2011 – Page 3 – The Brain Alchemist

Resilience is empowering, but so is revenge

“Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is power in the ability to take action and make a choice. Our brains like the sense of autonomy and control, after all, we want to feel comfortable in our environment. However, this human desire for autonomy and control can be expressed in a variety of ways, some of which may lead to more tension and longer conflicts.

In two recent discussion threads at The Conflict Coaching Guild on LinkedIn, we pondered the topics of resilience and revenge. Being resilient means being able to bounce back from life’s challenges, learn from different experiences, maintain a positive outlook despite setbacks and disappointments. Resilience requires a proactive, positive attitude and energy. It is hard to be resilient if your health is poor or you are depressed. Resilience is empowering. But so is revenge.

It can feel good to fight back when we are attacked even when we know that the revenge may cause more escalation. It turns out that our reactions to the punishment of bad social behavior range from reduced sympathy towards perpetrators to pleasure. The Prisoner’s Dilemma experiments show that even though the subjects are able to empathize and feel the pain of others, the activity in the pain-related areas of the brain slightly decreases when the participants feel the other side deserved a punishment. Moreover, when men (but not women) in the study watched a defector get punished, they showed additional activation in the pleasure circuit of the brain. Retaliating may feel so sweet because of the added sense of control we derive from our own actions.

The biological impulse to retaliate is strong. Conflicting parties are likely to be stuck in the continuous cycle of violence and revenge unless they find alternative ways to express their autonomy and choice of action. In essence, one side feels autonomous and fulfilled by punishing the other side, and vice versa. Remove the crutch of revenge, and the parties may feel lost and helpless. The challenge is to move beyond our biology and channel the need for autonomy into creative action and true resilience. Here are the choices:

Revenge	Resilience
Blaming	Sharing responsibility
Defending	Acknowledging
Attacking	Forgiving
Stonewalling	Connecting
Threatening	Harmonizing
Resisting	Accepting
Listening selectively	Listening reflectively
Ignoring	Inquiring
Withholding	Sharing
Assuming	Clarifying
Catastrophizing	Reframing
Reacting	Anticipating
Judging	Witnessing
Victimizing	Empowering

When we let go of revenge and embrace our own resilience, we regain the inner source of power. We no longer need an adversary to validate our significance. Instead, we begin relying on our own strengths to carry us forward.

By Anastasia Pryanikova| 2011-05-19T23:34:18+00:00 May 19th, 2011|Brain, Change, Communication, Conflict Management|1 Comment

Boosting creativity through passion, novelty and pleasure

I’ve just returned from Chicago, where I had the pleasure to present my program “Rewire Your Brain to Speak Your Mind: Neuroscience Insights for Conflict Management” at the Association of Conflict Resolution Chicago Area Chapter. It was wonderful to connect with other conflict resolution professionals and tap into our collective brain power for new ideas and approaches. Later, I got a chance to catch up with my Chicago friends and attend an amazing skating show – Ice Dreams 2011.

While the swirl of events from this weekend in Chicago is still fresh in my mind, I am going to anchor my breath-taking and brain-captivating experiences with words as I reflect on how passion, novelty, and pleasure can help us become better solution-finders:

1. Remember to nurture and pursue your life’s passions. Passions have the ability to dissolve fear, doubt, and hesitation. They can give you the voice to speak your truth. And it doesn’t really matter what your passions are as long as they help you embrace your own identity and live your life more fully. Passions can disrupt the perpetual circles of victimhood, blame, and excuses by shifting attention to more pleasant experiences. According to neuro-psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, the author of “Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive,” positive emotions make us more creative and resourceful. They open the mind to new possibilities and new ways of dealing with old problems. So, get connected to your passions.

2. Expand your synaptic connections through new places, people, and experiences. It will help you keep your brain plastic and able to build new pathways that can translate into new behaviors and new thinking patterns. Exposure to varying cultural experiences and views increases the pool of ideas to draw from and makes people more acceptable of differing opinions. Novelty tends to attract attention and boost cognitive energy. The brain is wired to make sense of the outside world so that we can feel more comfortable in it. Novel information puzzles the brain as it tries figure out how this new piece of information fits into our worldview. The brain is motivated by curiosity and the search for patterns. That’s how we learn. When the brain is busy searching for patterns and making predictions, it produces more neuromodulator dopamine, which is responsible for more pleasurable experience. You can stretch your brain and build up your transformational capacity by introducing small changes to your routine through travel, new activities, and new friends.

3. Nourish your senses and savor your positive emotions. What you feed to your senses has a profound effect on how you perceive the world and make decisions. A recent study, for example, reveals that people stereotype more in disorderly areas than in the clean ones. According to another study, the mere presence of plants in an office setting boosts one’s ability to maintain attention. Beautiful and luxurious experiences create a perfect neurococktail to envelope your brain in a pleasant, dopamine-induced buzz. The feeling of awe is transformative.

