I would like to welcome you to a particularly interesting aspect and component of this course. It has to do with helping you to develop a sustainability-oriented mindset, and you might be interested to know that the way in which we are planning to do so is by inviting you to experiment and experience a number of meditation sessions that will follow after this introduction. You might wonder, you know, why meditation? What does this have to do with sustainability? Well, if you think about it a little bit more in depth, first of all, sustainability is a matter of caring for the common good, it is a matter of developing a way to think about what is good for me? Not only for me and for my company but also for society and for the environment. That expansion of the concept of what is good actually requires an expansion of the concept of, what is me, right? I need to re-identify myself in a broader and broader way, with the all the other human beings and animals and natural elements that are around the organization. And for that, meditation can actually – has been developed, actually – over the centuries across all cultures precisely for that reason. The other aspect of this, is to think about long-term. Longer term view is also another component, right, I need to start thinking about the long-term consequences of my decisions. So there is a lot of research that shows that for example, the meditation practice reduces the levels of stress, okay? Whether you are a worker or a student, stress has this particular effect, it reduces the time horizon, makes you think about today, makes you think about your own personal interests and makes you think about essentially, in a very narrow way, right? Doesn't allow you to actually explore, expand. Not only in thinking about the value to create for others, but also really thinking about new ways of doing things, the innovation, that is also important. Those are some of the main reasons why we actually see evidence that meditation practice actually does have an impact on the thinking and feeling of sustainability. More specifically, let me share with you really briefly the results of a number of research experiments that we have conducted over the last six or seven years in collaboration with neuroscientists, psychologists, management and sustainability experts. The experiments were aimed to identify what are the most effective ways to develop, to nurture this sustainability mindset. and we have particularly focused on two approaches. This all goes beyond, of course, the knowledge, sharing, the learning that everyone can do by reading books, by attending classes and so on. We are really trying to understand what is effective in influencing the way that we think. Influencing the way that our brain, in a way, works. Now, on the one hand we tried a number of exercises that have been developed by neuroscientists specifically with the purpose of lengthening the time horizon. On the other way, we have also looked that the impact of meditative techniques. We've done this with a fairly large number of our students but also with, on other projects, with managers in a large multinational company as well as with entrepreneurs. And there are a number of results that have been done which I'm not going to go into details. The one experiment that I find particularly enlightening is related to again using both these two approaches, neurocognitive training and meditation, in two different groups, plus there was a third group which was supposed to be a control, where they haven't gone through any training at all but they all measured their own psychological traits, they all went through a simulation of sustainability-related business decisions, and they all went through an fMRI scan, magnetic resonance, right? So essentially a brain imaging technique that would allow us to understand whether anything had actually changed in their brain in particular in the aspects, in the parts of the brain that are most important in order to again, lengthening the time horizon and expanding the notion of oneself, particularly resisting the temptation to access immediate rewards, to basically go for the immediate profit at the expense of the long term sustainability of the company as well as the whole industry. And the results were quite surprising. We were expecting to see efficacy more or less of both interventions, but we didn't see that. We saw, of the two interventions, only the medical field one, with really important significant changes in the decisions that people were making, much much more sustainable in the case of the meditation training, and really no changes or if anything actually slightly negative, less sustainable, in the group that was trained with neurocognitive exercises. But the changes in the decision-making pattern, the sustainability of the decision making, was not the only result. We actually saw significant changes in the psychological traits of these students and of these managers.
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We saw that, for example, the willingness to cooperate was a lot, lot stronger in the group that went through meditation. The self-transcendence is a psychological term that essentially means the willingness to make the best for the others, so going beyond oneself, so broadening the notion of self, which was, again, a key dimension of sustainability mindset, also improved significantly.
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Also the ethical dimensions, the importance of moral behavior increased again in the group that went through meditation training without any changes in the other two groups. And finally, and most strikingly, we saw that in one particular part of the brain, which is the inferior frontal gyrus, for those of you who know neuroscience, but essentially it’s the part of the brain that is responsible for putting the attention inside and controlling the impulses to again attain immediate rewards, right? So basically it's the brakes to our urge to get immediate happiness. And therefore it is what allows us to really think more long term and think more for for others. That particular part not only was much more active after the meditation training, but actually the density of the gray matter physically changed, which was something that we really did not expect, but we were obviously very pleased to see, because that means that really this type of exercise that, you know, we are inviting you to experience, really might have significant influence on the way that you perceive yourself, perceive others, and perceive the relationship between yourself and others. Of course, with the implications, for example, of allowing, endowing you with more sensitivity towards the sustainability and with more capacity to make sustainable decisions. So I would like to invite you to go on and have fun and enjoy this process which is actually particularly enjoyable, these sessions, and we'll look forward to hearing any results, any feedback from you on our chat group. Enjoy!
