Insights from Brain Research

As I’ve been working with corporations on workforce behaviors and dealing with change, my desire grew to understand why we focus on what we don’t want. I am a thought leader in workplace dynamics, change, and the future of work. I am not a neuroscientist. Therefore, I sought answers from the scientific community.

Over the years, I have been fortunate to collaborate with a number of people who have dedicated their careers to brain research. I’ll share enough about what I’ve learned about the brain to provide understanding and awareness, without causing overload, because the brain is a very, very complex entity. We still have so much to learn about the quadrillions of synapses that occur in the brain. (A synapse is a gap between two nerve cells. Neurons are cells that pass signals to individual target cells, and synapses are the means by which they do so.)

Ellen Weber is CEO of the MITA Brain Institute. Brain research is her business. Specifically, she translates brain research into human behavior, in particular, human behavior within organizations. When I asked Dr. Weber what causes us to focus on what we don’t want, she explained that it is a combination of social conditioning and life experiences. We develop a fear-based response that begins with our unique genes and is socially conditioned within our families. Well-intentioned parents say things to their kids like “Don’t run!” “Don’t get hurt!” and “Don’t act out!” Their good intentions are to protect their children, but in reality, they create a fear-based reaction. Sometimes it’s real; sometimes it’s perceived. For instance, you might come from a family that has a tendency to worry or that has a kind of victim mentality (always thinking someone is “after them”).

Our genetic makeup partially determines our reactions, and families are the first place that social conditioning begins. Influence continues with our schools and includes the people we hang around with, the work we do, and the environment with which we surround ourselves. In a recent presentation, I discussed social conditioning and family influence. Afterward, a mother told me, “You spoke to me today. Before I left home this morning I said to my son David, ‘Don’t act out. Don’t overreact.’ Now that you bring this up, it makes perfect sense that I should give him direction he can actually act on in a positive way. It would have been better to say, ‘Have good listening ears today and remember to pay attention to your teacher’s directions. Try standing by Joey. He makes good decisions.’” I told her that she’s right and can take it one step further by coaching David to focus on what he wants. She could say, “David, how would you like gym class to go today? What will you need to do for that to happen?” She can ask David questions that prompt him to think of specific things he can do. “Which classmates are doing well in the class and could help you do these things?” I told her she might think that David is too young to respond positively to coaching like this, but no matter what their age, kids are capable of focusing on what they want, and the sooner you help them pave pathways toward what they want, the better. This is perhaps the most compelling reason to adopt the Seeing Red Cars mind-set and teach it to your kids. It’s one of the best ways to help our children accomplish what they want.

Early social conditioning is what starts to create a sense of fear or concern with things like the unknown, failure, loss of social stature, and new and different things. Coaching children early on, like the example of David, steers social conditioning toward positive rather than negative outcomes.

Another reason we focus on what we don’t want is that we do not think we are capable or deserving. Again, this comes from social conditioning. If you come from a background of humble means, you and your family members may think, “People like us don’t get a PhD.” This can be a powerful mental block that prevents you from even trying. Robert Fritz, an expert in developing creative capacities, says that two common beliefs get in the way of accomplishing what we want. Number one is the common belief in our powerlessness, our inability to bring into being all the things we really care about. Number two is unworthiness, that we do not deserve to have what we truly desire. Self-talk like this causes inaction and reverting to autopilot. The key to overcoming this threat is awareness. With self-realization that negative social conditioning can get in the way, you can turn on your relentless intention to root out the ways your thoughts are limiting or deceiving you. Challenge those thoughts and forge new pathways of thinking and taking actions toward your wants.

In The Fifth Discipline Peter Senge discusses the powerful tension between where you are now and what you want by using an illustration with rubber bands to symbolize the tension. Picture yourself in the middle, facing right. Behind you, on the left, is a pole, and in front of you, on the right, is a large hand. You’re in the middle with two rubber bands around your waist—one rubber band stretched around your waist and the pole on the left and the other rubber band stretched around your waist and the hand on the right. Both rubber bands are taut.

