Читать книгу The Every-Year Itch - Kirsten de Bouter Shillam - Страница 10

THE BRAIN – LEANING OVER TO THE RIGHT

The camera cannot see what you don’t point it at. You can only have one perspective; is it your own? To see differently you might need to stand somewhere else, listen with your heart not your ears, see with your senses not your eyes, taste with your intuition not your tongue. When you take one step to the right, the shadows will fall differently. What you see depends on where you stand.

Introduction

We all have a brain. This might seem an unnecessary statement, but not many people are that consciously aware of it, let alone use it to its fullest potential. How do you even know what the brain’s potential truly is? Scientists tell us that the more they discover about this incredible human computer, the more they realise how little they know. So many questions about how exactly the brain operates remain unanswered. Research never seems to stumble upon the human brain’s limitations, but instead opens up more areas for discussion and speculation. Chances are that for you and me that means there’s still much undiscovered territory.

The brain consists of two halves, the left and right hemispheres. Without needing to understand the intricacies of brain development and for the purpose of this chapter simplifying things terribly, the left brain concerns itself with the logical, with measurable facts and figures. The right brain on the other hand deals with expansive imagination and creative visualisation. However, the two hemispheres work together extensively in various areas. It’s very much a joint effort.

Brain development happens all the time, whether we are aware of it or not. We are constantly inundated with stimuli that need processing. Our brains are shaped by the environment we live in and the external factors we are exposed to. If you take a broad look at your life, how you think and how you make decisions, would you then conclude you are mostly governed by factual thinking or are you very much a creative?

ARE YOU A FACTUAL THINKER

OR A CREATIVE?

OR BOTH?

When I ask this question in groups it takes people very little time to conclude that they are mostly factual thinkers. We are living in a “left brain dominated society”, so it’s not difficult to be influenced and impressed by this approach. Questions that arise quickly are: how much does that cost, how long is this going to take, what profit will be made, etc.? In other words, questions that determine the bottom line, the results and the requirements for something. Imagination, visualisation, brainstorming and also the arts are all creative activities, associated with the right brain. In our hierarchical society it seems that the left brain and the “serious”, “demanding”, measurable business-like activities are favoured or certainly deemed to be more important than creative activities. Of course it is nice to be creative (so it’s explained)… as a hobby. The serious stuff is happening in the “real” (left, logical brain) world.

SO, WHERE IS THIS GOING?

This chapter looks at the bigger picture of what has made us so fact-focused. It’s threatening to take all life out of our imagination. Any new plans may suffer the overbearing burden of this way of thinking, which could lead to never coming out of the starting blocks.

This chapter will offer the helicopter-view, a greater awareness to help you see this for what it is. It’s conditioning and certainly not who you are.

Measuring success

Most of us have had the relative privilege to enjoy an educational system, where brain development in the form of learning is supposed to take place. This is also where –certainly at the moment–the logical, factual and measurable brain emphasis is considered superior. Children spend their time learning facts and figures, appropriate for their age, against a pre-determined time frame. Creative activities such as art, music and sport are part of the curriculum but they aren’t in the spotlight. They don’t require testing. It is great if you are good at these skills, but almost immediately the question on everybody’s lips will be “what are your marks for maths and English (or equivalent)?”.

In his popular TED talk “Do schools kill creativity?”, Sir Ken Robinson makes the case for different types of skills and intelligences and the fact that children learn in individual ways. In this, the arts, he says, mustn’t be underestimated as a way of unlocking children’s potential. They can in fact play an essential role for children to find their way of learning and being in their element.

We have all been shaped through school life and the subsequent selection processes which have of course focused on testing to meet certain requirements. Inevitably that means that people fall into one of two categories, smart or not, a brainy person versus a practical work-with-your-hands kind of person, intellectual versus vocational. Scores in these kinds of tests are seen as high or low. And a high score would always be more favourable than a low score.

This is what has shaped many people’s judgement of others as well as themselves. Even in the world around us, much of life is filtered in ways that could be measured against a standard. Depending on the scores you would consider yourself a success or not and you would judge others in the same way.

For many years I worked with a client who was hugely successful in business but had a chip on his shoulder due to his lack of traditional education and his inability to express himself very well with words. However, in his business he was an outstanding talent, a great networker and endlessly recommended as the go-to person. Working in the building trade he was intimidated by people who appeared to be “educated” even though he was far more successful than all of them put together.

The world we live and work in has advanced far quicker than we have been able to adapt to it. Intelligence was previously seen as a way of retaining facts and knowledge (IQ). Daniel Goleman talked about Emotional Intelligence (EQ), the ability to understand and communicate feelings, your own and those of others. Emotional intelligence has been termed a crucial ingredient to success by having empathy. Therefore it might be more accurate today to define intelligence as the ability to adapt. It’s no longer all about the survival of the fittest, but of the most agile.

