How We Work

An Empowering Bridge – An Integrative Approach

The Good Wolf Project teaches cutting-edge information on our brains from cognitive and behavioral neuroscience, and guides participants in applying that knowledge to improve their thinking, functioning, and well-being. Teaching and workshop sessions utilize a lively, interactive, and engaging approach compatible with the cultural and educational backgrounds of the participants.

Our approach is designed to capture the interest and active participation of learners, igniting a journey of discovery and introspection. It unlocks the door to a reexamination of assumptions and habits and lays a solid cognitive and conceptual foundation for transformative personal growth.

After an examination of relevant insights from brain science, participants are guided through a process that includes mindfulness-based social-emotional learning and cultivation of supportive social connections. Goals include self-governance, self-efficacy, improved relationships, and new skills in understanding oneself and in personal decision-making.

The Good Wolf Project approach incorporates complementary, evidence-based methodologies:

Educational Neuroscience
Transtheoretical Model of Change
Transformative Learning
Mindfulness-Based Social-Emotional Learning
Social Constructivism
Asset-Based Community Development

The Good Wolf Project curriculum builds a bridge from cognitive, emotional, and operational challenges to behaviors that improve self-awareness, self-regulation, social and goal-directed functioning, and personal well-being. Applied knowledge from brain science helps move participants from a defensive to a growth mindset. Mindfulness-based social-emotional learning supports the formation of a healthier approach, ushering in cognitive growth, emotional and behavioral well-being, and enhanced individual and collective prosocial agency.

The Good Wolf Project's Three-Step Process

The Good Wolf Project shares practical insights from brain science to engage learners, open minds, awaken hope, facilitate self-examination, and create a rationale for and a bridge to lifelong learning. Based on these insights, we teach a three-step process to personal empowerment, better decision-making, and improved well-being.

Step 1: Slow Down

Insights: Forces from deep within our non-conscious brain can create experiences and urge us to act in ways that are not in our best interests or are destructive to others. We are capable of value-based self-governance.

Actions: Control your impulses. Don't react or act on emotions or impulses. Understand and become mindful of feelings, thoughts, assumptions, and habits formed from past experiences. Reflect on values, goals, priorities, and possible consequences. Become self-governing. Prepare to act with intention, in alignment with your best values and long-term goals.

Step 2: Listen & Learn

Insights: What we hear or otherwise experience is profoundly influenced by past experiences, expectations, and our beliefs about ourselves, others, and our world. We are capable of empowering ourselves by acquiring new knowledge and learning new skills throughout our lives.

Actions: Listen to each other - actively and respectfully. Open yourself to other perspectives and possibilities. Embrace curiosity. Question initial impressions and long-held assumptions. Seek out information and acquire new knowledge. Let go of old habits that do not serve you well. Learn new skills and develop new habits that help you live out your values and achieve your goals.

Step 3: Feed the Good Wolf

Insights: We all have basic needs for health and well-being. We are all interdependent social beings who need each other. Each person has a right to be treated with respect, fairness, love, and compassion, to have healthy relationships, and to live their lives with hope and meaning.

Actions: Empowered, competent, and confident in skills acquired during steps 1 and 2, align your actions with your best personal values and long- term goals. Respect and care for yourself - and treat others with respect, fairness, and compassion. Collaborate with others to achieve shared prosocial goals and advance the public good. Act intentionally to create healthy relationships and thriving families and communities.

The Good Wolf Project's Four Goals

We develop and use our highest cognitive capabilities, coupled with respect, justice, love, and compassion, to achieve personal well-being, healthy families and communities, and a promising future for our children and our children's children.

Goals 1 and 2 are preparatory, including skill development. Moving from a life of largely unconsciously-driven behaviors to reality-informed self-governance and self-efficacy.

GOAL 1: Self-Governance

Using our capacities of metacognition, we control our impulses and become self-aware, self-reflective, and in control of our actions. We account for unconscious biases and base decisions and actions on long-term results and prosocial values, aware of their impacts on ourselves and others.

GOAL 2: Competence

We listen, question, learn, and develop an accurate and functional understanding of ourselves and our world. We acquire the knowledge, understanding, skills, and tools necessary to function effectively. We develop the confidence to function effectively in a socially and technologically complex world, consistent with our values and goals,

Goals 3 and 4 are achieved by applying self-governance and competence to live one's life in alignment with prosocial values. We call this "playing on the A-Team."

GOAL 3: Individual A-Team Action

Using self-governance, we focus on our values and goals, developing the requisite competence in knowledge and skills to achieve self-efficacy. Analyzing the impacts of actions on others and on long-term goals, we act based on prosocial values. We become effective value-driven agents.

GOAL 4: Collective A-Team Action

Collective A-Team Action. Working together using self-governance and competence, we face and meet challenges in our relationships, groups, organizations, communities, and society. We work cooperatively based on shared prosocial values and long-term goals across groups, cultures, and nations.