Un-Conditioning the Mind: Arnold Beekes on Brain Fitness, Mental Wellness, and Becoming a Better Leader

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Telling My Story, the podcast where we explore real life stories, personal growth, career journeys, challenges, and the lessons that shape our lives. I'm Henry Chiwetelu, and today we're exploring the power of the human brain, mental fitness, emotional intelligence, and personal transformation. My guest is Arnold Bakers. Did I get the name

correct? Bakers, yeah.

All right. The creator of Brain Fitness and Brain Athletes. Arnold is an explorer, generalist, innovator, and coach who has spent decades working in technology, organizational leadership, psychology, and personal development. His mission is to help people develop better brains and create better innovation for better living. Arnold believes that while many people train their bodies, very few intentionally train their brains. Through his work, he helps people improve their focus, emotional stability, self-awareness, and performance under pressure. He also introduced the idea of brain athletes, people who see their thoughts, emotions, and relationships as trainable rather than fixed. Today, we'll discuss brain fitness, neuroplasticity, mental awareness, unconditioning leadership, and how we can unlock our potential by learning to train the mind. Arnold, welcome to Telling My Story, and it's a pleasure to have you here with us today.

Likewise, Henry. Excited to be here.

All right, Arnold. You have spent many years working in technology, organizational leadership, psychology, and personal development. Can you take us through your journey and explain how it's led you to create Brain Fitness and Brain Athletes?

Well, that sounds like a small question, but it covers a large part of my life. Somehow after finishing my university, nobody will guess what my degree was. Doesn't matter. I was in the military service, which was mandatory at the time. And then I started working first in a small company and then in a large corporation, which was then the second large IT company in the world. It no longer exists, so that's how things go. But in its heyday, there were 120,000 people. There I had many different jobs. I managed very, very large groups of people in the end. And then we were taken over by another company and I lost my job. And then I worked at another big company, which was terrible. And since the last 26 years, I'm doing two things, figuring out who I am and trying to help build a little bit better world for everybody. That's what I'm doing. And so the last 20 years I got out of the corporate world and into the world of,

well,

understanding myself and understanding people and understanding the world.

Wow, that's really very insightful. So what experiences influence your interest in the human mind?

Well, actually that started in the corporate world. Well, as they say, I made a career in this big IT company. But I worked there all of the

time.

in the services division. So services in the context of IT is, well, the most simple way is like if your computer server breaks down, you need someone to hop in a car and go to it and fix it. Or if you have a software problem, you want a telephone number to call and someone to help And we're talking here about very, very,