Blog-Leadership Impact - Bridge to Partnership

Afraid of Dying or Loving Life?

1/20/2020

Some animals have cells that are not programmed to age, therefore they can live until they are killed or eaten by someone or something else. Both the Hydra and the Turritopsis dohrnii Jelly Fish do not die unless they are eaten or become diseased. Many other animals can live hundreds of years, the Bowhead Whale, the Red Sea Urchin, and the Aldabra Giant Tortoise to name a few. Trees are known to live thousands of years. We live an average of 79 years and the longest lived human lived 122 years. This is an improvement over our 47-year average life span in 1900.

What if we could repair our DNA and keep our cells from aging so that we could live 6500 years. Would YOU want to live 6500 years? How about 200 years? Why or why not? Turtles and trees just live. I have to believe that they get joy from just being alive. They ‘neither toil nor do they spin’ yet they find life worthwhile, enough to keep doing it long after we throw in the towel. How would your life change if you knew you would be around 2-300 years or 6500 years even?

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Relationships

7/5/2019

I was ruminating on why we form relationships – specifically why do we marry? When we are young children are a biological push and to a certain extent property and status are social pushes. So I put these aside and thought about those folks whose relationship really seems to work. What I’ve noticed is that there is an appreciation of each other that appears to give each of them a freedom to be themselves. Their very differences are what make the relationship strong. They have learned to see the value in the others difference and they even come to depend upon that difference at times.

What would happen if we saw 'marriage' as more of a partnership? What would happen if we saw our other relationships as more like a 'marriage?' Maybe the key is looking at building a long-term asset/value. Not all relationships have to be a 10 to be perfect as they are, but the commitment to maintain over the long-term needs to be shared.

Relationships are curious things. We come to them with so many preconceived notions, expectations and desires. What would happen if we became curious about our partner? Curious about who they are and why they do what they do, willing to explore in order to understand and then be willing to express delight in the unique person they are?

This led me to think about how inherent in their appreciation was a deep respect. I believe it is possible to respect someone and not appreciate them, but I don’t think you can appreciate someone and NOT respect them. What do you think?

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Habits

6/7/2019

Habits, we all have habits. Habits are, ideally, shortcuts to behavior we find useful. Once we make something a habit we can do it without thinking, we put it on automatic pilot. The problem, of course is that some habits are not our friends and we find ourselves doing things we’d rather not do, or that have bad or inconvenient consequences for us. Habits can hijack our best-intended behavior.

Our brain is a willing partner in helping us form habits. The neurons in our brain have dendrites at the end. Information jumps from the dendrites of one neuron to the dendrites of another. If we do something over and over we collect a lot of neurons that are engaged in making that activity happen. If we do it really, really often then the brain figures that this is important and to make it happen even easier it covers these neurons with white stuff called myelin. It’s a bit like paving a highway versus a muddy road, same path, but you can go faster.

Get angry a lot? What about those ‘hot buttons?’ See a spider and scream? Each of these denotes a myelin-paved path that the brain has made very easy for that information to go down. These experiences are sometimes called an amygdala hijack. They happen fast and make us feel like we are out of control.

Being ‘out of control’ is sort’a true, but the good news is that you can get that control back. Neuroplasticity – the ability of your brain to change, is something that you can actually stimulate. In doing so you actually change the structure of your brain. This is what happens when you consciously decide to ‘break’ a habit.

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Why All the Buzz About Brain Research?

5/3/2019

Humans have always worked to try and ‘figure out’ the world around them. We’ve invested centuries in creating stories that help us ‘explain’ why things happen the way they do. The research focusing on how the brain works has given us a much clearer understanding of how those stories actually help or hinder us as we strive to create a world we want to live in. We don’t control the world – things happen. What we CAN control, however, is our brain chemistry and in so doing we discover that there is much about the world we actually CAN control.

Our brains are hard wired to do two things: protect our self, and connect with others. Almost everything that happens to us stems from one of those two proclivities. It can be phrased another way; we either love or fear – period! Think of it this way, our thoughts are really habits of thought, so we either spend our time scaring our self about the world or loving our self and the world around us. Either way we are creating strong pathways inside of our brain that have profound ramifications about what we can and cannot do with our mental faculties.

My training and certification in Conversational Intelligence® has not only stimulated my curiosity about my – and your brain, but it has given me tools and techniques that provide ways to reprogram our brains so that we are working with our brain chemistry to actually achieve what we say we want – a world that works. I’m committed to sharing CIQ with you!

Check out:
Restoring Organizational Trust Through Conversational Intelligence®
https://youtu.be/yLHSuSEKGuM

How God Changes Your Brain by Andrew Newberg, M.D. and Mark Robert Waldman

Distinct neural signatures for safety and danger in the amygdala and striaturm of the mouse by MT Rogan, KS Leon, DL Perez, and ER Kandel as published in Neuron April 21, 2005

It's All Just Talk

4/5/2019

There is not a human being in the world who cannot talk. We learn to talk when we are about two. If we are so good at it then why do we get into so much trouble just by talking? If you have trouble with your reports and/or team members then you know what I mean. You have the best of intentions yet things go awry that you did not foresee - why?

