About this Event
What Gets in the Way of Using Your Mind the Way You Want To?
You may know what you want to accomplish, yet still find yourself distracted, mentally overloaded, stuck in overthinking, or struggling to initiate and follow through on important goals.
Sometimes, the challenge isn’t simply attention or motivation. Psychological, emotional, and behavioral patterns can take up mental space and influence how we focus, approach tasks, make decisions, and move toward our goals.
The workshop centers around three areas:
- Understand how you think: Strengthen metacognition—the ability to recognize how you approach tasks, challenges, and goals so you can become more intentional about adjusting your approach.
- Understand what occupies your attention: Explore the psychological and emotional “noise” that may compete for your attention and make it harder to access the cognitive abilities you already have.
- Clarify your goals and barriers: Identify what you want to move toward and better understand the internal and external barriers that may make it difficult to initiate or follow through.
With neuropsychological support, those insights can become a starting point for developing strategies that are personal to how you think, what gets in your way, and what you want to accomplish.
See How You Think, Then Explore What You Can Do Differently
One of the central ideas behind this workshop is metacognition: thinking about how you think. Most of us move through cognitive tasks automatically. We try to concentrate, start a project, make a decision, or accomplish a goal without necessarily recognizing everything happening beneath the surface.
You may know that you procrastinate without understanding what happens internally at the moment you try to begin. Or you may describe yourself as easily distracted without recognizing how much of your attention is occupied by worry, self-monitoring, competing priorities, or emotional responses.
A temporary altered state of consciousness may offer a different perspective on these familiar patterns. With neuropsychological guidance, participants can explore questions such as:
- What takes up my attention?
- Why do I approach certain tasks the way I do?
- What happens when I get stuck?
- What barriers stand between intention and action?
- Could I approach this differently?
That understanding can become the foundation for exploring individualized strategies for cognitive health.
Cognitive Health Is More Than Intelligence
Cognitive health involves the mental processes we rely on to navigate everyday life. But having cognitive abilities and being able to access and use them effectively are not always the same thing.
This workshop explores several interconnected areas:
Attention & Concentration
Better understand the internal noise, competing thoughts, emotions, and patterns that may make it harder to direct and sustain your attention.
Metacognition
Develop greater awareness of how you think—including how you approach tasks, solve problems, respond to obstacles, and decide what to do next.
Executive Functioning & Goal-Directed Behavior
Explore the cognitive and psychological factors involved in initiating tasks, organizing your efforts, setting priorities, and moving toward goals.
Cognitive Flexibility
Explore your ability to step outside familiar ways of thinking, consider alternative perspectives, and adjust your approach when something isn’t working.
Goal Clarity
Look more closely at what you are trying to accomplish, why it matters to you, and what internal or external barriers may have made it difficult to move forward.
The goal is not to promise a “better brain.” It is to develop a deeper understanding of your own cognitive style and use that awareness to identify strategies that are meaningful to you.
Why Alter Ordinary Consciousness?
Most of us experience our own thinking from inside the patterns we use every day. That can make those patterns difficult to recognize. A temporary altered state of consciousness may provide an opportunity to step outside familiar habits and observe them from a different vantage point.
You might begin to notice:
- What occupies your attention when you are trying to focus
- How emotions or self-monitoring influence your thinking
- What happens internally when you try to begin a difficult task
- Where you become stuck when working toward a goal
- Which assumptions or habitual responses shape how you approach challenges
- Whether another way of approaching a problem becomes possible
Paired with neuropsychological education, guided reflection, and integration, participants can use those observations to explore their own strategies for supporting cognitive health and goal-directed behavior.
Who Is This Cognitive Health Workshop For?
This workshop may be a good fit if you:
- Feel capable but find that overthinking, distraction, stress, or mental noise sometimes gets in the way
- Have difficulty initiating or following through on goals despite knowing what you want to accomplish
- Want to better understand your attention, executive functioning, and cognitive style
- Feel stuck in familiar ways of approaching tasks or challenges
- Want greater clarity around your goals and the barriers that may be interfering with them
- Are interested in developing stronger metacognitive awareness
- Want to explore the relationship between psychological patterns and cognitive functioning
You do not need to have a cognitive disorder or diagnosis to be interested in understanding how you think.
How the Workshop Is Structured
Before the Workshop
Participants complete the following before November 7:
Optional 30-minute introductory call with Dr. Amanda Sacks-Zimmerman (Fridays only; scheduled via Calendly)
Optional preparatory survey to clarify individual goals and intentions
The In-Person Workshop | November 7, 2026
Over the course of five hours, participants engage in a structured experience incorporating:
- Neuropsychological education around cognitive health
- Exploration of attention, metacognition, executive functioning, and cognitive flexibility
- Guided exploration of personal goals and potential barriers
- Reflection on cognitive, emotional, and behavioral patterns
- Development of individualized strategies informed by what emerges during the experience
After the Workshop
Participants have the option to attend an optional group integration session the following Friday at 12 PM. Integration provides additional space to reflect on the experience and consider how new insights can be applied to goals, tasks, relationships, and everyday life.
What Makes This Workshop Different?
This is not a productivity seminar, brain-training program, or collection of “brain hacks.” It is a clinically informed exploration of cognitive health and self-awareness that brings together:
- Neuropsychological education about cognitive functioning
- Metacognitive exploration of how you approach attention, tasks, and goals
- Guided reflection and integration to explore individualized strategies for everyday life
Optional neuropsychological testing is also available for participants interested in gaining additional insight into their individual cognitive functioning.
Goals of the Cognitive Health Workshop
This workshop is designed to create opportunities for participants to:
- Develop greater awareness of how they think and approach cognitive tasks
- Better understand what may compete for their attention
- Identify emotional, psychological, or behavioral patterns that may interfere with goal-directed behavior
- Explore barriers to initiating and accomplishing personally meaningful goals
- Strengthen metacognitive awareness and cognitive flexibility
- Clarify goals and explore strategies that reflect their individual cognitive style
Sometimes changing how we approach a challenge begins with seeing more clearly how we have been approaching it all along.
Pricing & Insurance
Total Workshop Fee: $500
- Insurance: Aetna and Cigna accepted
- Out-of-network superbills available upon request
Important Dates & Requirements
- In-Person Workshop: November 7, 2026
- Optional Group Integration: Friday following the workshop at 12 PM
See Your Thinking From a Different Perspective
Sometimes we become so accustomed to the way we think that it becomes difficult to recognize what may be getting in the way.
Altering Ordinary Consciousness to Enhance Cognitive Health offers an opportunity to step outside familiar patterns, deepen your understanding of how your mind works, clarify what matters to you, and explore new ways of approaching the barriers between you and your goals.
November 7, 2026 | In Person | New York City
Spots are limited.
Event venue & nearby stays
11 Broadway suite 930, 11 Broadway, New York, United States
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