Building Self-awareness

 

We continue with the theme of following our class content for Building Self-awareness. We have completed class two (2) in which we focused on new discoveries in neuroscience, also known as brain science. The study of brain science is fascinating, for it helps explain why we do the things we do and why we often can’t easily bring ourselves to do things that are helpful to us. Many aspects of neuroscience help in our quest toward our developing emotional self-awareness, leading to happiness and success in life.   Let’s remember, “One single discovery can change everything for us.”

The real benefits of studying neuroscience are twofold. First, we gain insight into how our life experiences from early childhood to present might have affected our cognitive and emotional development. That often allows us to make helpful behavioral changes. Second, we learn there are very specific steps we can take to undo limiting blocks in our behaviors and emotional balance, while enhancing our abilities toward living a more successful life. We have heard the saying, “Knowledge is power”. Even more important, “Self-knowledge is enormous power”.

NOTE: This explanation of our how the brain development limits our abilities to change behavior is simplified. Still, it provides an important core understanding in developing great self-awareness.

Our very first cognitive development occurs in-utero, where we are bombarded with maternal hormones. Up to 50% of our physiological development, including brain development, results from the positive or negative chemicals and hormones (emotions) we absorb from our mother. It’s best have a happy mother during pregnancy.

After birth, we receive continual learning input from parents, siblings, peers, teachers, church authorities, society in general and media (music, tv, video games). This input literally programs us regarding positive experiences such as love, kindness, patience and fun, as well as stressful experiences such as anger, frustration, resentment, and feelings of inadequacy.

Almost nobody totally escapes harmful trauma or deprivation in their youth, and many are subjected to distressing repetitive trauma much of their young lives. Estimates suggest at least 40% of infants and children experience protracted trauma and abuse sufficient to damage their emotional and intellectual development. Virtually all of us experience impactful traumatic events even living in reasonably well-adjusted families.

Brain cells (neurons) activated repeatedly become dominant, even more so as they are bombarded with brain chemicals during intense emotional experiences, positive or negative.

Virtually all early learning “programs” move into our unconscious, controlling our feelings and behaviors throughout life, just like a software or malware program loaded onto our computer.

We are completely unaware of how we developed many of our most powerful beliefs, assumptions and behaviors (our programs). Understanding how and why we function day to day has been a subject of study for centuries. Today, researchers feel that more than 80% of what drives our behaviors is outside our awareness and much of what we do know about this has been uncovered in just the last three decades.

Here is a brief and simplified summary of what we’ve discovered about how the brain responds to change.      

• Much of our learning becomes hardwired into our brain. The more regularity with which we have a type of experience and more impactful or intense the experience is, the more it is reinforced in long term memory. Our memories are stored in various parts of our brain (much of it throughout the cortex) and are activated when we want or need them.  
• Our basal ganglia oversee our execution of familiar and routine functions, such as going to the store, washing dishes, mowing the lawn, the activities we do on auto-pilot. These activities we accomplish on auto-pilot can be called our “Silent Partners”.
• Our prefrontal cortex highly active when we learn something new, such as learning to drive a car, or learning a new computer program. We call this working memory.
• Activities involving the basal ganglia take very little energy and activities involving the prefrontal cortex expends a great amount of energy. We can complete many routine errands with little effort, yet learning something new, especially if it is extended and complex, can be exhausting. Decision-making uses the working memory, and if we are faced with heavy daily our decision-making responsibilities, these abilities will deteriorate throughout the day.
• This partly explains why even when we have great urgency or there is great benefit to acquire new learning, our brain urges us to stay with what we already know, because it requires so much less energy. Change can be hard for the neural setup of our brain, especially when the new learning is forced on us. This is one way the brain resists change.
• Our Orbitofrontal Cortex and Amygdala are both hypersensitive to detecting whether new and different experiences could be “threatening”. Depending on how radically past experiences have programed the Amygdala, it could instantaneously hijack a situation emotionally, reacting with a strong fight or flight response.
• The Amygdala, developed in our primitive brain at a time when fast reaction was a life or death matter, is activated more quickly than the prefrontal cortex, thus overriding that part of our brain that develops a more reasoned and logical response. When faced with something new, something forced on us, something threatening our control of our life situation, a hyperactive Amygdala can cause a severe emotional explosion.
• Our neural processes are also highly sensitive to attempts at manipulation. Only if the change is clearly accompanied by pleasurable experiences, and the learning is fun, helpful and welcomed will resistance from the Amygdala and Orbitofrontal Cortex fade.
• People who have a limited mindset, most often the result of severe traumatic, abusive events, or experiences of deprivation, have a strong tendency to see limits rather opportunities, lack instead of abundance, and competition instead of cooperation. Like the monkey in the cage, they see only the few material prospects right in front of them. They grasp for those sparse offerings – the low-hanging fruit – with myopic focus, never even looking for paths to far greater prosperity and freedom.
• Our extreme reactions, or triggers, often are indications of deeply buried traumatic wounds, guilt or hurt. However unpleasant or disturbing these reactions might be, they are informing us that our behavioral imbalances are unconscious, programed emotional malware that can be fixed.

One of the great recent discoveries of neuroscience is that when discovering new learning on our own, or by our own creative problem-solving, the brain releases a rush of powerful, pleasurable neurotransmitters. The brain literally “lights up” on brain scans during this process.   Learning by reading or through lectures does little to excite the brain or deepen the learning. Positive experiential learning is a far more powerful change agent for the brain. This is the primary reason coaching is such an effective development tool for most people.

The latest neuroscientific discoveries about effective brain function hold powerful potential for rapid transformation in our growth, effectiveness and performance. When we realize how the brain is structured and how our beliefs, perceptions and behaviors develop from infancy, we can far more effectively make remarkable strides in how we improve our lives and the lives of those around us.

If you would like to know more about this fascinating subject, and how you might use this knowledge to further your effectiveness, please contact us. The “Johari Window” is an excellent self-discovery tool. If you would like us to provide you a copy of it, along with instructions for its use, please provide us your email and we’ll send it to you immediately.

Tom Searcy, BBC

Spirit of Eagles