Month: May 2018

Which brain causes you to change?

                                                                   our 3 brains

A useful way to think about changing behaviours or patterns of thinking is; people will change when they fully understand and can integrate the change at three levels:
• Head
• Heart
• Gut
From my own experience, let’s take stopping smoking, which I did In 1997. The history is; started at 21 years old at 25 per day for around 20 years, stopped for about 5 years, started again for 5 years at 20 per day or 5 cigars per day, then stopped finally. I must admit it looks awful seeing it written down😳. Any way how did I finally stop? Like a lot of smokers , I knew intellectually (in my head) that it is unhealthy to smoke; it is not good for you for all sorts of well explained reasons. At the head level then, I had accepted (but not integrated), the need to change. That was not enough to make me stop😏. One day, I was invited to a medical check-up by my Company and asked to blow as hard as I could into a little machine. The machine did not play happy music and the output, along with the doctor person’s interpretation, caused a ‘gut’ reaction. A pulse of fear ran through me and now I have two of the three reasons to change, head and gut. Having the two together, caused me to analyse the consequences of the habit much more, i.e. what would happen to me if I carried on smoking, what would happen if I stopped, how would I cope? From this I developed a possible strategy to do the ‘stopping’. With this in place, I searched and knew in my heart of hearts, I would stop (I got the power). With my head, heart and gut now in agreement, I stopped.
If you are a smoker, this is my ‘warm turkey’ strategy for stopping.
Since most smoking is habitual i.e. I always have one with a cup of tea after eating breakfast, then I have one in the car on the way to work, then I have one when I arrive at work etc.. I simply delayed having the first cigarette for an hour, on the first three days, then next three days delayed by another hour, then next three days by another hour etc.. What I found was, when I had delayed the first cigarette to four o’clock in the afternoon, I’m saying to myself, “you can wait this long, so why bother with this one?” I’m choosing now not to have it and could finally throw the packet away. The key here is I chose, I made a conscious choice🦉

The reasons you’d want to know about this are:-
• Becoming the ‘real you’ will most certainly involve change on your part
• This insight will help you create the conditions for change, also execute and sustain the change

What is this about?
This is to do with how we, as humans, approach change. It is useful to think about change requiring agreement within us, across three parts.
There is an intellectual part of us (head) that does the analysing and thinking about the reason to change, what the change actually will be, how we will do it and what the consequences will be. In my stop smoking example above, at the beginning, this part had only really looked superficially at the evidence available about why I should stop and not associated what it was finding with the true ‘me’.
The second part, (gut) came into play in the doctor’s office, with that pulse of fear. I had a visceral response and now instinctively, if you like, knew, something was amiss. Having this part in play now, as it were, caused me to associate the damage of smoking directly to me, and triggered deeper intellectual thinking around why, what , how.
Finally, in this example the third part, the (heart) came into play where I examine in my ‘heart of hearts’, do I have the will, the power, to do this?
I have a belief that our heart is the seat of our power (e-motion). It is the driver. It is where our love comes from and is the part that contains the spirit within us.
Note, I’m equating these three parts thus:-
• Head —- Intellect
• Heart—- love / spirit / power
• Gut —– Instinct / visceral / intuition
Also I believe the order in which we ‘get’ things varies. So we may get something intellectually first (head), as I did with smoking, or maybe the first thing we get is an intuition (gut), or maybe we experience a deep instinctual trigger (gut). The important thing for change to happen is, we need agreement across all three👍👍👍.
How can we use this insight?
As I have said, only you can change you and you will only do that if you truly want to change.

It is my belief that this is where the ‘want to’ gets sorted out – in the agreement of these three parts Head – Heart – Gut

Think about a change you are considering but you haven’t really made yet.

  • Are all the parts in agreement?
  • Are you sure?

Can you put it in a wheelbarrow?

                                                      language meta model

The above figure shows how we use language, viz. we have an experience and create an internal representation of sensory information which is stored eventually in deep memory. As we recall the memory and bring it to conscious mind in order to speak about it, some interesting things happen.
We nominalise, delete, distort and generalise . See below:-

Nominalisation a common form of distortion
• The communication in this company is atrocious
o How could we communicate more effectively?
• They need my decision by Monday
o When will you decide?
Note: nominalization is when we make a verb into a noun and remove the doing or action. There is a simple test for nominalization, if you cannot put it in a wheelbarrow, then it is a nominalisation, in the above examples you cannot put communication or decision in a wheelbarrow even although you could put a piece of paper with what had been communicated or what the decision was, written on it.