Opposite forces exist at all times when you are not content with the way things are today and you have specific “I wants” you are striving for. These forces act like rubber bands pulling you in opposite directions. The key is to acknowledge these forces and to plan and take purposeful actions so that you remain in control. Inaction pulls you toward the “I don’t want” mind-set, on the left side, while intentional actions pull you toward the positive outcomes you want, on the right.

Another factor is real-life experiences. For instance, if you’ve had a car accident, it is only natural to focus on what you don’t want: another car accident. This is especially true if you have a natural proclivity toward introspection. Years ago, my friend accidentally fell into the music pit at a concert and broke her leg. It’s only natural that she does not want to fall into a music pit again. Even though the possibility of this ever happening again is remote, her eyes are wide open to situations in which she could reinjure herself.

Fear and Concern Trigger Negative Emotional Reactions

The brain plays a major role in the tendency to focus on what we don’t want. In our brains, the amygdala controls the automatic responses associated with fear and concern. Think of it as the brain’s place to store all our reactions to good and bad situations over a lifetime. It’s the seat of our emotional responses. When we encounter something that we’re afraid of or concerned about, the amygdala is good. As Dr. Weber says, “Panic reactions stored in the amygdala can cause us to get off the road when a Mack truck is barreling around the corner.” That is good. That is helpful. Without the amygdala’s familiar and learned reactions, we might show up to a meeting without clothes, if at all. This, too, is helpful. The trouble is that, due to our genetics, social conditioning, and life experiences, the amygdala has a difficult time distinguishing the difference between the threat of being hit by a Mack truck, the anxiety of asking for a raise, and the emotion of a challenging conversation. You may not be paralyzed with fear, but the brain is reacting very similarly. Whenever the amygdala reacts with fear or anxiety, it causes the release of harmful chemicals such as cortisol. The chemical reaction from cortisol has some limited redeeming qualities, but the first and last items on the list are certainly not desirable: high blood pressure and belly fat. If those reasons aren’t enough to avoid it, here are some others: inability to focus, lack of creativity, and lack of innovation and resourcefulness. Fortunately, we can detour around the amygdala’s negative reactions by storing reactions that lead us to more delightful goals, so that our brain doesn’t land in the “I’m freaked” zone.

The amygdala creates a damaging pattern of reactions, which we can avoid. We can guide the amygdala to work in our favor by storing responses we’d like others to see in us—and we in ourselves—so that these responses emerge when we need them most. It is not easy, given our social conditioning and life experiences, but with the right intention and discipline, we can react well to tough situations and thereby alter our brain’s chemical and electrical circuitry to move us toward what we want in any given situation. This is important: Take it one small step at a time. When you attempt too big a change, you trigger fear and avoidance. Take small, steady, incremental steps.

Creating New Roads Triggers Positive Responses

Instead of cortisol, you can choose to rewrite the typical responses stored in the amygdala to produce an opposite chemical reaction and release serotonin, which lends itself to creativity, innovation, and focus. It’s why some people are just a lot more fun to be around. These are the people others like to work with and who are often asked to be part of projects. They have a natural tendency to come up with important solutions and responses to challenges.

Many wonderful benefits await people who act on what recent research suggests: Axons and dendrites can regenerate, regardless of your age, through the process of neuroplasticity, which means fresh rewiring. It is the secret to change and the answer to how we can reroute our brain’s natural inclination to focus on what we don’t want. We can grow, regenerate, and pave new neuron pathways toward our goals.

Neuroplasticity is defined as the brain’s natural ability to form new connections to compensate for injury or environmental changes. A neuron is a nerve cell. Our brains have 100 billion of them, and you can march yours in your favor with carefully crafted activity. Neurons have extensions that are called dendrite brain cells. These extensions connect and reconnect. Axons, in contrast, relay information from the body back to the brain. In a complex electrochemical process, neurons communicate with each other in synapse, and the connection creates chemicals called neural transmitters. Each synapse begins creating a neural pathway.

