Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long
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with people who are more mindful, more of their brain becomes part of the inhibition process. “It wasn’t just the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex that got activated, but also the medial, right dorsolateral, the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (under the left temple), and other areas that got involved,”
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he chuckles at this memory and lets the thought pass.
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The brain has an overarching organizing principle to minimize danger (an away response) and maximize reward (a toward response).
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The away response is stronger, faster, and longer lasting than the toward response.
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The away response can reduce cognitive resources, make it harder to thin...
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When you sense a strong emotion coming on, refocus your attention quickly on another stimulus, before the emotion takes over.
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the degree of control that organisms can exert over something that creates stress determines whether the stressor alters the organism’s functioning. His findings indicate that only uncontrollable stressors cause deleterious effects.
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Choosing in some way to experience stress is less stressful than experiencing stress without a sense of choice or control.
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Yet another study, looking at residents in a retirement home, found the number of deaths was halved in the study group, compared to a control group, when participants were given three additional choices about their environment. The control group were people on a different floor on the same premises.
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Even if we have the illusion that we are in control, our cognitive functions are preserved.”
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Finding that you have choices in a situation reduces the threats from both autonomy and uncertainty.
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When a child won’t go to bed, you might reduce her resistance by giving her back a choice. She can choose whether she is read a book or told a story. This choice can have a big impact. It’s the “perception” of choice that matters to the brain.
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EVERY DARK CLOUD HAS A SLIVER OF REAPPRAISAL
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reappraisal generally has a stronger emotional braking effect than labeling,
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Remember that perceived dangers pack a punch, so even a small reappraisal in the wrong direction can have quite an impact.
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It turns out that conscious control over the limbic system is possible, not by suppressing a feeling, but rather by changing the interpretation that creates the feeling in the first place.
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This first type of reappraisal involves reinterpreting an event.
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The second type of reappraisal is at the heart of many effective management and therapeutic techniques. It goes by the name of normalizing, and it’s a widely useful tool.
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The third type of reappraisal is a little more complex, but essentially it involves reordering information.
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REAPPRAISAL AS THE “KILLER APPLICATION” FOR EMOTIONAL REGULATION
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To me, reappraisal is one of the most important skills needed for success in life, the other being the ability to observe your mental processes.
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The effort involved in reappraisal explains why it tends to be easier to reappraise with someone else.
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Another person sees things about you that you can’t. It’s like having a bonus prefrontal cortex.
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From away, to toward. You have probably noticed how much easier it is to see options when you laugh at an otherwise tough situation.
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like to think of humor as a type of cheap reappraisal.
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Reappraisal is a powerful strategy for managing increased arousal.
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Find ways to create choice and a perception of autonomy wherever you can.
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“Participants in several social psychological studies have been shown to orient toward goal cues and engage in goal pursuit while being completely unaware of both actions.”
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The phrase “seek and you shall find” may have a basis in neuroscience.
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Because expectations alter perception, this leads people to see what they expect to see, and not see what they are not expecting.
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Because the brain is built to avoid threat, people tend to work hard to reinterpret events to meet their expectations. It’s all too common to see people make tenuous links between ideas that are not really linked, or discard important data that might disprove a theory.
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The placebo lessened perceived pain, even when people were told they may have been given a placebo.
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“Positive expectations produce a reduction in perceived pain that rivals the effects of a clearly analgesic dose of morphine.”
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Unexpected rewards release more dopamine than expected ones.
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However, if you’re expecting a reward and you don’t get it, dopamine levels fall steeply. This feeling is not a pleasant one; it feels a lot like pain.
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Dopamine is the neurotransmitter of desire. Dopamine levels rise when you want something, even something as simple as to cross the road.
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you need a good level of dopamine to “hold” an idea in your prefrontal cortex. Positive expectations increase the level of dopamine in the brain, and this increased level makes you more able to focus. This makes sense intuitively: teachers know that kids learn best when they are interested in a subject.
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happy people perceive a wider range of data, solve more problems, and come up with more new ideas for actions to take in a situation.
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Managing your expectations is also an opportunity for your director to be more proactive, setting the scene for good performance rather than just sorting out problems when things go wrong.
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“With any brain function, the important thing is firstly to minimize threat,” explains Evian Gordon. “Only once threat has been minimized can you focus on increasing possible rewards.”
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For average emotional hits you can try labeling your emotions, which increases a sense of certainty and reduces limbic arousal. For stronger emotional hits you can reappraise, by changing your interpretation of events.
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Being hungry and being ostracized activate similar threat and pain responses, using the same networks.
Vijay Gopal
why no strokes can hurt
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One of the unusual aspects of these neurons is that they light up only if we see someone perform an action that has a specific intent behind it. Random actions don’t have the same effect. In this way, mirror neurons seems to be the brain’s mechanisms for understanding other people’s intent—their goals and objectives—and, as a result, feeling connected to them.
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Mirror neurons explain why leaders need to be extra conscious of managing their stress levels, as their emotions really do impact others.
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Here’s one big reason collaboration is difficult: just as the brain automatically classifies any situation into a possible reward or threat, it does the same with people, determining, subconsciously, whether each person you meet is either a friend or foe.
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Research within the positive psychology field shows there is only one experience in life that increases happiness over a long time. It’s not money, above a base survival amount. It’s not health, nor is it marriage or having children. The one thing that makes people happy is the quality and quantity of their social connections.
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increased social support also serves as a buffer against potential stresses by reducing reactivity to other threats.
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She didn’t know that she needed to defuse the natural “foe” state before getting her new team to do some difficult thinking.
Vijay Gopal
Lincoln's advice: before you persuade someone , be their friend first
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People are classed as friend or foe quickly, with foe as the default in the absence of positive cues.
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Anytime you meet someone new, make an effort to connect on a human level as early as possible to reduce the threat response.