Intentions Impact Our Reality

Dr. Toper Taylor is a successful entrepreneur, strategist, curiositist, Emmy award winning producer, Doctor of Policy, Planning and Development, expert of intention and subtle energetic sciences, and a recently elected city councilman. In his landmark dissertation, the Human Performance Intention Experiment, Dr. Taylor showed that sending positive intentions using a quantum field framework improved athletic performance for an NCAA Division I swim team. There may be other exciting applications of intention, such as business innovation and health improvement. Dr. Taylor is an expert in media, entertainment, and consumer products. He is a pioneer of family and kids educational entertainment, having produced over 15,000 episodes of television and won awards for his work with authors Marc Brown, Maurice Sendak, Tim Burton, and William Joyce. The three companies Taylor ran, Nelvana Ltd., Cookie Jar Entertainment, and Network of One (renamed Spotter), have all exceeded $1 billion in valuation at one point in their life cycle. He is an expert in strategy, operational execution, innovation, scaling businesses, and raising capital. Dr. Taylor has three degrees from the University of Southern California: BA in Communications, Master of Healthcare Administration, and Doctor of Policy, Planning, and Development. He serves on the board of councilors for the USC Roski School of Fine Arts & Design, the USC Cinematic Arts alumni association, and is the recipient of the USC President’s Volunteer Award. This November 5, Taylor became an elected member of the city council of Indian Wells, California.

More at – https://intentionsnetwork.com 

 

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou:
Welcome to the Nonprofit Exchange. This is Hugh Ballou. I’m the founder and president of SynerVision Leadership Foundation. It’s where we help leaders focus their vision impacting lives and build the synergy in their teams. So I’ve got a fascinating guest today who found me out of nowhere, but he’s got a great message and I’m just so pleased to have him on the show today. Topher Taylor, tell people a little bit about who you are, your background and your passion for the work that you do. Your topic today, your title is fascinating and we’ll get to that after we talk about you. Intentions impact our reality. But first, tell us about yourself.

Toper Taylor:
Sure, Hugh. Thanks for having me on, by the way. A real fan of your show. I’ve spent most of my career in the entertainment industry making family entertainment, a lot of kids’ cartoon shows like Arthur and Caillou and Franklin the Turtle and Little Bear, et cetera. And I’m really fascinated by the human experience, which is global. One of the things I’ll never forget is walking out of a meeting in Paris and seeing a mom holding the hands of her little seven-year-old boy. And in French, he said, I need to go home to watch Franklin the Turtle. And what that did is it kind of illuminated my thoughts on how we all share the common experience. you know, whether it’s growing up, going to school, meeting people for the first time, going to the dentist for the first time, trying out for a soccer team for the first time. The point is, we all share a lot of experiences around the world. And this kind of led me to getting a PhD in policy planning and development at the University of Southern California, where I began to study intention. And that’s what we’re here to talk about today.

Hugh Ballou:
Wow. Wow. You’ve said you made 15,000 episodes of these programs?

Toper Taylor:
It’s a lot of television. Won a few Emmys along the way. I’ve had a lot of fun in my life.

Hugh Ballou:
Wow. Wow. Wow. So you’ve morphed into something different. So specifically, what are you doing now?

