Everyday EF Village

The skill I love most is the one that's always been hardest for me. And I think that's exactly why it matters. Of all nine executive functioning skills, cognitive flexibility is the one that gets more rigid the older we get, if we don't actively nurture it. It's also the skill that sits at the root of almost everything: how we handle conflict, how we see other people's perspect...

Summary In this episode, Jamila Godfrey and Certified Mental Performance Consultant and Member of the Canadian Sport Psychology Association Erin Brennan explore the importance of creating emotionally safe coaching environments that foster human connection and accountability. They discuss the skills learned through sports, the value of early exposure to different sports, and the significance of nav...

In this conversation, I reflect and explore the intersection of faith, emotional regulation, and community. Faith has been a foundational aspect of my life, akin to how others may rely on nature or philosophy or anything else that anchors you in life, and I ponder on how concepts of emotional regulation and executive functioning are deeply rooted in scripture, highlighting that practices like pati...

Long before we had language for it, the signs were there. My cousin Monica babysat me when I was just four or five years old, and even then, she noticed something different about how my brain worked. This was decades before we understood that girls could have ADHD, before executive functioning challenges were recognized as something treatable and trainable, before we knew these weren't character f...

What happens when someone who can run 250 marathons in a year finds themselves unable to manage daily stress? In this deeply honest conversation, I sit down with Cochrane resident and local inspiration Martin Parnell - author, keynote speaker, world record holder, and the man behind The Secret Marathon: Empowering Women and Girls in Afghanistan Through Sport . Martin and I met at a speed networkin...

Summary In this episode, Jamila Godfrey shares her personal journey with executive functioning skills, emphasizing their importance for everyone, not just those with ADHD. She discusses nine key skills: self-monitoring, emotional regulation, impulse control, working memory, cognitive flexibility, task initiation, organization, planning and prioritization, and goal-directed persistence. Each skill...

Welcome to the very first episode of Everyday EF Village. This is where it all begins, with my story. And fair warning: it involves a pandemic, grief, Google Classroom chaos, and a life-changing realization that came about 40 years too late. I'm Jamila Godfrey, founder of Village of Play, and for most of my life, I thought something was fundamentally wrong with me. I couldn't hold onto inf...