2013 – Page 3 – The Brain Alchemist

How keeping your distance can get you closer to what you want

“Step away from a problem,” “eyes on the horizon,” “a bird’s eye view,” “remove yourself from a situation,” “burn your bridges” – we have many expressions in English that indicate spatial and psychological distance. When we physically or mentally increase our distance from whatever we are dealing with, it changes how we perceive things and make decisions. Employing the mind trick of distance when you present or process information can result in greater impact and better decisions. This is not about distancing yourself from people, but rather finding your own “observer” or “distant self” that can help you connect better with people and ideas. Here are five ways to benefit from distance:

1. Lean back to make a task seem easier. Increasing the physical distance from a complex task also increases the psychological distance. A task seen from a greater distance appears easier. After you present a problem, try moving the whiteboard away from the audience or have the audience members change their seats to increase the distance from the spot that represents the problem. It may boost abstract thinking and creativity. Taking a break can have a similar distancing effect.

2. Be a fly on the wall. Self-distancing can help people look at a negative experience with less anger and aggression. Rather than immersing yourself in a stressful situation, switch to the role of an observer. Replaying a negative scene as if watching the events unfold from a distance and happening to the “distant” you can buffer from the negative outcomes of rumination. Role-play is another form of self-distancing that encourages different perspectives. If you are a speaker or presenter, it is helpful to think about the appropriate level of self-immersion that you want to create for your audience. A distant perspective can help the audience deal better with topics that can trigger strong emotions and aggression.

3. Use the distance to bring your points across. When you tell a story, move with purpose to create a picture of your content. The action in your story should prompt your movement. Where can you place all your characters and everything else on the stage to create a sequence of scenes in your mind? You can bring your audience into the scenes by moving purposefully as your story progresses. Your movement can also create a timeline of the past, present and future. What is the sequence of the events that occur in your story? As you describe the sequential events, you move accordingly. Remember that your audience reads the timeline from left to right, so you should do it from their perspective (backwards for you). Apparently, the future feels closer to us than the past. This reduced psychological distance may help us better prepare for future events.

4. Match the psychological distance of your message with the timing of the decision. Gergan Nenkov of the Carroll School of Management in Boston investigated the persuasiveness of messages presented to consumers at different stages of decision-making process. Consumers in a predecisional mindset were more likely to be persuaded by psychologically distant messages that focused on the future and distant others. In contrast, consumers in a postdecisional mindset who looked for ways to support and implement their decision were more likely to be persuaded by messages that talked about the present and the self.

5. Keep it cool. There is a link between cold temperatures and social distance. For example, social isolation or emotionally chilly memories can actually make people feel cold. It turns out that cooler temperatures also reduce the so called “egocentric anchoring” when people unintentionally project their own perspective onto others. So, if you want to promote mutual understanding and perspective-taking behavior, keep the room temperature cooler.

By Anastasia Pryanikova| 2013-05-22T16:17:50+00:00 May 22nd, 2013|Communication, Peak Performance, Public Speaking|0 Comments

5 ways to power up your words and ignite the brain

“All words are equal, but some words are more equal than others.”
~ George Orwell, “Animal Farm”

Words have power – some more than others. Neuroscience research sheds light on how words captivate our brains. We know that traditional language regions, like Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, are activated when the brain interprets words. Surprisingly, however, narratives stimulate many other parts of the brain. For example, when researchers in Spain showed subjects the Spanish words for “perfume” and “coffee,” their primary olfactory cortex lit up. Similarly, words describing motion activated the motor cortex. It appears that words can cause the brain to create a vivid and real experience of whatever is described to us. Here is how you can power up your words to ignite the brains of your audience.

1. Write and speak for the senses. Whenever you describe a scene, think about the sights, sounds, smells and textures it can evoke. Close your eyes, imagine the scene and describe it in the words that appeal to all our senses. Sensory words can make your descriptions more vivid.

Be mindful of the “word aversion” phenomenon described by University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor Mark Liberman as “a feeling of intense, irrational distaste for the sound or sight of a particular word or phrase, not because its use is regarded as etymologically or logically or grammatically wrong, nor because it’s felt to be over-used or redundant or trendy or non-standard, but simply because the word itself somehow feels unpleasant or even disgusting.” Certain words – ‘moist’ being the worst offender – appear to trigger word aversion for more people.

