Читать книгу Beyond Emotional Intelligence - S. Michele Nevarez - Страница 12

In the same way scientists discovered an entire ecosystem of microorganisms living within a single drop of water, we can each discover the universe of possibilities percolating within us, a dynamic display just ready to express itself in any number of ways and combinations. As Leonard Mlodinow writes in his book Elastic, the magnificence of the human brain lies in its ability for “bottom-up” or elastic thinking (Mlodinow, 2018). This is the kind of novel and creative thought process that has at its beck and call a seemingly infinite number of possible connections it can draw from, resulting in unique ideas and unexpected creations. The brain's capacity for free and nonlinear association is still more of a mystery than not and hasn't yet been successfully replicated outside of the stomping grounds of the human skull. In the same way the brain's capacity for elastic thinking has given rise to humanity's greatest inventions, our brain has the unique and unparalleled capacity to simulate its own reality, casting predictions that piece together the fundamental ingredients of perception itself. While we each have the experience of leading our lives out in the world, in fact we live our entire lives from the cockpit of our own minds.

Despite the fact that it seems we're strictly responding to stimuli on a reactive basis, contrary to how we experience our own perceptions and emotions, the brain is thought to proactively simulate its own version of reality. According to the latest neuroscience research, the brain draws on its prior experiences to predict what will happen next, anticipating how we will need to respond. Our brain makes real-time adjustments to its estimations to account for its own prediction errors and metabolic requirements by factoring in input from our senses as well as our interoceptive sensations. Words and concepts are the brain's currency for making sense of its own perceptions relative to what it anticipates will happen next and how we will need to respond in a context-appropriate manner. Lisa Feldman Barrett has written extensively about the brain's functioning relative to each of these topics in her book How Emotions Are Made (Barrett, 2017). It's a book I highly recommend to those interested in delving into the latest research on the neuroscience of emotion. In the following chapters, we explore the practical implications of what all of this may mean, and how this relatively new way of understanding perception and emotion as constructed experiences invites us to rethink and reenvision what it means to be emotionally intelligent. As we navigate the territory of our own mind, we will surface what's at stake and where we have wherewithal and agency within the context of perception itself.

Beyond Emotional Intelligence approaches the topic of habit change from an intrinsic perspective, introducing you to cognitive and contemplative practices for identifying and working with your own habits of mind. This is a fancy way of saying you'll learn how to use thought to change thought and awareness to change everything, starting with your perspective. The focus of this book is to help readers connect with what they have available within themselves as their primary means—qualities they don't have to go somewhere else to find, starting with their own awareness and capacity to perceive. By developing your inner coach, the source of wisdom from within, you access the aspect of your own mind that is inexhaustible and always present for you to connect with. Only through awareness do we have the possibility for our actions to be consciously derived and our intentions purposefully acted upon. Our ability to shift our perspective and relate to our circumstances in the moment is dependent on our capacity to activate the rudder of our own minds.

Without a doubt, emotional intelligence and the broader mindfulness movement have done much to bring the value of self-awareness and contemplative practice into the mainstream, while demonstrating the generative effects of empathy and compassion. However, I believe we've only touched the surface of what we each have available to us to access the inherent qualities of our own awareness. There is far more to explore by way of the mind's expression of awareness and how we can familiarize ourselves with something that is always with us but we are rarely cognizant of. With this goal in mind, you'll be introduced to the Awareness Matrix, a framework that gives you a bird's-eye view of what you do and do not have the capacity to be consciously aware of relative to your MindBody functions—at least from a scientific point of view. You'll learn how self-awareness is simply one stance, one way of being aware among many invaluable ways in which we are already aware and can become even more so. The intrinsic qualities of our own minds are present whether our attention or awareness of them is or not. This is the jumping-off point for this book.

We will orient ourselves to the topic of habit change from a very personal and practical vantage point. The book addresses the importance of cultivating and training our attention to notice its own habitual patterns and to optimize and select for choices that contemplate and account for the interplay between our inner and outer habits and the conditions that give rise to them. You'll be asked to look at specific themes and clues within your own repertoire of mental habits, noticing how you consistently make sense of your own experience and the actions you take in response. Typically, we perceive disturbances to our peace of mind and sense of wellbeing occurring as a result of external events or circumstances. Even though we may perceive our emotions to be discrete, universal responses triggered in response to stimuli, we will learn from recent findings in neuroscience that this is only how things appear—likely owing to what we've been taught up to this point about what gives rise to our emotions and how we behave in response. It is more accurate to say that our brain proactively curates our perceptions and our emotions for us. However, becoming consciously aware of how we interpret and act on them relative to what our brain has predicted is where we have a say in the matter.

Irrespective of whether we perceive ourselves or our emotions as being triggered, or whether we operate on a more precise understanding of how we come to feel the way we do, we are each at the mercy of our brain's ongoing display and constantly evolving simulation of reality. When the salience or valence of our interoceptive sensations rise to a level at which we become cognizant of them, and our brain decides that they are important enough to assign them meaning, the output is our affect, which may or may not materialize into an instance of emotion we are consciously aware of. Despite what it may seem, we aren't at the whim of outside circumstances nearly as much as we are at the mercy of our own perception of these circumstances. As we'll learn more about relative to one of the 12 Self-Discoveries in particular, we are, in a very real sense, the common denominator of our own experience. Ultimately, we are the beneficiaries of what we think and how we feel, as are those whose lives we directly or inadvertently impact by how we make sense of and respond to what we think and how we feel. Therefore, it's up to us to find practical ways to work with our own perception of reality along with the mental models that shape and inform how we make sense of our experience.