Toper Taylor:
And I look at it not as different, but as an extension. So I’m a business guy, right? And everybody listening to this podcast is either running a business or a nonprofit organization and is in some kind of a leadership role, but in an unusual leadership role, which shouldn’t be unusual. It should be common. But the unusual nature is we’re leading compassionate businesses. We’re leading businesses who care and nonprofit organizations that care. So, you know, when I kind of stepped into this role of studying intention. I was skeptical. I’m not someone who has crystals around the house or has a feng shui expert come to the house and reorient my house so that the energy in the sun is hitting it in the appropriate manner. So as a scientist and someone who enjoys research and study, you know, I was really inspired by some early experiments in kind of the 1970s and 1980s, where they took, you know, professional energists, you know, let’s call them shaman for the sake of conversation, who have a kind of a professional relationship with energy. First, we’re all connected energetically and particularly. Those two core elements, energy and particles, comprise everything in the universe. And whether you believe in the Big Bang Theory or believe in the universe as a perpetual existing entity, you can’t get around the fact that all of us are connected energetically and particularly. We’re all one living system. And in fact, a subsystem of that giant thing called the universe is the Earth. And we’re in the middle of this huge universe where this tiny little globe on which there’s a population of humans. And therefore, we are humanity. We are one, in essence, group of living organisms that are interconnected. And so I was taken by surprise and delight when I saw a shaman who has an ability to use a higher level of energy because he or she has practiced as an energist. and take a basic concept which has been repeated over and over again in science, and that’s important in science, where they take some apple seeds in their hands and they intend for those apple seeds to grow faster and be more productive. Then they take a similar group of apple seeds without intention and they plant them in the ground. The seeds that received intention grew faster and produced more fruit. And so this actually kind of inspired me to think, well, that’s interesting. I wonder if that can work at kind of a macro level. So now we then apply the kind of new science of quantum physics. which talks about there being this quantum field of energy and particulate matter that is all interconnected around the world. And instead of holding the seeds in our hands, an energist, if you will, a shaman, let’s say the shaman sitting in Los Angeles is sending intention to a farmer holding the seeds in Melbourne, Australia, clearly on the other side of the earth. That intention is sent to the farmer holding the apple seeds in his hand on the other side of the earth. And once again, the seeds are planted, both those seeds that received intention and those seeds that did not. And of course, the seeds that received intention grew faster into trees and became more productive in fruit-bearing apple trees. How does that work? That is sending energy, if you will, or intention through a connected network called the quantum field by which you are impactful to something on the other side of the Earth. So if we actually take that kind of basic study and extrapolate that into thinking, wow, if an intention is a thought that comes from our soul and our head, and we’re sending that positive intention, and it’s impacting a thing, a seed, What does that mean for our daily lives? You know, we’re walking around this world as interconnected beings and we are broadcasting our energy and we’re broadcasting our thoughts. You know, I grew up in an area where you had an antenna on a roof, right? And you had CBS and NBC and ABC. And the antennas, the broadcast antennas, would just send out the signal. And this antenna on your roof would grab it and bring it into your living room and put it on your television. Well, now we’ve advanced those conversations because we have a dualistic communication system called the internet, broadband, Wi-Fi, et cetera. So now not only can we put our receiver up with our cell phones, our cell phones are the same as the antenna on our house, except it’s two-way. We’re actually sending information into the communication system known as the internet or broadband, but it’s more than that. We’re sending our messaging into this energetically connected universe. The average human being has 85,000 thoughts a day, Hugh, and about 85 percent of those are negative. So we’re walking around going, would we watch Netflix if every single television show on Netflix was negative and a downer? No. No, we wouldn’t. So why do we want to be that channel? Why do we as individual human beings want to be that kind of broadcaster of negative thoughts and energy? We don’t. We don’t. And as soon as we can start recognizing that positive thought and positive generous thought where we’re giving to others a positive thought and intention to heal, to be compassionate, to forgive, to love, then we can start really getting to the core elements of our interconnectedness which is that we’re not alone and we’re here to help each other and we’re here to evolve. That’s how humanity evolves, by helping each other and going through this evolutionary process.

Hugh Ballou:
You’re here also because you have a new book, but there’s been a number of experts who’ve written on this. Psychiatrist Murray Bowen about family systems and how we generate that James Allen as a man thinketh. Napoleon Hill. Some of these themes, parts of them are in their writings. John Heider.

Toper Taylor:
Absolutely.

Hugh Ballou:
John Heider, The Day of Leadership. There’s just lots of sub themes that go with that. I think it’s probably a good time to interject, The Human Performance Intention Experiment, A Quantum Field Framework, is the title of your book. Think in terms, as you talk about that, think in terms of, I’m in Lynchburg, Virginia, where you know we’ve got a lot of history. We have 30 charities working to feed people, because we have the highest poverty in the Commonwealth of Virginia. So as we’re sitting here in a chair, as you talk about the book, connect these themes to the work that we do, because there’s a resonance with what you’re talking about and what we do.

Toper Taylor:
Yeah, no, look, to me, it’s really simple in the sense that when you run experiments on the power of intention, and intention being a positive thought, in this case, sent to another person for a positive impact, The same experiments are done with dice. Roll a 7 or 11, roll a 7 or 11. And the impact is significantly less. And one has to ask themself, why? Well, some theorists would argue that that’s a selfish request. I want a 7. Why do you want 7? Well, I want to win. Well, that’s not the same as saying to your sick mother or your neighbor who needs help a positive thought saying, I hope you heal. And that’s at the root of what the nonprofit exchange is kind of all about. And in giving, and in kindness, and in sharing, we actually improve the system in which we live. Because, you know, again, if you assume we’re all interconnected in one system, you know, if you have a bruise on your arm, your internal organic system doesn’t say, chop it off. No, it heals the wound. That’s what our natural, organic systems do. If there’s an issue, if you have a flu, what does your body do? It doesn’t shut down and say, eh, he’s got a flu, get rid of him. No, your body heals the flu, right? And so that’s what we need to do as a society. If you look at society as potentially filled with positives and negatives, and filled with a variety of different thoughts, it’s OK to have a complex system. We all don’t need to think the same way. We all don’t need to belong to one religion. We don’t need to belong to one political party. But we can coexist. with compassion and with love. And that’s what I really love about this interview, this conversation, which is because everybody on this call is actually doing something to better our communities and humanity.

