Читать книгу The CommFlow System - Christian Horak - Страница 5

Our brain is a very advanced machine. It has evolved over millions of years. It operates at amazing speed and can store and retrieve huge amounts of information. The brain justly gets a lot of praise for being the main driving factor for putting our species on top of the food chain. Well done, brain! But in spite of its great performance, the brain is essentially "stupid". Just like a digital computer, the brain is essentially a sophisticated data processing machine and will faithfully execute any programs that are fed into it, through nature or nurture.

"Well", you are probably thinking, "I am not sure I agree with this! How can the brain, the main seat of our intelligence be stupid? What is this guy thinking?" Of course, it’s a gross exaggeration to get your attention. But let me explain.

The brain is essentially a collection of biological and chemical mechanisms that have evolved to provide the most appropriate response to a certain stimulus. The brain basically operates to continuously answer ONE main question.

"Is the stimulus I am receiving at this time a threat, or a benefit?"

This basic question is constantly, rapidly and subconsciously evaluated by all senses, continuously compared with stored information, and all other sensations and, if the answer is conclusive (it's a threat / it's a benefit), a number of mechanisms are brought into action that trigger or modify our behavior (fight, flight, excitement, sadness, etc.). These behavioral triggering and modification mechanisms are immensely complex and involve 1000's of different chemicals and bio-electrical systems.

Truly, the brain is an amazing machine. And it does its job really well. But, like I said, it’s essentially stupid. The brain and will continue to simply execute the inherent or learned programs, and it continues to optimize its response machine based on new inputs, experiences and training to further optimize its reflexes and automated responses. And the most important insight of recent scientific discovery about these responses and decision is: This process is neither purely emotional nor purely rational. It’s both emotional and rational at the same time!

There is an entire region of the brain, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), whose job it is to constantly take ALL INPUT, emotions, experiences and rational options and integrate them into a positive emotion to act. And it’s that positive eMOTION that provides the MOTIVation to act and decide; automatically and in split seconds, but always based on the whole experience. So, in short, no emotion, no decision. (see note at bottom of chapter 1).

As a consequence, since we do have a wealth of emotions we can integrate with our rational thoughts in sub second time, one thing the brain does extremely well, is to "jump to conclusions". Often, even a partial or very fuzzy stimulus is enough to trigger a full scale physical or emotional response. In a life and death situation, even the partial sight of a tiger should be enough to trigger the flight response. In a normal everyday communications situation, this sudden triggering of a full response to a partial trigger is a root cause of much conflict and misunderstanding. What is good for basic survival of the species is not always good for excellence in communication.

So we need to be careful not to be constantly "fooled" by the brains trained programs and "auto-triggers". We need to respect the constant automatic evaluation against the "threat/reward" criterion when we communicate. We need to be aware that the brain is a very sophisticated pattern recognition machine. A whole set of neural structures and a chemical called Dopamine is specifically built to look for patterns, try to predict what happens next, and will reward the person with a release of Dopamine, which generates "pleasure".

This pattern recognition machine is the main driver behind learning. The more unexpected the positive outcome is, the more Dopamine is released. And the brain will look for patterns even when the event is completely random. That's when the brain is starting to "make up stories", and we need the help of the rational mind and our connection to the real world to "make sense" of it all. (Note: there is a lot of scientific literature on this, in case you want to learn more about this)

When dealing with a real world stimulus, the brain is usually very reliable and allows us to react with blazing speed. It does this by evaluation of the external stimulus against a stored response program based on patterns. A good example is how we train our brain as well as our muscle reflexes to play better and faster tennis, or how to drive a car, without paying much attention to the mechanical actions needed to steer, shift, brake etc. But take care! The brain also reflexively responds to communication in a highly automated way.

This tendency to "auto-respond" gets even more severe when the body is flooded with one of the main chemicals such as adrenalin, that is preparing the body for an emergency response. This is the reason why you need to be fully awake and aware of the responses you are generating in your audience. What you say does not matter. Only what is being heard, and what reaction you are generating.

Using these auto-triggers, the brain's patterns and conditioned reflexes can lead us into a response that is entirely based on a constructed model of the world, not the real world at all. As a matter of fact, many of our responses to communication are entirely based on assumptions and the brain's speculations regarding the threat/benefit value of a future stimulus. And since the brain is constantly using this model, these assumptions, and the associated reactions can be very wrong or misguided.

Let me repeat. The brain is stupid. Its internal mechanisms cannot differentiate between a "real world" stimulus and a modeled or imagined stimulus. Just like a real world physical input (such as the smell of a bowl of fresh strawberries and cream can make your mouth water and make you want to sit down for a snack), communication in the form of images, words, sentences, and sounds will invoke an IDENTICAL response in the brain.

The brain cannot differentiate between the fear invoked by the sight of a physical Tarantula spider (if you are afraid of spiders) and the fear invoked by the sight of a picture of a Tarantula, or the fear invoked by the mentioning of the word "tarantula". It is the same chemicals that are being released into the body, the same response being triggered, and it needs a conscious effort of our awareness (conscious mind) to manage the triggered response. This is also true when we try to negate the image with words. If you, for example, say "do not think of a Tarantula", the brain cannot help but evoke the image, and therefore the response of the spider. The brain cannot process negatives.

What does this mean for communication? It is essential that we understand the brain at this level to optimize our communications. Here are a few things to remember:

(1) The brain is a very advanced threat/reward evaluation machine. Try to consider this before you initiate or respond to communication because this happens automatically in any interaction.

(2) The brain has/makes a model of the world, and will respond to communication with the same mechanisms it uses for responses to physical stimulus. So, when we communicate, we are basically connecting two world models based on abstract concepts such as words. As we can see in everyday life, this does not always work the way we intend it to work, unless we respect the world model mapping of the person we are interacting with.

(3) The brain cannot process negatives. All concepts/images invoked in communication will produce a response. Even if you bracket it with negatives such as "don't", "but", "never", etc., the brain always scans and processes for the basic concepts that it can relate to phyisical stimulus.

In later chapters I will go into more detail on examples on how the brain operates on information. Just let this short introduction be a reminder that "we cannot not communicate". Every message we send, we send at multiple levels including tone of voice and body language, and every message will always be interpreted by the receiving brain. Keep this in mind the next time you are in the middle of a misunderstanding. You might be more responsible than you thought.