The Chief Psychology Officer

Ep57 The Neuroscience of Imposter Moments and Personal Effectiveness

• Dr Amanda Potter CPsychol • Season 3 • Episode 57

Share episode

Ever feel like your brain is stuck on autopilot, falling prey to biases and inefficiencies? Dulcie Swanston and Dr Iain Price join us again, offering enlightening insights into the art of personal effectiveness and the power of neuroplasticity. Through their dynamic exchange, they unveil approaches to work smarter, transforming "imposter syndrome" into manageable "imposter moments," and fostering stronger professional and personal relationships. Their strategies aren't just about productivity; they're about nurturing a reflective mind and using social connections to reshape perceptions of ourselves and our capabilities.

We all grapple with self-doubt and the inner critic, but it's how we turn these experiences into actionable wisdom that counts. This episode takes you through a journey of understanding imposter thinking and provides practical applications to use this awareness in your everyday life. You'll grasp the concept of the 'Sphere of Influence' and how it can streamline your focus on what truly matters. And as we discuss the liberating effects of sorting concerns into areas of control, influence, and acceptance, you'll learn to manage pressure with grace and self-compassion.

But that's not all; we also unlock the secrets of maintaining a childlike imagination in the face of life's complexities. Discover how simple breathing techniques can ignite your cognitive functions, unleash creativity, and propel your personal growth. Guests Dulcie and Iain share personal anecdotes and professional insights that underscore the transformational effects of mindfulness and self-compassion. So tune in, breathe deep, and let this episode guide you toward a more intentional and joyful approach to life's challenges.

Episodes are available here https://www.thecpo.co.uk/

To follow Zircon on LinkedIn and to be first to hear about podcasts, publications and news, please like and follow us: https://www.linkedin.com/company/zircon-consulting-ltd/

To access the research white papers mentioned in this and other podcasts, please go to: https://zircon-mc.co.uk/zircon-white-papers.php

For more information about the BeTalent suite of tools and platform please contact: TheCPO@zircon-mc.co.uk

Speaker 1:

Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of the Chief Psychology Officer with Dr Amanda Potter, chartered Psychologist and CEO of Zircon, and I'm Christian Lees-Bell, senior Consultant at Zircon.

Speaker 2:

Hello.

Speaker 1:

Hello.

Speaker 2:

And hello.

Speaker 1:

Today we're invited guests for a second time and, after meeting Dulcie and Iain last year to discuss finding inner confidence on the 25th of September and receiving so much positive feedback, we wanted to get you both back in to talk again with us, as it became clear that you've got all sorts of hacks and tips to make science simple that really resonate with our listeners.

Speaker 3:

I completely agree, Kristian. How fantastic that we've got Dulcie and Ian back. I love the way Dulcie's mind works. I love her thinking, I love some of the little statements that she makes and I steal them and I've been borrowing them along the way, which is just so fab. And Ian is such a deep-rooted expert around neuroscience and I think we all fundamentally agree that we are a bundle of biases, that our brains lie to us, that we're inherently lazy, that we're all prone to these quite crippling things like imposter syndrome. So the hacks and the tips that you've mentioned to help us be much more action focused and be much more positive in life is just brilliant, which is why we've asked them back today.

Speaker 1:

We enjoyed doing the last podcast so much. I learned a lot as well, and, much as we have so many biases, there are definitely some lights at the end of the tunnel with some of the tricks and hacks and strategies that, dulcy and Ian, you're going to share today. So the plan today is to pack in as many of those tips as we can, but focus primarily on personal effectiveness and some practical things that you can do to work smarter and not harder, and using a little bit of science to enhance your relationships at work and at home would be fantastic to talk about as well.

Speaker 4:

It's an absolute pleasure to be back with you talking about top tips for personal effectiveness, and Dulcie and I. This is something that has been an ongoing conversation for the last three years. I think, Dulcie, isn't it more than that. The thing here, I think, for us is it's an ever evolving thing, because our brains, as far as we know, the most complicated thing we know in the universe, and it's very plastic to the day we die. So, as a result, the light at the end of the tunnel here, Kristian, as you're saying, is that we can do something about it, and the research suggests that as well.

Speaker 3:

I love the fact that our brains are constantly evolving and learning so that we can overcome those biases and those shortcuts and our lazy brain syndrome and our lying brain syndrome. Actually, I don't like the word syndrome. I dropped syndrome because of you, dulcy, and my imposter syndrome. I renamed it imposter moments. I did because I really liked that from our last podcast.

Speaker 4:

What does that say, Amanda, about how our brains work? To you?

Speaker 3:

Well, I'm learning, I'm picking up the pieces I enjoy and recognize and attend to and realize and I'm trying to embed them in my everyday language. But the point is that I've got some bad habits, so I use that word syndrome and I'm trying not to use it.

Speaker 2:

Every time I do it, I catch myself and I move on, said you've stolen my stuff. And then I have to do the thing where I go hang on. No, you're supposed to accept that as a compliment. Also, you're supposed to take a step back and be able to respond to that as what it was intended to be, which was an opportunity to be sociable and to accept the compliment that. What a massive irony that you just kicked off my imposter thinking by saying you steal my stuff when you're the CPO.