The brain cells you obliterated in college or at the New Year’s bash are gone for good, but luckily our brains can rebuild cells, strengthen remaining cells, and build new connections that compensate for those lost each day. Brains use the outside world to shape and reshape themselves physically and mentally. This means we can alter bad habits and add new approaches, such as focusing on what we want and aligning our thoughts, actions, and behaviors toward desired outcomes. It’s like building a new road for your neurons and then acting on the desired changes. Your brain restructures to facilitate the process.

The reason it is hard to form those new pathways is that we have those estimated 12,000 to 50,000 thoughts coursing through our brains each day, and 70% of them are focused on what we don’t want and what we’d like to avoid. Since a large percentage of our thoughts, actions, and behaviors are repetitive, inadvertently we create deep neural ruts that are hard to get out of and hard to change. It reminds me of driving on long stretches of freeway in South Dakota in the winter. The accumulation of ice on the well-traveled roadways creates deep ruts. It’s much easier to let the tires roll in those ruts than to try to get out of them.

Awareness, Expectation, and Intention Drive Positive Outcomes

When you’re consciously aware and you act on what you want to have happen, your brain responds by creating a road in. Change comes to the human brain with intention and consciously repetitive, step-by-step action toward future change. Whichever direction our prominent thoughts lean—either positively or negatively—our brains produce chemical reactions that attract more of those outcomes. The following story illustrates this reality.

I put myself through college working in a medical clinic. Carol and Rebecca worked at the front desk. They were similar in many ways: cheerful, helpful, and committed to doing the job well. As similar as they were, their daily experiences could not have been more different.

Rebecca seemed to attract the disgruntled patient. Scarcely a day went by when she didn’t get berated and publicly challenged by a frustrated patient. Carol, on the other hand, rarely had such an encounter. When she did, she was able to turn the tide quickly. I often imagined their dinner conversations—Rebecca lamenting the crabby, mean-spirited patients and stressful work environment, and Carol commenting about the current trends of the flu.

What differentiated their experiences? Largely, expectation, a state of mind! Carol expected a fluid day at the clinic, and it often was. Before things got off track, Carol’s expectations for the day would propel her into action. She’d quickly smooth slightly ruffled feathers before things got totally disheveled. She’d extend a confident smile and self-assured demeanor that left people feeling secure that they were in good hands.

Rebecca, on the other hand, focused on what she didn’t want and got more of it. She didn’t want to be yelled at, and she got yelled at. She didn’t want charts to get misplaced, and they often did, especially charts of regular patients we knew had short fuses. Rebecca was focused on what she didn’t want. For that reason, anticipating situations before they happened wasn’t even on Rebecca’s radar. She reacted in the moment; she reacted with fear. Often you could see her posture anticipating the blow before a word was uttered.

Larry Dressler, author of Standing in the Fire, says that in these moments of high heat, two kinds of energies ignite within us. One is the energy of reactivity and defensiveness, and the other is the energy of calm and deliberate choice.

Carol operated with calm and deliberate choice. She took pride in her ability to sense the wants and needs of the patients. I remember looking out into a filled waiting room with her. She gave a swift and accurate assessment of the emotional energy of the room with specific insight as to the patients’ emotional and medical needs. Carol and Rebecca encountered the same tense situations every day. The difference was that Rebecca mentally set herself up for negative outcomes, and Carol poised herself for positive outcomes. You get more of whatever you focus on.

Now that you have awareness, you, too, can choose to be like Carol. Being clear about what you want affects others and allows you to anticipate situations and take appropriate action to ultimately get what you want.

A few years back, I was working with an executive who was really stuck in a negative pattern of thinking and behaving. It took three months of hard work, reminders, and reinforcement for him to get out of the ruts and create more productive neural pathways. It was not easy, but he would confirm that it was well worth it. The improvements in morale, productivity, and results were reasons enough, but he also experienced improvement in his personal relationships, especially with his kids. He says this is perhaps the most compelling reason to choose to make the change. Note the pivotal word here: “Choose.” But choice does not equate to easy.