INTELLIGENCE: "MENTAL ACTIVITY DIRECTED TOWARD PURPOSIVE ADAPTATION TO, SELECTION, AND SHAPING OF REAL-WORLD ENVIRONMENTS RELEVANT TO ONE'S LIFE."

PSYCHOLOGIST ROBERT STERNBERG

You cannot use old measuring standards in a fast-changing world and box everything neatly in an orderly way. It also doesn’t capture the human experience which is so rich and diverse. Tests don’t measure learning, profit doesn’t measure engagement, diplomas don’t measure talent, rules don’t measure experience. But people are so shaped by it, that it has become the very fabric of our success evaluation system.

Over the years I have worked with many people who go back to that early point in time where they had to choose what they were going to do for a living. If choosing was even an option. Some people’s journeys were pre-determined by the fact that they were considered “not academic”. Their school life was painful, and they probably would have done anything to get out of it. Others did some simple life-maths and concluded to either do something sensible or escape the whole learning environment and roll into work. I have had clients say to me that they chose accountancy because it was sensible, or that parents made them do something with their hands so they “could always fall back on something”.

To this day doing a university degree is still considered the sure way to a steady future, even though high percentages of graduates are out of work. A shocking 54.8% of students in the US will complete college with a diploma, leaving a huge group either in education for longer than six years or not qualifying at all. In the UK the number of drop-outs is smaller but rising year on year.

TESTS DON'T MEASURE LEARNING, PROFIT DOESN'T MEASURE ENGAGEMENT, DIPLOMAS DON'T MEASURE TALENT, RULES DON'T MEASURE EXPERIENCE.

Unlocking the creative brain

It appears that in a world where technology has caused an explosion of entrepreneurship and huge diversification of ways and manners in which to make a living, we still revert back to simple school and college results to assess ability. In this, adaptability doesn’t officially feature, yet it is a hugely important skill. Equally creativity and innovation are not recognised in conventional school results. It still comes down to the piece of paper you hold which is still based on a pre-technology era.

It leaves the abilities of the creative brain hugely undervalued. I stumbled across this in my early years of working within organisations. I was working on a project with a group of managers and explained to them about the creative abilities of the brain. Before translating this into how it could affect and enhance their approach, I gave them a “disassociation” exercise. You describe an object to others, but you do so imaginatively. In other words, you are not allowed to refer to what the object is actually for. I knew beforehand that their imaginations needed a bit of warming up, but I wasn’t prepared for the awkwardness and downright failure of the whole exercise. The room was filled with “Uhm – uhm” and people looking over to me as if to say: “Help!” Some gave me the deathstare with the subtitle “What is this all about? Are you making fun of us?”

I told them if you got a 5-year-old child to do it, they would have a field day with it. The fact that they were so conditioned by factual and measured thinking meant that my so-called silly exercise didn’t seem to have any value. Holding a bag as an object, their brain would be screaming “It’s a bag!” whilst they were trying to imaginatively come up with other suggestions. Just imagine applying that to a work scenario that needs a different approach or solution. You wouldn’t get very far.

We repeated the exercise. With the understanding of it, they improved. What had changed was the energy in the room. People were trying to be creative, there was lots of laughter. Practice would have made a real difference.

I used this experiment in many different organisations and with individual clients. Everywhere I found there to be the same blockage. People were unprepared to try something new. They wanted to know the process and do well immediately.

You can’t have a pre-determined system for everything. Not everything is a system. The potential of the human brain is far greater than that. Unlock the creative brain and the diversity of human experience. Next to measurement and systems stand innovation, vision, meaning. You can’t get to your itch, unless you consider the whole spectrum.

YOU CAN'T CALCULATE FOR

EVERYTHING.

THE BROTHER OF MEASURING

IS MEANING.

CYNICAL SELF ALERT

You might be thinking that it is genetic predisposition the way you think and tackle problems. The nature–nurture debate is more or less negated, because although we all start out with a certain DNA, it’s the environment that determines development.

The overriding tendency in the West is to box things in binary ways. Human life has got so much more potential if the story is explained by making connections and seeing synergies. Life isn’t by definition “done” in a certain way.

Think ACES before applying SMART

I have always done a lot of goal setting and strategic planning in organisations. Immediately people ask me to introduce the SMART-principle for goal setting and there is nothing I dislike more. It is such an overused term and doesn’t fit our times anymore, if it ever did. It’s based on factual thinking and concerns itself with rules and regulations and this-is-how-we-have-always-done-it attitudes. Narrowing options rather than widening them. That’s no way to go into the future.