2. Use concrete details in your descriptions. Provide enough detail for your audience members to help them visualize the scenes of your narrative, but remember that too much information can be boring. Our working memory is limited and can be easily overwhelmed with lots of detail. Don’t overuse adjectives and adverbs. While they seem to be descriptive, they are often vague.

Here is how vividly Sarah Ban Breathnach describes dreams in her book “Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self”: “Dreams can also be like a collage, an artistic composition made up of various materials, such as paper, fabric, and wood. Our dream collages can be as illogical as snippets of conversation spoken by a woman balancing a tepee on her head as she’s chased by a pack of llamas.”

3. Compare sensory impressions. Comparisons can turn abstract concepts into something tangible that we can all relate to. You can use comparisons when you describe sounds, colors, sizes, flavors, smells, and textures. Here are some examples:

“She spoke of fruit that tasted the way sapphires look…”
~ Toni Morrison, “Paradise”

“The bed linens might just as well be ice and the clothes snow.”
~ Robert Frost, “The Witch of Coos”

4. Employ metaphors. Our brains often blend reality and symbols. Metaphors activate sensory cortical areas in the brain that process touch, hearing, and vision. Metaphors can trigger emotional responses and influence decision-making more profoundly than abstract concepts. Beware of the power of metaphors. They can either clarify an issue or mislead by triggering a visceral reaction that may overcome rational judgment. Here are some examples of metaphorical thinking:

“It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood.”
~ Robert Frost, “Birches”

“The rain came down in long knitting needles.”
~ Enid Bagnold, “National Velvet”

5. Highlight novelty, surprise, and contrast. Our brains prefer stimulation to boredom. “There are three things which the public will always clamor for, sooner or later: namely, novelty, novelty, novelty,” wrote Thomas Hood. The brain is motivated by curiosity and the search for patterns. Washington State University neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp calls this the “seeking” system of the brain. It motivates animals to search for food, and it causes human brains to seek out information, experiences, connections. When the brain is busy searching, it increases levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is responsible for the sense of purposefulness and focused attention. Interestingly, these neurons become even more excited when there is no pattern to be found or when the expected pattern is broken. Novelty fuels the brain’s urge to search. Contrast and surprise captivate the brain because they violate routine expectations and patterns. They capture attention as the brain tries to reconcile the incongruities. Here are some examples of novelty and surprise:

“The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels.”
~ Simone Beauvoir

“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.”
~ George Burns

“Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles.”
~ George Eliot

How do you power up your words to link and sync brains? When you listen, which words carry more power for you?

By Anastasia Pryanikova| 2013-05-08T14:20:56+00:00 May 8th, 2013|Attention, Communication, Public Speaking|0 Comments

5 strategies to ditch perfection and build connection with your audience

Are you trying too hard to be perfect when you need to speak or present? I have a secret to share with you that may liberate you from this overwhelming desire to be perfect. For years, whenever I had to speak in front of groups, I had a concern at the back of my mind that my accent would be an impediment. I knew that my accent was slight and did not prevent people from understanding me, but somehow it still felt less than perfect. After all, most of my speaking and training is done in English, which is my second language. Even the fact that I was a linguist and a certified ESL instructor who used to teach English grammar and writing to international students in the U.S. didn’t help. Only through a lot of practice and feedback from my audiences, I came to the conclusion that it really didn’t matter. On the contrary, I was often better prepared because I paid more attention to how I phrased things and rehearsed more. People were curious to know where I was from, which made me stand out and led to more interesting conversations. And most importantly, whenever I helped others with their communication challenges, I could honestly say that if I was able to become a speaker, coach and trainer in a second language, they could become more effective communicators too. I could help them because I knew their struggles, self-doubt and fears of public speaking. Speaking is about connection, not perfection.

Perfect speeches often lack connection with the audience because nobody is perfect. Perfection can even undermine the effectiveness of your message. When you share your knowledge with your audience members, there may be a doubt in their minds that the solutions that worked for you may not work for them because they may not be as savvy, confident, determined, or decisive as you are. How can you overcome their objection that you sound special?

1. Let someone else be the Guru. You want to stress what you share with your audience because we naturally gravitate towards people like us. Don’t be afraid to talk about your failures and frustrations because we all have experienced them. Position yourself as the one who received a helpful lesson or revelation and is about to pass it on to your audience. Now, the focus of your story is less on you as the know-it-all Guru and more on your audience members – their pains, needs and desires – as well as the process that gets them where they want to be. You can call back to the Guru’s message more in your speech without sounding like you are preaching or trying to sell yourself too hard.

