Hello, and welcome to creating and sustaining mind fitness. My name is Paul Sarris. I am the creator, and facilitator of this course. Firstly, let me congratulate you on selecting this course. I believe that if you are here watching this video, we share some similar attributes. And perhaps one of them is that we are curious, curious about how to get the most out of the most vital asset that we have at our disposal.

And that is, of course, the human brain. Now a little bit about myself in this introduction video prior to me letting you know a little bit more about the course. So I studied behavioral science and didn't end up practicing in that field. But what I did go into was law and international business. So I was a litigation attorney for approximately 10 years and I experienced as a result Number of adverse mental health concerns myself ranging from burnout to vicarious trauma. You see, I was working within the criminal jurisdiction, I was exposed to some horrific and matches that were ongoing over these years.

And I've identified the matter that more or less broke the the camel's back, so to speak, the one who broke the camel's back, as they say. And I'll share that with you now. I was working in the meld metrics court, as Judy lawyer when I received a call from our office advising that we had a young client in the police cells. And so I saw that young client who was up on some salt charges, I believe, and I had made the observation that he was suffering from mental health concerns. And long story short, I did my job. I got him bail prior to his next court case, and I lined him up with a number of psychiatric and psychological services.

And there are some other conditions which are just part of the normal course. of getting BIOS such as you had to report into the police station every day. So long story short, I got in bio, he was released on the Friday afternoon, Monday morning rolls around. I went to call him up just to make sure that he was on route to his site appointment. And to my surprise, his cousin picked up the phone. And she said, Oh, Paul, it's you.

She said, Thank you very much. After you've got Let's call him Daniel, after you got Daniel bail. On Friday afternoon, he stepped in front of a train and took his own life. Okay. So these were the type of things that I was dealing with day in day out, but you know, is the compounding effect of that, that made me seek the counsel of a dear friend of mine who was a mentor, and who suggested that I go to a mindfulness and meditation class that week, and that's what I did. And that was the catalyst for me to be In this journey that led to me finding or founding rather The Open Mind Institute.

You see, after this class, my brain had this positive explosion, because I just had a new perspective on the situation and on life, and I thought to myself, Okay, wow. But you know, I think was the lawyer in me, my thinking process was if I'm going to invest time in this, I need some tangible evidence that this stuff works. So I indeed stumbled upon this evidence. And I'll be sharing you sharing with you in this course, the evidence that I've found, that confirms unequivocally that these psychological processes, some of which make up this course, do indeed work to create and sustain mental well being, or mind fitness, so to speak. So that's our Tommy was founded, more or less, I wanted to share this information, these processes that I had begin that I began to use to help my own mental Have I started sharing it with friends with colleagues with family, and I saw the transformation in their lives.

And eventually, yet MIND Institute was founded. And prior to me being a lawyer, I studied behavioral science. So I guess you could say I was always curious about human behavior. And, as I said, the most vital asset we have, which is, which is our brain. And now I've been practicing mindfulness meditation and the psychological processes in which I'll share with you during this course, for about 12 years now. And as I said, they have positively transformed my life.

And I'm hoping the same effect will be felt by by you, but it's entirely up to you. I can only show you the door. It's up to you to open the door and make the tools that I will impart upon you a habit, because that's our positive transformation comes about. So that's a bit about me. Let me tell you quickly about the course and what you can anticipate. So look, I've broken it down to three main sections.

First and foremost, we'll be talking about the brain, right. So the section is called understanding the brain. So we're going to be looking at this incredible information processing machine, we're going to be doing a fun little thought experiment that demonstrates the power of the brain. We'll also be looking at our subconscious programming. And also ways we can go about changing that changing that in addition to the effect that this digital age has upon our brain. So that's the first section that will comprise of two videos.

Each section comprises of two videos. The section the second section is creating mind fitness, right? So in creating mind fitness, we will be looking at some of these fundamental psychological processes that we can use to create mental well being but also used to dilute This tendency that a lot of people have to think and overthink matters right to over engineer matters to our mental health detriment. So particularly, I'm going to be addressing critical thinking, and emotional and social intelligence in that second section. And then finally, I guess the most powerful part of the crescendo of the course, so to speak, is sustaining mind fitness, sustaining mind fitness, and that will be broken down into two parts to videos. And I'm going to be sharing with you some of these vital tools.

And I'm going to give them away in the introduction, but these tools, these exercises, these processes that you're going to use to sustain the empowering effect that I'm going to share with you during this course. And then finally, in the last video, in the summary and call to action. I'll be giving you a five step process that you can use to eradicate completely eradicate any negative habits You have in your life right now keeping you down, preventing you from being the best possible version of yourself and implementing some new and empowering habits, which will be the tools that make up this course. creating and sustaining mind fitness. Thank you and I can't wait to share this journey with you.