If you are like most of us when folks don't seem to get it - the usual response is to say the same thing louder and more often or in new and clever ways (maybe tinged with a bit of sarcasm). Still they don't 'get it.' YOU know you are right! YOU know how it should get done - why is it so hard to make them understand?

The new field of brain science has some very important information for us as leaders. If you spend most of your day talking to people and yet are frustrated by the results come join me as we explore how we get ourselves into trouble and how we can get out of it. We create worlds with our words so with the help of a better understanding of brain chemistry and neurobiology we can now begin to create a world we actually want to inhabit

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The End of the World

3/1/2019

Are you getting depressed by the world? Is the state of our politics driving to to hide or fight everything? Do you really believe that the 'end is nigh"? then I'd suggest that you take another look at what's REALLY happening in the world.

To do this you have to get outside of your box and READ different things. I'd start with books. Hunter Lovins - a person I've followed for decades, has a new book, A Finer Future. You can hear her on a podcast interview done by Y on Earth. To dramatically change your understanding of 'how the world works' try Donut Economics by Kate Raworth.

The angst we are feeling is because what we thought we knew is proving untrustworthy. Things are NOT going as 'planned' or as we think they 'should'. Why? Because the world has changed - it had to because it wasn't working . We have made these changes as we expanded our capacity to use nature's resources, as we learned from each other at a pace that never been seen before via the internet, and as we became interconnected globally through trade on a scale that is also unprecedented. We need to go with the flow or we will be left behind!

It's one thing to have the technology - we have the technology to make the needed changes, it's quite another to get people to actually change! I can't help everybody, but I CAN help you! We can work together to rethink how we see ourselves, work with other others, and organize our businesses. I can help YOU do all of these. Change isn't easy, but it's not as hard as you think, either.

Building Trust Through Conversations

2/1/2019

Nothing happens if we don't talk to each other. We talk all the time. We haven't known before is how very powerful conversations can be - conversations can change your DNA. The FOX2 gene, the gene that enables us to connect with our world, is impacted by our experience. It can 'remember' if we felt fear or if we were excited and creative. These experiences can be created through conversations.

Key to building trust is Transparency. If you most often function with a 'need to know' attitude then you are creating an opaque environment for many around you. If you often put a 'good face' on things so you don't rock the boat, you are creating a cloudy environment for those who work with you. The truth is people DO know when things have an emotional charge, but they may not always read those signals correctly. By asking, "How do you feel about this?" folks are trying to clarify the signals they are getting. We are conditioned and even expected to cover up those moments so others won't feel uncomfortable and we are spared from revealing our truth.

The common response to these types of situations is the complicit, "Great, just checking." as we enable each other to hide reality. The trouble with this is that, while it smooths things over and we can get on with it, it also creates a climate of distrust because we all know something is being hidden, we just are not sure of what that might be. Not knowing creates distrust.

When we experience distrust our brain is flooded with higher levels of cortisol, which closes down our brain and our willingness to be in relationship with others. We feel we have to protect our self by playing small, hiding in the background, and keeping our views and ideas to our self. When we make others feel excluded, judged, or criticized we stimulate the release of cortisol in the brains of the people we are talking to. This changes their focus from tasks and problem solving to self protection. It can make it hard for people to even remember what was said, as they were preoccupied with self protective thoughts.

The good news is that is very possible to shift these kinds of conversations to ones that do just the opposite. Conversations that enable us to work as partners by stimulating the release of oxytocin which creates higher levels of bonding and mutual success. Appreciation, inclusion (transparency), and empathy all bring out the best in us. Working to create increased skill levels of Conversational Intelligence® is one very good way of improving your results.

Fear: Our Ever Present Nemesis

1/4/2019

Fear is old school, but you wouldn't know it the way its being thrown around today. The reality is fear is a tool used by uncreative folks who are fearful themselves. They use fear as:

A distraction
A form of control
A method of manipulation
Self-Protection

Fear is a distraction because the subject of the fear stops looking at anything except a very narrow search for safety. Many reasoning functions go unused in the search for the ONE action that will provide safety. If that action is not clear or too distasteful, then inaction and hiding become the favored strategy.

Fear is a form of control as the need for safety limits creativity and experimentation. thus severely limiting the number of possibilities seemingly available. This ties in nicely with the next use - manipulation. When the range of options narrows it is easy to make suggestions that will be easily and quickly accepted, thus ensuring a desired outcome. The Amygdala does like anything new.

Generating fear in others means that people are too focused on their own safety to really see the limitations and weakness in those creating the fear. When people are afraid of you they are less likely to actually see who you are and only see the projected image that creates the fear. It is the old illusionists trick of creating a distraction so that you don't see what the other hand is doing. And so we come full circle.

Fear is old school because it never goes forward, but strives to take things backward into old patterns and old experiences. New requires the freedom to experiment and explore and yes, even fail. Innovation, growth and discovery require too much energy to be distracted by fear. Fear only results in old habits and old patterns, fear is not able to create, only the prefrontal cortex creates.

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Kathryn
Alexander, MA Author

A student of human nature, of living systems, ethics and now neurobiology and brain science - I see the same thing everywhere - we need to get reconnected: to ourselves, others and the planet!

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