The S stands for Specific, immediately followed by Measurable. If your life is at a certain point from which you would really like to move on, then it is impossible to be specific let alone know how to measure anything. If you want to move your business on, you can’t do so based on the specifics of what you already know. Equally, you cannot know at that point what’s Achievable, Relevant or indeed what Time factors there are involved here.

S-M-A-R-T is step two. Not insignificant, but it follows another principle. What comes first is A-C-E-S.

A – AWARENESS C – CREATIVE BRAIN E – EXPERIMENT S – SOLUTIONS

Every opportunity or problem today needs an increased awareness of human behaviour. During the awareness phase, you look from different angles, through different eyes. You allow yourself to be informed to get the widest possible understanding of what’s going on and what is needed in the bigger picture. Awareness is followed by a playful engaging with the creative brain. Flip-thinking, stepping outside the comfort zone, trying things on for size, coming up with various plausible scenarios, ideas, initiatives, innovations.

Experimentation is all about real life testing without all the risk and the investment. It creates a freedom to play and give things a shot. It will soon emerge what survives the experimentation phase and which option therefore can be instrumental in defining the best solutions. These can then be defined by SMART.

The human brain is an incredible instrument. Decide to put it to use wisely. Don’t get too hung up on what certificates or experience you have – those will act as limiting filters. It’s about your talent and what you can do with it tomorrow. The creative brain will enable you to imagine things that haven’t happened yet. You can visualise the outcome you want to see. You can turn things inside out, if you can silence the practical brain and ignore its questions about who, what, where and how much.

It’s a game of two halves; it’s a 50-50 deal. I’m not saying that the creative brain is more important. It’s just that the world we grew up in has not acknowledged it for its valuable contribution. With the knowledge that we are so much more skilled and left-brain trained, it would always be my advice to give the creative brain visualisation a bit more space. For planning, goal setting and especially for actioning your every-year itch, base yourself in bigger picture visualisation first. Of course, you need to plan practically, measure improvement and know how you have done, but get immersed in figuring out what you want and who you really are first.

Immobilising thought patterns in the imaginary plaster cast

What’s the practical application of this? I know through working with hundreds of clients that the words only penetrate one level of understanding. Clients almost immediately come back with the “Yes, but” response. They seem to get it on one level but the moment they have to engage in a short exercise all that nodding goes out the window. They like the theory, but theory only never changed lives. In applying it, people meet obstacles almost immediately.

If you have done a certain thing over and over, then it’s understandable that you will struggle. The faculties that you have relied upon will moan and complain, even question why things have to be done differently. You can’t get rid of them because you need them later.

S-T-R-U-G-G-L-E HAS R-E-S-U-L-T IN IT

For now, immobilise all old attitudes and behaviours by sticking them in an imaginary plaster cast. The one the doctor puts on when a bone is broken. Whilst the arm is in the plaster cast, the muscles aren’t being exercised and as a result that arm’s muscle mass atrophies, because they are not being used.

Apply this method to your thinking muscles. If your usual way of thinking and evaluating can be contained in a plaster cast, then those approaches will atrophy also. It’s a mental discipline that will pay dividends. Each time you have the urge to explain, detail or substantiate what you are doing to justify some old pattern, then see that doctor put on that plaster cast. Immobilise those thoughts. This will give you the chance to develop new thinking muscles that can prompt new ways of being and doing things.

CYNICAL SELF ALERT

Yes, but… easier said than done, you might come up with. This is not a question of having a personality transplant. Just for the purpose of trying something new, temporarily, you put on hold (in the freezer or in that plaster cast) your reactions that might have become automatic. Yes, and… says: you never know what you might find. If it doesn’t teach you anything new or worthwhile, take the plaster cast off and apply your usual thinking patterns. Nothing has been lost.

“Yes, and…” instead of “Yes, but…”

Another way of obtaining a new perspective is by replacing or overlaying every “Yes, but” attitude with a “Yes, and” attitude. Yes, but… as an approach is judging things from a distance and commenting on them from your usual point of view. Yes, and… as an approach takes it to the next level by thinking of the next step or opportunity.

"YES, BUT" PEOPLE, GRAB THE BATON AND BEAT YOU.

"YES, AND" PEOPLE, GRAB THE BATON AND RUN WITH YOU.

LOOK AT IT THIS WAY

Is your thinking your own or conditioned? Have you been taught to approach things methodically, “realistically”? Try to pause and apply a different tactic in a right-brain, creatively rich way. The brain plays a game of two halves. Together they can change your world. How can you apply thinking differently to the changing world around you?

TOOLBOX

• ACES: awareness, creative brain, experiment, solutions.

• Thoughts become things.

• Old thought patterns in a plaster cast.

• “Yes, and . . .”