Positive psychologists have discovered that one way to increase our well-being is to savor our life experiences. Savoring is a form of mindfulness. According to Fred Bryant, the author of “Savoring,” we can anticipate future events, appreciate the present, or reminisce positively about the past. All three forms of savoring are helpful in producing positive emotions.

Rich sensory experiences that appeal to your eyes, ears, your senses of smell and touch make savoring easy. Find what makes your senses happy and indulge. But remember that people tend to compensate for distress by overindulging. Our willpower and self-control diminish when we are in a bad mood, while our search for pleasure and comfort increases. So, it is better to schedule your harmless infusions of beauty and luxury periodically to cultivate a positive outlook in the long run.

On this note, I am off to reconnect with my positive emotions as I savor the memories of the past weekend, new professional connections, good times with friends, and the immersive experience of dancing lights and music, combined with the mastery, speed, and power of the blades.

By Anastasia Pryanikova| 2011-05-03T23:32:48+00:00 May 3rd, 2011|Books, Brain, Creativity, Perception|3 Comments

Your Brain or Mine? Collective Perceptions and Group Conformity

Metaphors often reveal the hidden connections between our perception of the physical world and our mental constructs. The expression “eye to eye” means “in agreement.” It turns out that seeing eye to eye in the physical sense may explain our tendencies to conform and “follow the crowd” under peer pressure. Put differently, what others say may change what you see.

In the 1950’s, Solomon Asch, conducted a series of experiments designed to understand the phenomenon we know as conformity. In his experiments, a group of participants were seated in a classroom and asked to compare the length of vertical lines. They were then asked to tell the group which vertical line, A, B, or C, matched the test line. The catch was that all of the participants except one were Asch’s aids . The aids first gave the correct answers, but eventually all began to give incorrect responses. Amazingly, the test subject began giving the same incorrect answers as the aids. Overall, after 18 trials, only 25% of the subjects never gave a false answer, and 75% of the subjects conformed at least once. However, in follow-up trials where one aid openly disagreed with the rest of the aids voicing the wrong answer, the test subjects easily identified the correct answer. So, it took just one dissenting voice to destroy the conformity spell.

Psychiatry professor Gregory Berns, the author of the book “Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently,” wanted to find out if people conformed because the peer pressure influenced their decision-making or because the group’s opinions affected their physical perception. The use of fMRI, registering different brain activation patterns, allowed the researchers to distinguish the “seeing” stage from the “deciding” stage. The experiments revealed that the peer pressure may actually shape the way we see things. Moreover, those subjects whose perception remained unaffected by the opinions of others and who went against the group showed more activation in the amygdala, the part of the brain associated with fear responses and emotional control. It takes courage to disregard the fear and discomfort and go against the group.

So, how do we know whether we truly see eye to eye or we look at the world through the peers’ eyes? What do we do to avoid false agreements?

By Anastasia Pryanikova| 2011-04-13T19:21:33+00:00 April 13th, 2011|Books, Communication, Conflict Management, Perception|0 Comments

How The Grumpy Gremlin, The Inner Critic and The Mad Monkey Stole the Creative Seed of Discourse

Once upon a time, Discourse possessed a creative seed that in the right conditions had the power to germinate into better understanding among people and offer new solutions to their problems. The wise and the elderly knew how to take care of the creative seed and help it sprout into a peaceful growth until one day a stranger showed up at Discourse’s door.

“What’s your name?” Discourse asked.

“I am The Grumpy Gremlin,” replied the stranger. “You, Discourse, can’t even imagine all the threats and dangers that are lurking out there. Hidden in the dark, nagging worries, stewing self-sabotage, debilitating doubt, and paralyzing fear wait for the right moment to pounce and send chills down your spine. And slimy worms are about to eat your creative seed. “

Discourse looked around in horror. “What can I do?’ “Can you help me?”

“All right,” said The Grumpy Gremlin. “I will protect you against threats and dangers out there, but you have to give me something in return.”

“What can I give you?” asked Discourse.

“Your good mood,” The Grumpy Gremlin replied.

Discourse thought the Grumpy Gremlin’s request was strange. What’s the value of the good mood, anyways? And he accepted the offer.

As days passed, Discourse grew sad and blue as he became aware of every possible threat out there. This realization even gave him indigestion. One evening, Discourse was sitting by the fire when he noticed a shadow darting across the wall of his house. Spooked, Discourse jumped around and saw a strange creature creeping across the room. “Who are you and what are you doing in my house?” Discourse yelled.

