which is the beats per minute, and then you can kind of match it to what it is that you like to do. [00:46:00] So if somebody wanted to go through and kind of. Group favorite songs according to Tempo, they could use that free tool and put their own playlist together,
Dustin: Okay, let's just one or two quick examples. Uh, you know, we like, clean up time for the kids and you want 'em to get in like this cartoonish, frenetic energy to go clean up. But like if, say we're an entrepreneur or we're working, and we want to get in a creative state like. Which sort of band, like slow, medium, or fast paced, would that fall into as an example,
Regina: kind of medium to high and you're looking more for also the higher frequencies.
Regina: So violins, flutes, you know, something on the higher end like that.
Dustin: Okay. So it's not just tempo, the beats per minute, but it's the frequency, like, the tune, I'm not a music person, like you're, but like the frequency, like high pitch, I guess would be the, oh, wait. I could say that. Yes. Those also have an impact on how your brain reacts in which state it wants to get into.
Regina: Exactly.
Dustin: Perfect. I love it. All right, so we could do [00:47:00] that on our own, but I know that you've done some of the legwork for us, right.
Regina: Yes, absolutely. So what I did for myself was I created three private Spotify playlists. So if you just search for them on Spotify, if their tech is right, you will not come across these, but you can request access to them, which I'm happy to share with your listeners.
Regina: And the way that they can get those is by going to my website. Regina Sweeny com and Sweeny is with NEY at the end and at the top, the homepage, there's the notification bar, the button, get the playlists, and you can go ahead and request those through there. And I will send over to any of your listeners the link to share that with them.
Regina: So the three playlists that I've created are for relaxing, concentrating, and being motivated, and they're all about 30 minutes each, which I've found to be a good chunk of time for, you know, like a work session. So,
Dustin: perfect. I love that. So regina [00:48:00] sweeney.com. R-E-G-I-N-A. And then Sweeney is probably the part, that people might trip up on, but.
Dustin: S-W-E-E-N-E y.com. And then right there at the top, I'm looking at it right now on my monitor, says, get the playlist. Can't miss it. And so people can grab that tap into one of the three sort of, zones that they want to get into. And experience this firsthand. And, and I think it's really cool to think about doing this, like intentionally versus, and my experience with music is typically like whatever comes on, I, I sort of adopt that energy.
Dustin: But like you can choose that and, you know, improve your work, your concentration, and obviously all the, cool things that we've talked about today. All the science behind that is really fascinating. but I, I love that we have just a practical tool that people can just go experience it for themselves.
Dustin: And so. They could do that, and if they're like, you know what? there's something to this. I could really use some more. Regina in my life, I could really use some concentration coaching than obviously through that same, website@reginasweeney.com and get ahold of you and, and [00:49:00] learn more about your work.
Dustin: is that right?
Regina: Yep, that's right. And I'd love to share a story with you of, CEO that I know who I happened to mention about the playlist. And he said, you know. I try those out and I hadn't really shared them with anyone up until that point. And I said, sure. And he had really been using the concentration playlist and he shared with me the other day.
Regina: He sat down for a four hour work session and he got four blog posts and four something, and four something done within that period of time. So he was definitely a believer in the music and I was thrilled to hear his success. So if you know any of your listeners are out there and they request the playlist, I'd love to.
Regina: Get notes back and hear what their experiences were as well.
Dustin: I love it. Well, thank you for being a friend, for being a, a part of our community at the PPA, you know, our, our flagship program at Seven Figure Leap. I'm really excited for the work that you do. It's really unique. It's really necessary.
Dustin: it's benefited me a lot just, being around you and, and learning about the power of Montessori, the power of music, [00:50:00] and all these different ways that we can, I. Fight against a preconceived notion that like our ability to concentrate is outside of our control. And there's actually so much we can do to impact that.
Dustin: And really, really blessed to, have you as a resource here on the podcast as well. So thanks Regina for being here. I look forward to staying in touch and seeing all the cool work that you continue to do in this area.
Regina: Thank you so much, Dustin. It's been a pleasure and a joy.