Hugh Ballou:
Yes. We’re united in that purpose. So what, talk about your book a minute, the human performance.

Toper Taylor:
Well, so, you know, when I started doing research in the area of intention, there was an enormous amount done in human healing. So, you know, where let’s say again, an energist, let’s call that person a shaman remotely from across the country would, would, uh, impact the health levels of people who had bad hearts, people who had AIDS, people who were very, very sick. And they literally showed time and time again, Stanford University, Yale, McGill College, they showed time and time again that remote intention can actually positively impact human health. In fact, recently in the last 10 years, the Cleveland Clinic, which is a hospital that most of us know is one of the top in the US, conducted a study where people who sat at home on the couch visualized a specific intention of going to the gym, lifting weights, and running on a treadmill for about 10 minutes a day for six months. And then they took a control group who actually went to the gym and worked out, et cetera. Now, the people who sat home on the couch actually increased their muscle mass, not in the same amount as the people who went to the gym and lifted weights, of course, but they actually increased their muscle mass. That shows how impactful the mind can be on matter, on our muscles. If we can train ourselves to think positively and be impactful, there’s no telling what we can do in the broader sense. My experiment is that Though healing has been the core root of intention, as a business guy, I’m interested in human performance. I’m interested in innovation and creativity. I’ve been in the arts most of my life. I’m interested to see if we can’t, what’s the right word, accelerate innovation or accelerate our ability to run businesses effectively. And so what we did in the experiment was very simple. We actually, again, took, let’s call it energist, shaman. We took a shaman. We took an electronic energy device that was created by a theoretical physicist by the name of Bill Tiller, who was formerly at Stanford University in California. And he had created this electronic intention device that, like we talked about, a broadcast television station broadcasts these intentions, specifically to, in this case, the men and women’s swim team at the University of Southern California. I chose the swim team because it’s a non-defender sport. There’s no one trying to block you from performing like you would in basketball or football. Swimming is, you swim as fast as you can in a lane and yes, there’s other swimmers around you, but there’s no one preventing you from performing. Golf would be an example of that. All kinds of track and field and Olympic sports would be examples of that as well. So wouldn’t you know it that we sent intention over the course of a season from the time they arrived in August to the time school started in September to the time the conference had their finals in March and then April with the NCAA finals, that the women’s tennis swim team finished in the top 10, the men in the top 20, and the coach won coach of the year. Now, that hadn’t been done in decades. And at that level, an athlete’s a very interesting person. An athlete I have an enormous amount of respect for because they live an intentional life, and we’re using intention in a slightly different way here, probably more than anybody else. In the case of a swimmer at USC, most of these people at the highest level actually appeared in the Olympics, representing their own countries. So they get up every morning at 5 a.m., they swim, They have breakfast, they go to class, they come back, they work out, they swim. And they do this all year long to do what? To swim faster by one second or two. And that’s all the difference in the whole world to winning a gold medal or to winning their meet or to beating their college opponent. And so you want to talk about intention and focus and concentration. So the intention, now we’re talking about the intention that we sent, was to enable them to swim at their peak, to stay underwater longer, to breathe comfortably in a more relaxed state, because if you’re panicked and anxious, you don’t breathe smoothly and more reliably, to sustain a long duration of equal energetic, sustained athleticism, right? So that you can swim over the course of a three or five minute meet with incredible intensity. And it worked. And so I would just ask all of the organizations that are listening here to really think about that and the power of the organization getting together as one and creating an intention for that organization to heal or to improve its performance. And then to spend 10 minutes a day actually sending that intention. And I’d be so curious to hear from you if you do that for six months. how your organization is impacted.

