Your Brain & Others summary

THE PREFRONTAL CORTEX

The prefrontal cortex is an essential part of the brain that helps you focus and work well. It also manages your emotions and helps you stay calm, cool and collected. There are a number of tasks the PFC has to do, and it can only do one thing at a time in that whole list:

Focus your attention
Set goals
Problem solve, help with reason and logic
Hold complexity and uncertainty
See the bigger picture of problems and withstand the paradox of different things coexisting
Self discipline, delay gratification
Manage emotions, maintain calm

The PFC is a bit lazy, it's a lot slower than the limbic system. And it's not very potent, so it's like a battery. At the beginning of the day, if you're well rested and you've eaten well you have a full battery, and as you go through your day it wears out a little bit. What lowers the energy level in your PFC battery?

Focusing
Managing your emotions
Worrying about something
Not eating or resting well

At the end of a day, those times when you're tired and you’ve had a long day, we can be a little more emotional and reactive because the PFC is out of energy and the limbic system takes over. So we need to be sure to take care of this PFC. Rest well, eat well, take care of it. Know that throughout a day, you're using up this energy.

THE ABC MODEL

When you do experience a limbic threat, how can you engage your PFC instead of having a fear-based reaction? There's a model that we use for this: The ABC of mindfulness:

The ABC model is a mindfulness model to help you separate yourself from your limbic reaction.

Be aware of your limbic reaction. Noticing your reaction helps you interrupt the cycle of the limbic system. When you are aware, you create a break and take a mental step back.
Breathe to help release the adrenaline and cortisol that create stress, and help you get to a place where you can
Choose your reaction. Having released the chemicals by breathing, you will be able to see the whole picture in a calm, cool, collected way, and make a responsible choice you'll be happy about later.

When you practice ABC or any kind of mindfulness, it physically grows your prefrontal cortex. So mindfulness gives you more capacity to work longer, to manage your limbic system and to see a bigger picture. It makes you more resilient.

THE SOCIAL BRAIN

The brain is designed to be tracking relationships and other people very much at an unconscious level. In the Be SAFE and Certain model, most of those things are about "me in relationship to others," like belonging. If I feel, or the limbic system is concerned, that I don't belong, I'll have a reaction. With those reactions I impact others. It's like our brains are having a secret conversation that we don't even know about, and we're reacting to each other. We need to know that this is going on because it's creating conflict. It happens unconsciously.

If we learn to use our PFC together we can create great collaborative environments, we can manage our limbic systems, we can support each other in that. While we can only control ourselves, we can create agreements with each other where we learn to manage our reactions and to support each other to manage reactions.

CREATE POSITIVITY

HAVE A CONSCIOUS IMPACT

You've spent some time looking at and understanding yourself, how your brain works. Now we'll focus much more on what happens between you and other people, and what happens in teams and organizations.

Why do we react?
Why do we get in arguments with each other?
Why do we have difficult conversations?
Why is it so hard to do what we need to do sometimes?
Why is it so hard to give feedback?

It all comes back to the brain and how it's wired. The brain is a social brain. It's always managing us in relationship to other people.

It's very cautious and wants to keep us safe.
It's often very fear based.

POSITIVITY & NEGATIVITY

From an evolutionary perspective, our brains are wired and tilted towards negativity. Something happens, we're tired. We grouch about it, somebody else grouches back, we just bounce back and forth and create more and more negativity. Morale goes down. It creates an environment of fear, of stress, of blame.

Some people are naturally more positive, but most of us have to work at it a bit because of the negative bias of the brain. So put a little more emphasis on positivity, make sure we appreciate each other, keep the energy high. Have a supporting, motivating comment now and then, especially when you're tired.

From research, positivity has been shown to be correlated with productivity. People are more productive when they're positive together. It's a good reason for us to create positive environments with good morale, motivation and engagement.

WAYS TO SUPPORT POSITIVITY

There are things we can do when we work together, to support each other, so we can have a positive, productive environment where we like to work.

Make sure that you take a break or breaks during the day.
- - Take at least 10 minutes out - no technology.
  - If you're in long meetings, take breaks. It really helps to stay calm, cool and collected, using your best thinking and collaboration ability.
Bring snacks.
Eat well. Eat good foods.
Sleep well.

Ways to support each other can be in your team agreements: You could practice mindfulness together, go for walks together. You can do these simple things that get you out of the building, have you breath some fresh air, creating a break from the intensity of whatever you're working on together. Then come back and start over. Sometimes you'll be even more efficient, creative and productive.

We have this factor of 5 to 1 where we're wired to look at what's wrong.

We need to practice positivity. If you practice it consciously, it will become a habit. Notice your general attitude. Do you look for positive things, make positive comments? Or do you tend to make more negative comments? You can increase your own positivity and have a positive impact on others. That too is contagious.

Look for things to acknowledge or appreciate in others.
Look for things that went well in a project. Often we do a wrap up at the end of the project: "This went wrong, that went wrong," but so many things have gone right. Name it. Appreciate each other for the great work you're doing together. It changes your brain when you focus on appreciation and positivity towards each other.

Report abuse