2. Let your audience contribute to the solution. A sense of autonomy is a reward to the brain. Give your audience members choices, engage them by asking powerful questions, and acknowledge their input and wisdom. What questions can you ask your audience to make them reflect on your points? How can they better fine-tune and apply your strategies to their unique situations? People feel more committed to the ideas that they have helped to develop.

3. Don’t memorize your speech word-for-word. Have an outline, know your quotes and memorable expressions, and internalize what you want to say by practicing it. Don’t try to sound too formal. Don’t speak like you write. People prefer things that are easy to process. Repetition, clarity and simplicity help to build connection and trust. “Cognitive fluency” is a measure of how easy it is to think about something:

“…studies have shown that when presenting people with a factual statement, manipulations that make the statement easier to mentally process – even totally nonsubstantive changes like writing it in a cleaner font or making it rhyme or simply repeating it – can alter people’s judgment of the truth of the statement, along with their evaluation of the intelligence of the statement’s author and their confidence in their own judgments and abilities.”

Here is a trick to make sure you stick to the conversational language. Instead of standing when you practice your speech, have a seat and imagine you are having a conversation with someone. What would you say to get your point across? If your language is too formal, it will feel awkward.

4. Replace “Ladies and gentlemen” with “You.” If you use collective phrases, such as “Ladies and gentlemen…”, “How many of you…”, “Dear friends and colleagues…”, you create a perception that you are speaking to too many people. You want each of your audience members to feel like you are speaking directly to him or her. Look audience members in their eyes as you scan the room. Choose words as if you are speaking to each member individually. The word “you” is your most important word.

5. Make your physical environment warm and inviting. Colors, smells, textures in our surroundings all affect our moods and behavior without our conscious awareness. You can’t always choose where you speak, but it is important to pay attention to the design, acoustics and seating arrangement in the room. Clear away anything that may create a barrier between you and your audience, such as lecterns, projectors, etc. Remove empty seats. Make sure everybody can see and hear you well. Use a cordless mike that allows you to move around the room and offer a mike to audience members when they ask or answer questions.

What techniques do you use to build connection with your audience?

By Anastasia Pryanikova| 2013-04-23T18:18:19+00:00 April 23rd, 2013|Communication, Public Speaking|0 Comments

Multiply Your Impact & Income Through Packaging Your Brand Online (The Right Way)

A few years ago, I conducted a teleseminar titled “Leveraging the Web to Grow Your Dispute Resolution Practice” for the New York State Dispute Resolution Association. Its premise was that conflict resolution professionals loved their work but often struggled when it came to marketing their services. In that teleseminar, I discussed how no-cost to low-cost technology could help conflict resolution professionals build long-term trusting relationships with their clients and prospects and even create passive income streams while they shared their expertise and valuable experience with a wider audience.

The topic of information products is even hotter these days when so much of our knowledge is acquired online. That is why I am especially honored to share the work of Dr. Marina Kostina, founder and CEO of Wired@Heart, who is an expert in transcending distances online and helping business owners leverage their time and expertise through online courses and products. Maybe, now is the time to package all your experience and wisdom into a product that can make you extra income around the clock. Find out how you can do it in today’s post.

The author of today’s post is our guest blogger Dr. Marina Kostina, founder and CEO of Wired@Heart.

Why go online?

You love your clients.

You love connecting and engaging with them.

And you’d love being able to make a difference on a larger scale.

But there is only one of you! And that means that no matter what, your impact (and income) will always be limited.

We live in a very exciting time, as there are literally billions of online businesses nowadays.

However, 95% of online businesses fail and they fail in a matter of months!

These statistics tell us two very important things:

1) Small business owners finally realize that the online environment has tremendous potential for impact, profitability, and building the lifestyle of their dreams.

2) Most online businesses fail, and fail super-fast because they do not know how to bring their brand online in an effective way.

Many “business gurus” promise that designing an info product will solve all your financial frustrations, magically attract lots of clients, and ultimately will help you build a lifestyle of your dreams. I strongly believe that most info products experts are missing the KEY ingredient: building connection and engagement in cyberspace.

How to make your brand shine online the right way:

After 10 years of working online and conducting research on online interactions for my doctorate dissertation, I know one thing for sure: connection and engagement is THE KEY to success in cyberspace! I believe that an engaged client is a happy client. It is a client who will keep on buying your products, develop a sense of identity with your brand, will produce great results that he will gladly share with others, and will become your biggest fan and an advocate for your business!

