YOUR BRAIN & YOU summary

HUMAN NATURE

Investigating the brain helps understand ourselves and each other, answering questions such as:

Why we behave the way we do
Why we make the choices we make
Why we like/dislike certain people and things?
What makes us react and why?

Understanding our brain allows us to know how to manage our reactions, and how to care for ourselves in order to be more effective in life, work, and relationships.

THE LIMBIC SYSTEM

Core part of the brain consisting of many structures.
In an evolutionary sense, it helps us with survival.
- Lets us know when it thinks something is good for us, by rewarding with dopamine, a feel-good brain chemical.
- Disincentivizes us from bad things with the chemicals adrenaline and cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone. These give us the power and energy to run from things.

LIMBIC EXPERIENCES

Experiencing what limbic threats and rewards feel like allows us to be prepared when they show up next time, you know it's your limbic system trying to communicate with you. Here are a few questions to consider to noticing how these limbic chemicals are showing up in your life:

What are you being drawn towards?
What do you like? What do you not like?
What causes you to be frustrated?

Here are a few questions to start understanding the reactions of others from a limbic perspective:

When are they upset?
When are their needs not being met?
What are they drawn to?

As you understand these things, you'll start understanding human behavior and human nature.

BE SAFE & CERTAIN

The limbic system is observing the world for you 24 hours a day, helping you stay safe and certain. And that is what our model is called, Be Safe and Certain. The model has six elements:

Belonging
Status
Autonomy
Fairness
Expectations
Certainty

And it's these things that the limbic system is monitoring. Do we have enough of this, do we have enough belonging? Do we need a little more belonging? Or there's a "hey, there's an opportunity to belong, move towards that." It works in that way, threats and rewards around each of those elements.

BELONGING

Belonging is a super core need for all of us. We need to be part of something, or so our limbic system tells us. If we belong to the tribe we're safe. When we feel like we might be thrown off a team or not accepted by a team or a group, especially one we want to belong to, we get this threat reaction; adrenaline, cortisol tell us this is not good, it's not good for survival and we feel awful. And you get the reward when you feel "ah, I belong to this team, I'm in the right place, I'm home."

STATUS

Status is about position and role. So once you're in the system, what's your position relative to the others? Are you at the top? Are you at the middle? Where's your role? It isn't always about having to be top status and going for more, although many people do feel the rewards of that. Others just want to know what's my role, what's my position? For example, someone who thinks, "I'm the one who brings the goodies for breaks, the coffee and the doughnuts. I feel good in that role but I get threatened if somebody else decides to be the bringer of the goodies."

AUTONOMY

You might think of autonomy as independence, being able to make your own choices, being able to do things your way. Micromanaging creates threats to autonomy. We don't like people telling us what to do all the time, it doesn't feel good. Different people have different levels of needs. Some of you might not feel so strongly about autonomy but you might feel more strongly about belonging. It's personal. But they're all in there at some level.

FAIRNESS

The limbic system seems to be very concerned about fairness. When you imagine, or think back to a time when somebody was unfair to somebody else, the reaction that you have is quite deep. We react so strongly to a sense of unfairness and injustice in the world. We're also wired for revenge and to get back at the perpetrator, at the people creating unfairness. When we do that, I'm not saying it's a good thing, we get a feeling of "yes, that's right, we've prevailed. We made right." When in fact it might have all been based on a perception. When we have a sense of fairness, we're making a fair deal for example, it can feel good.

EXPECTATIONS

When we have high expectations, for an event coming up, a project, a plan, a goal we've set or a holiday that we've created, it can really make ourselves feel good. That's the dopamine side of expectations. When we don't get our expectations met, we get disappointment. It actually registers in the brain as pain and we avoid pain. That means some of us will keep our goals low so we don't set too high expectations and experience disappointment. If you're working/living in an environment where you don't know what's coming next, there are no expectations, you need to know that we'll fill them in. The brain will just fill in the expectation, we'll make it up and not even know it; and that too can create disappointment. It's really helpful to create expectations for yourself, for others, between the team so that you don't create disappointment unnecessarily.

CERTAINTY

Certainty is about knowing what's happening and what's going to happen. Imagine that you've got your organization, you know what's supposed to be happening and then a change comes in. Somebody changes something last minute or something happens and your plans aren't going to go as expected. That can create such a big reaction. Adrenaline, cortisol, "What's going to happen? I don't know, it's all a mess, it's chaos." That's what our need for certainty does to us. We get a little bit of certainty we have things in order, great!

MANAGING LIMBIC REACTIONS

UNDERSTAND & MANAGE LIMBIC REACTIONS

There are a number of ways to use the Be SAFE and Certain model. All of them are about helping you understand yourself and others, why you and they react and to help manage those reactions. Consider for yourself: what do you react to? What are you sensitive to? Belonging? Autonomy? Certainty? If you know what you're sensitive to, when you go into an environment where you feel that might be threatened, say a room where you don't know anybody, and belonging is very important to you, your limbic system will react. Just knowing that will help you calm down a little bit.

You can also use the whole model together, looking at all the different elements. If you have a threat in one element, you might see, how can you have more of the others? Because we all need a bit of dopamine. It all adds up. A certainty threat might be counteracted by a stronger sense of belonging. Questions to pay attention to:

What are you sensitive to?
What do you need in order to feel stable?
What do you react to?
What do others react to?
What are their sensitivities and how can you manage those two together?

MANAGING OURSELVES

We want to be able to manage ourselves in order to be in control of ourselves and emotions. How do we self-manage when the limbic system is so powerful?

Get curious about those emotions. They're an expression of some kind of need underneath that emotion. The limbic system is communicating to you, it needs and wants something.
Pay attention and name those emotions, even in your own mind. "I'm feeling angry" can actually interrupt the cycle of the angry limbic system when it's creating those reactions over and over again. Naming it can help tame it, can help stop that consistent dwelling that creates emotions.

WE CAN ONLY MANAGE OURSELVES

Another thing about emotions: Your emotions are your emotions. You are the only one who can manage your emotions. Other people have emotions, and only they can manage their emotions. One way that we spend a lot of energy is in trying to control other people. Let go of trying to control other people. You might assist people in helping manage their own emotions, but it's not your job to control other people. Save that energy for yourself, and for managing your own emotions.

ASSUMPTIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS

The brain is quite good at imagining, at interpreting, at making assumptions, at filling in the gaps. It's actually quite a sophisticated function of the brain and quite useful for us. Except those times when it's not and we misinterpret something and the limbic system is operating often on interpretation, assumption, perception. You walk into a room, you notice the way somebody looks at you. Your brain has immediately filled in the gap and interpreted, perhaps, that this person doesn't like you, and you feel like you don't belong because the limbic system has reacted so quickly. So much more quickly than your conscious mind can react. You're in a reaction now and it was all based on perception.

Look at times when you are reacting to situations. Dig into it a little bit. How much was that based on an assumption, an interpretation, something you've made up, ways you've filled in the gaps? Celebrate your brain for being great at that, fantastic at that, and, know that it's not serving you, and probably not serving those around you either because as you react, it's contagious and creates reactions in others.

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