“So sorry to bother you, Discourse. I am your Inner Critic. I was always here, but you were too happy to pay any attention to me.”

Discourse listened in disbelief as The Inner Critic’s voice grew louder and louder.

“Just look at yourself, Discourse. You turned into a laughing stock. You are just fuming and fuming, but you have nothing useful to say. What will people think of you?”

“What should I do?” asked Discourse meekly.

“Here is what you do,” The Inner Critic replied angrily. “You listen to me carefully. I will protect you against the harsh judgment and the ridicule of your neighbors. But you have to promise me something in return.”

“What is it,” asked Discourse, embarrassed and upset with himself.

“Promise me that you will always carry your creative seed in a tightly closed sack and you will never venture into unknown territory.”

“But if I always keep the creative seed in a closed sack, how will it grow without the sunlight?” protested Discourse.

But The Inner Critic just hissed, “What do you know?”

So, Discourse reluctantly agreed to The Inner Critic’s offer.

Discourse kept the promise. He carried his creative seed in a tightly closed sack as he walked along the beaten path. One day, during his usual walk, a monkey jumped from a tree and grabbed the sack with the creative seed. Discourse was too absorbed by his own sad thoughts to notice The Mad Monkey sooner. He tried to catch her but she ran into the forest and just kept jumping from tree to tree. Discourse chased The Mad Monkey for a full hour but had to stop because he got tired of running in circles.

And that is how Discourse lost his creative seed, tricked by The Grumpy Gremlin, The Inner Critic, and The Mad Monkey into giving away his good mood, courage, curiosity, and a peaceful, open mind.

By Anastasia Pryanikova| 2011-05-03T23:21:31+00:00 April 2nd, 2011|Change, Communication, Creativity|0 Comments

Reflections on the 4th Annual Mediators Beyond Borders Congress, Part 3: Compassionate Listening

“Listening creates a holy silence. When you listen generously to people, they can hear truth in themselves, often for the first time. And in the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone. Eventually, you may be able to hear, in everyone and beyond everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you.”
~ Rachel Naomi Remen, MD

Have you ever tried to listen to someone intently for three minutes without interrupting and interjecting, without letting your attention be diluted by questions and observations popping up in your head? It sounds simple, but not easy. This was one of the exercises we did at a workshop entitled “Compassionate Listening: Powerful Practices for Healing & Transformation” presented by Susan Partnow and Ilene Stark of The Compassionate Listening Project.

I wrote in my earlier post about seven common barriers to active listening. The inner workings of the brain may hinder our listening capacity.

First, the brain is a prediction machine. In a conversation, it is always in a rush to figure out what comes next, causing us to jump to conclusions and complete other people’s thoughts.

Second, the brain has a limited attention span and working memory capacity. Our prefrontal cortex, the brain region implicated in planning complex cognitive tasks, decision making, and moderating correct social behavior, is easily overwhelmed. We can process just about seven pieces of information in our conscious mind at any given moment. It makes it impossible to attend to several things simultaneously that require our concentration. It’s not easy to pay focused attention to the other person’s words.

In addition, the brain has a negativity bias. For our own survival and protection, the brain is wired to constantly scan the environment for threats and things that may go wrong. At the sign of a perceived threat, the amygdala triggers the “fight or flight” mode. As a result, our mind “freezes,” and we either launch verbal attacks or withdraw from the dialogue. Strong feelings and emotions affect our listening, reasoning and judgment.

Finally, the brain is good at conserving mental energy and resources. It filters out information that doesn’t comport with our own beliefs. Once we’ve made a decision, the brain is happy to look for evidence that supports our decision, conveniently ignoring contradictory information. In other words, we hear what we want to hear.

The goals of the compassionate listening workshop was to help the listeners and speakers overcome “defensiveness and reactivity” and connect heart to heart. There is a lot that goes into the practice of compassionate listening. Anchoring yourself in the heart rather then the head is not always easy. Among other things, compassionate listening means:

being present;
“accepting, but not necessarily agreeing”;
looking for the common ground;
valuing opposing views;
seeking the good in conflict;
practicing forgiveness;
respecting yourself and others;
staying centered even when the emotions become intense;
being self-aware;
suspending assumptions and judgment;
being comfortable with uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity;
resisting the urge to offer opinions, advice, interpretations unless asked;
trusting each person’s capacity to solve their own problems.

For more information on the practice of compassionate listening, visit The Compassionate Listening Project.

Reflections on the 4th Annual Mediators Beyond Borders Congress, Part 2: Cross-Cultural Communication

By Anastasia Pryanikova| 2011-03-20T22:08:35+00:00 March 20th, 2011|Attention, Communication, Conflict Management|1 Comment