There are 5 types of connection that businesses need to foster while bringing their brand online:

Strategy # 1: Building Client-Client Connection

The client-client type of engagement is where clients engage with each other, creating an online community. Often, such communities are considered to be a “bonus” to an online product. I argue that developing such communities is a MUST. You can easily create a community of like-minded individuals even with self-paced, downloadable products by providing an opportunity to access an online forum, or maybe creating a private Facebook group where your clients can interact and share their experiences, questions, and success stories.

Strategy # 2: Building Client-Mentor Connection

The secret of engagement is this: you need to find a way of making your trainees feel that they are involved in a learning process that they own, one that they have helped to construct, and that they are working on a piece of work that is relevant to their lives and interests. They are searching for information and finding in it what is of most interest and relevance for their piece of work, reporting the progress of their work to others, and benefiting from the feedback. They are giving constructive input that can help fellow participants clarify concepts and arguments in their work, being producers of knowledge rather than consumers of it, and having a hand in their destiny and living creatively as they progress through the program.

Strategy # 3: Building Client-Content Connection

Client-content engagement refers to the client’s accessing the content of the course or a program. You have to consciously and continuously facilitate discussions, and guide your clients toward the program goals. Remember, this is not a mentorship approach in which you tell your clients where to go to find answers; rather, you encourage them to explore the parameters of an issue, raise questions, and go to the program content and other valid sources of information to find their own answers.

Strategy #4: Building Client-Platform Connection

A Learning Management System (LMS), an interactive video, or a downloadable PDF series – are all important in the learning process: it is a part of the learning community, as your clients must engage with the technical platform that delivers your product. As the mentor, your responsibility is to facilitate interaction between the platform and the client. In order to minimize early dropouts because of technology, you should help your clients with navigation tools by creating a short video or a detailed PDF cheat sheet that explains how to interact with the platform, download a product or post a comment in a discussion forum. You can also develop problem solving queries in which you can invite clients’ comments on the culture of online learning, its strengths and its limitations, and ask for suggestions on how their current learning experience might be improved.

Strategy #5: Building Client-Learning Process Connection

Clients need to feel that the learning process respects their needs and that they are trusted to have a say in what they learn and how: they need to feel that they have agency and that you are fostering their autonomy. Explain to the clients the basics of the online interactions, where each participant creates a new identity and information might be miscommunicated more easily than in face-to-face interactions. Delayed response and technology might create a sense of isolation. When the clients are aware of the challenges of the online environment and have the tools to deal with these challenges, they will less likely become frustrated with the program and will not lose their motivation.

In conclusion, if you want to multiply your impact and income, you MUST bring your brand online! Imagine not having to worry about attracting new clients. Imagine creating a referral powerhouse where your satisfied clients spread the word about you! (Remember, people would more likely buy a product recommended by their friends).

I know that the process might sound scary for many of you.

I created a FREE training session: “Multiply Your Impact and Income Online” that will be held online on April 4, 2013 @ 7:30 pm.

In this training you will discover 3 simple steps to:

Big Idea: Finding your product’s main idea that will instantly connect with your clients

Design: Weaving connection and engagement into the design of your product

Delivery: Building connection and engagement during delivery of your product

Sound interesting? You will find more information here:

Register Here

I cannot wait to see you!

Disclosure: This post contains links to an affiliate program, for which I receive a commission if you make purchases.

By Anastasia Pryanikova| 2013-03-28T19:02:39+00:00 March 28th, 2013|Communication, Conflict Management, Learning|0 Comments

5 strategies to silence your inner critic and boost creativity and self-expression

Have you ever tried yoga dance? Yoga dance is different from what most people think of when they hear the word “dance,” or “yoga” for that matter. There are no specific steps to follow or routines to worry about. Instead, our yoga teacher offers a storyline with elements, such as “welcoming yourself to the space” by dancing your way around the room in different directions, “building a fire” in an exuberant circle moving with the sound of drums, or the “souls and hearts” dance with scarves. Yoga dance is all about self-expression in a harmonious, non-judgmental way when you bring your body, your sense of rhythm and your emotions into a delicate alignment. It is also about the power of being open, spontaneous, creative and fluid. It is about the community and trust in your ability to be yourself, no matter how sweaty or goofy you may feel. In other words, yoga dance offers one of those precious moments when your inner critic becomes quiet, giving in to the power of music and movement.