Deletion
• I am afraid
o What specifically are you afraid of?
• She is a better driver
o Better than whom?
• I like her
o What do like about her?
Distortion (mind-reading)
• Susan has no regard for my opinion
o How do you know?
• He’ll be compelled to act
o What gives you that impression?
• You’ve lost all respect for me
o What leads you to that view ?
Generalisation
• I am never mistaken
o You have never ever made a mistake?
• Everybody thinks like that
o Everybody? Everybody in the whole world?
• Nobody takes me seriously
o Not one single person in the whole world ?

Reasons  to know about this are:-
• Sometimes how we use language, clouds understanding of a specific situation.
• It provides an easy way to get someone, especially you, to think a little more about a situation
• It will provoke new ways of thinking

What is this about?
This is to do with how the brain uses language to build its ‘maps’ and how people create faulty mental maps of reality, failing to test their linguistic / cognitive models against the experience of their senses.

How can we use this insight?
First thing is to notice. Use  the observer to catch yourself using these linguistic devices and then ask yourself an appropriate question e.g. you say or think ‘nobody takes me seriously’ . then ask ‘ what nobody? Nobody at all anywhere ever? In the whole wide world, there is nobody that takes me seriously?’ I’m sure you can come up with one or two that do. What this does, is give a truer perspective and probably something better to build beliefs on. Use the insight also, to gently catch others when they use the devices, to help them maintain a ‘truer’ possibly better balanced view.

When you observe, which of the four do you use most:-

  • Nominalise?
  • Delete?
  • Distort?
  • Generalise?

What happens when you ‘correct’ and gain a truer, more balanced  perspective?

Reframing; think about it in a different way.

Reframing:- I believe this is one of the most powerful ‘tools’ I have learned on my path.🦉

A very old Chinese Taoist story describes a farmer in a poor country village. He was considered very well to do, because he owned a horse that he used for ploughing and transportation. One day his horse ran away. All his neighbours exclaimed how terrible this was , but the farmer just said “maybe.”
A few days later the horse returned and brought two wild horses with it. The neighbours all rejoiced at his good fortune, but the farmer just said “maybe.”
The next day the farmer’s son tried to ride one of the wild horses; the horse threw him and he broke his leg. The neighbours all offered their sympathy for his misfortune, but the farmer again, just said “maybe.”
The next week conscription officers came to the village to take young men to the army, they rejected the farmer’s son because of his broken leg. When the neighbours told him how lucky he was, the farmer replied “maybe.”

The meaning that any event has depends upon the ‘frame’ in which we perceive it. When we change the frame, we change the meaning. Having two wild horses is a good thing until it is seen in the context of the son’s broken leg. The broken leg seems to be bad in the context of peaceful village life; but in the context of conscription and war, it suddenly becomes good.
This is called reframing; changing the frame in which a person perceives events in order to change the meaning. When the meaning changes, the person’s responses and behaviours also change. (Grinder, 1982) There are many NLP books that will take you into reframing and how to do it in many contexts, too numerous to mention here

The reasons you’d want to know about this are:-
• Another frame will generate other ways of thinking about an issue
• Even thinking about reframing an issue or problem will help in generating a solution

What is this about?
It is a useful strategy in generating flexibility of thinking, in order to resolve issues and problems, both within yourself and with others.

How can we use this insight?

Calling someone too ‘unfocused’ for example. A reframe to enable you to work with the person in a better way, is to maybe think of them, being useful as a ‘wide angle’ lens, bringing more into the ‘picture’, broadening and  deepening understanding  of the whole context, through doing that perhaps.
Or let’s say you perceive someone in your team as obstructive, then a possible reframe may be, actually when you need a dam to stop a flood happening , obstructive is good. Or if you need a ‘solid wall to push against, then obstructive is good. Or more literally you can use them with permission, as a solid sounding board for new ideas.

This insight really can help you change your beliefs 😀

  • What / who is ‘bothering’ you at the moment?
  • How might you reframe that?