“When a person is calm, brain activity sounds like Bach — harmonious, deep, and spreading in space. But when the mind is out of balance, it’s no longer music, it’s noise,” says KTU Professor Arminas Ragauskas, who has spent many years studying how the human brain thinks, feels, and acts.

According to him, modern people are increasingly disturbed not by lack, but by excess — of information, expectations, and the constant demand to “be better.” Even when everything seems fine, fatigue, anxiety, and emptiness can build inside. Only the ability to pause, stay in silence, and turn inward can restore balance.

Professor Ragauskas sees leadership not as a display of power or position, but as the search for direction. “A leader is someone who has followers. But if they follow a person who doesn’t know why they are running, leadership has no meaning,” he says, recalling the scene in Forrest Gump, where Tom Hanks runs across America without a clear goal. A true leader does not always go first — but they know why they go and can inspire others to go with them.

In the podcast Beyond Economics and Back, LFMI president Elena Leontjeva talks with Prof. A. Ragauskas about the subtleties of the brain and why modern people experience burnout.