We should all practice silencing our inner critic more often. Neuroscience research suggest that we become more creative when the the parts of the brain that are responsible for cognitive control – in particular, the left prefrontal cortex – become less active. In one study, researchers non-invasively manipulated neurons in the participants’ left prefrontal cortices through the method of transcranial direct current stimulation, or tDCS, thus suppressing the activation of these specific areas of the brain. Participants saw a sequence of 60 objects, one every nine seconds, and were asked to quickly come up with uses for them that were out of the ordinary. The researchers measure how long it took for the participants to come up with a valid response, or if they were unable to do so before the next picture appears. The participants with the inhibited right prefrontal cortices missed an average of 8 out of 60 objects, compared to 15 objects missed by two other control groups. They were also able to provide correct responses an average of a second faster than the control groups.

Another study indicates that when musicians are improvising, the part of the brain that plays a role in self-restraint and evaluation is also powered down, while an area associated with self-expression becomes more active, compared to when the musicians play music they have memorized.

How can you silence the inner critic in situations that benefit from a creative flow of unfiltered ideas? Here are five practices to boost your creativity and self-expression:

1. Role-play your way to different scenarios. Play boosts creativity, imagination, and social agility not just in children, but in adults as well. As adults we become overly concerned with opinions of others. The fear of embarrassment and social rejection inhibits our creative expression. Play can relax the brain and make us more comfortable to take risks and experiment. Play helps us prepare for the unexpected and produce a more diverse repertory of behavior. In a role-play, we can put ourselves through different kinds of experiences, learn to better understand other perspectives and cultivate empathy. Are you feeling too shy to play? Try a hand-puppet to get your over the discomfort of assuming a role.

2. Give yourself a permission to be absurd. Brainstorm bad ideas and poke fun at your own assumptions. It will take the pressure off and allow good ideas to percolate into your conscious mind. Don’t take yourself too seriously. “Think like a fool,” advises Roger von Oech:

“It’s the fool’s job to extol the trivial, trifle with the exalted, and parody the common perception of a situation. In doing so, the fool makes us conscious of the habits we take for granted and rarely question. A good fool needs to be part actor and part poet, part philosopher and part psychologist.”

3. Let your mind wander. The daydreaming mind continues to work on your problems, increasing the likelihood of an insight. A recent study shows that the times when we are naturally less productive may be optimal for solving insight problems. In those off-peak times when we are more distracted, our brains can tap into a wider range of information, find new connections, and see more possibilities.

4. Ditch your meeting room and head to a coffee-shop. Experiments showed that a moderate level of ambient noise (70 dB) enhanced subjects’ performance on the creativity tasks, compared to a relatively quiet environment (50 decibels). However, if the place is too noisy (85 dB), it will hurt your creative problem-solving. Coffitivity can even “deliver the vibe of a coffee shop right to your desktop.” This web application allows you to combine your own music and ambient noises to optimize your creative process.

5. Find a solution in your dreams. Michael Michalko, the creativity expert and author of “Thinkertoys,” once said, “Ideas twinkle in dreams like bicycle lights in a mist.” A study conducted by the University of Alberta and the University of Montreal of 470 psychology students revealed that dreams that occurred six to seven days after the remembered event often reflected “interpersonal interactions, problem resolution and positive emotions.” These findings suggest that people continue to work through personal difficulties in dreams.

Sleep psychologists claim we have about six dreams each night during rapid eye movement sleep (REM sleep). We often forget our dreams, but there are things we can do to recall dreams better and capture any creative ideas that emerged in the dream state:

If you’ve been working on a problem for a while, bring it back into focus right before you fall asleep. Think about a question related to your problem that you’d like to get an answer to in your sleep.
When you awake, don’t get up immediately. Instead, lie quietly as you reflect on your dream. If you have trouble remembering your dreams, try waking up thirty minutes earlier.
Have a dream journal next to you bed so that you could promptly record any thoughts that came to you after you woke up. Don’t censor, just write down anything that comes to mind. Your ideas are often triggered by your dream even if you can’t remember the dream exactly. After all, the contemporary scientific method was first reveled to René Descartes in his dream, which he promptly recorded in his dream journal.
You can later go over your dream journal again to see if any patterns, ideas, or insights emerge from your dream entries.

And you can always check out yoga dance.

How do you silence your inner critic?

By Anastasia Pryanikova| 2013-03-22T12:41:02+00:00 March 20th, 2013|Brain, Creativity, Peak Performance|0 Comments