Hugh Ballou:
I want to note for people who are watching this video or listening to the podcast that a lot of things have gone by, a lot of soundbites. You can find all these in the transcript. It’ll be at thethenonprofitexchange.org. There’ll be this episode with the title of The Human Performance. No, the title is not the title of your book. The title of this episode is Intentions Impact Our Reality. So, a couple of themes. Let’s piggyback on a minute. We got people in the trenches. We’re really running a marathon. And you said, you know, you’re working back to business. Well, I’m reminding people we’re running a tax-exempt for-purpose business, not a for-profit business. So you’re in the trenches and it’s a professional endeavor and probably, Topher, some of the most difficult places to lead is in a community charity or a small church or synagogue. Those are very difficult because you got all the rules and volunteers and not enough money to do it. So the power of our intention of our positive, like Napoleon Hill wrote about, and as I work with leaders in building strategy and coaching, People say, oh, I bet God laughs when I tell God what I’m going to do in reference to writing goals. And I say, no, no, no. Writing a goal is the power of your intention and the commitment to do it because you’ve written it down and shared it. So how do you weigh in on that paradigm of actually creating the accountability and sharing your intention with other people?

Toper Taylor:
Yeah, no, look, so I think it’s really important to ask the question either as an organization or as an individual human being, who am I and what is my purpose? And that works for organizations as well. So getting clarity on your intention as an organization and as you as a leader, is fundamental and a starting point. And then to remind yourself, of that singular purpose and intention every day is really critical in the manifestation of that intention. I think you’re spot on in that. What did Yogi Berra say? If you don’t know where you’re going, you may end up somewhere else. And I think that’s a great line to remember. You gotta know where you’re going.

Hugh Ballou:
Yeah, you don’t know where you ended up unless you have an attention. I think he was also said, if you find a fork in the road, take it. But there’s, you know, the clarity is where you’re heading. So let’s go to your, you have a really good looking website and for people that are listening, and can’t see it, it’s intentionsnetwork.com and I’m going to show it here and if you find the video of this, podcast listeners, you can actually see it or you can go yourself to intentionsnetwork.com It’s plural intentions. So there it is. It’s front and center, your book. So what else will people find here? Because I know people are fascinated and they want to check you out. So you can get the book here. So what else do people find on your website?

Toper Taylor:
Well, I think one of the key elements of the power of intention is our entanglement. And entanglement is a unique phenomena that occurs in quantum physics, where there is a particle that is influenced right here. And then as you influence this particle, another particle on the other side of the earth without regard to time and distance is also influenced in the exact same way. I mean instantaneously, faster than the speed of light. Entanglement was something that even Albert Einstein kind of shrugged his shoulders and called it spooky action at a distance in the 1930s. But But the Nobel Prize went to three physicists two years ago in entanglement. They not only show that it exists, but they show that they can actually create entanglement between particles remotely, where they didn’t have to start from one and separate, almost like twins inside a mother’s womb. They could actually exist separately in the universe, and entanglement could actually be created. So I think entanglement is a powerful thing to hold on to in realizing that we are broadcasting energy. And like are cell phones, right? If we use the metaphor of a cell phone, where when we’re taking down information, we may get news, we may get Instagram feeds, et cetera. We’re sending up information. We may post our own pictures on social media or our own podcasts. So we’re contributing to this thing called the internet and we’re receiving, we’re growing from the education and the learnings that we get from the internet. The same thing is true in the holistic universe where we’re all connected energetically and particularly. Our thoughts, just like our cell phones, are actually receiving information and contributing information to the universe and to the energetic field and that’s something that again, we need to be aware of. Because how many times have we walked into a room and you felt this negative, dark, you may have gotten a good night’s sleep, had a cup of coffee, walked down the hall and you walk into this business room, this conference room, and it’s like, whoa, what happened in here? Well, that’s the negative energy that is held over from some argument or dispute, or something that happened in that room some time ago. And so we’ve all felt that. We’ve all felt that. And that’s real. That’s not fake. That’s real energy, impactful energy.

Hugh Ballou:
That is real. This is so relevant to our work. And just as this 25 minutes has just flown by as a closing thought, just this last piece, this piece on your website where I’m stuck here, true potential within practice intention. What do you want to leave people with as far as intention and practicing this?

Toper Taylor:
You know, I would just ask that everybody set an intention for themselves and for their loved ones or for the people that they’re serving in their community, all three, all three, you know, bodies of people, if you will. and that one sends that intention, that healing intention, that positive intention, that inspirational intention from all elements of their body, their heart, their mind, their soul, and actually visualize an energy beam leaving their bodies and sending it to the people who need to receive it or who you’re targeting. And then watch what happens to your life. It’s a powerful thing.

Hugh Ballou:
Talk to Taylor. Thanks for inspiring us today on the nonprofit exchange.

Toper Taylor:
You, you’re the best.