Speaker 3:

That's so funny, but I really do genuinely like your thinking, and in one way, it's great because Kristian Iain and I are all very similar in that we've got psychology and neuroscience behind us. But, dulce, you came into this from the HR world, from the application of a lot of the thinking that we do, which is why I like your thinking and your approach, because you're much more practical, you're much more pragmatic and you say it as it is, but that's a nice intro to you, Dulcie. So why have we invited you back here today, Dulcie?

Speaker 2:

Do you know what it's really interesting, isn't it? When I wrote my book, people kept saying to me oh, are you a neuroscientist or a psychologist? And I find myself apologising for what you've just described as my superpower, if you like that actually I'm not a psychologist or a neuroscientist. I'm somebody who actually I didn't move into HR until my mid-30s. Prior to that, I worked in operations. I worked in finance, property, brand development and commercial for a big ftse 100 initially and then ftse 250 organization.

Speaker 2:

I just became fascinated by the science, but only to the extent of oh, where can I use that and how can I use that? So when I came to specialize which is how I describe my hr life now I was in my mid-30s at that point and and it was then that I sort of thought, whoa, hang on, all this stuff I've been collecting like a magpie all these years. Suddenly it's got a place. Actually, when I'm talking to people about how they can increase their capacity for work, how they can get more done in less time, how they can stay motivated in difficult circumstances, that's the kind of what you deal with in HR, right, how to get on with people better, how to motivate yourself when life's really tough For me. That's when I started to go and lean on this stuff I'd been collecting for years.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, that's me. I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a neuroscientist. I like to call out truths, I suppose, and I suppose a bit of the psychology and neuroscience helps me to think that the truths I call out have got evidence. I'm not just giving something as an opinion, I'm giving something as an informed opinion based on the fact that the science says it's so added to an observation. How does that help us? So it's always collaborative, but with the science as a sort of partner in the room, I suppose. Does that help? That felt as though that was a bit of a rambling introduction. But yeah, it's great, did lots of stuff before that and still get that sense of an imposter. Even when people say you know you're a HR professional, I think well, yeah, only recently. And then I think actually it's 20 years now, dulcy, because doesn't time fly, it, doesn't it?

Speaker 3:

but I think we've missed the most important point, which is the book the book that we're here to talk about, and also the science and the neuroscience behind the book, which is not bloody rocket science. I mean, the title says it all. You're all about bringing practicality, pragmatism and kind of cutting through the complexity and making it really simple for the reader so that they can lead and manage in a really effective way.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you. And I got the name from the fact that I'm from Yorkshire as well and it was just a phrase we had growing up, which is it's not bloody rocket science. So the intention is you sort of you know, you use that sort of accent when you're saying it because I suppose when I was growing up I was in a family where nobody had really been to university, nobody had ever had an academic life, particularly around me. But I just had this idea that well, how hard can some of this stuff be? And just because nobody else has done it around me, well why can't I do it?

Speaker 2:

And actually it's a phrase you hear a lot in Yorkshire it's not bloody rocket science and I just used it to keep reminding myself that I didn't need to feel like an imposter in a world where nobody looked or sounded quite like me. So when I came to write a book it felt like it kind of summed me up really keep it simple, don't make it more complicated than needs to be, tell the truth and be kind. And for me that it kind of encompassed all those things and you said earlier about truths, calling out the truths.

Speaker 3:

What would you say is the most important truth that you have from this book or from your research?

Speaker 2:

Gosh, that's a really big question. Probably two, if I can be greedy. So the first one and it's chapter one actually of the book called Lies is that you think you can trust your own brain. Right, you think you can trust, like that, what you've seen and what you've heard, and you then trust your ability to process that in a fairly balanced way. And I think we become more prone to that problem as we get older, when actually what the truth is is that you can't trust your own brain. Your brain lies to you all the time, it distorts the truth and it deletes bits of it, mostly to save fuel, because actually hearing something different and doing something different is is quite difficult for us.

Speaker 2:

So I think that's the first truth, that you cannot trust your own brain. It's not telling you the truth, because for me, once you stand back from that is a huge win. The second one is related, I guess, in the sense that you're never finished, and I have a phrase that is, if you're finished, you're finished, because actually, even if you think you know all there is to know about something and you're a real technical expert, that point where you stop looking for why you might be wrong, why the truth has changed, why the circumstances around the truth has changed. That, for me, is the kind of second big truth, and when I'm talking to clients, whether I'm training or coaching, fundamentally they're the two things that you come back to is keep growing and appreciate. You don't always tell yourself the truth, because then you know whether it's a friend or a coach or a mentor or whatever role you use other people for, you are willing to listen to them speaking truth to you about their observations it's so interesting.

Speaker 3:

Sarah will say to me that I'm much better if I've got something unfinished. If I've got a target or a goal to work towards, I can get quite low once it's achieved. I don't like finishing things. I complete a finisher. If we think of the old belbin definition, i'm'm a massive completer finisher, but I actually I can feel quite despondent once I've actually finished something. So that's so interesting. It's all about the dopamine system, isn't it? And needing reward.

Speaker 2:

Do you know what? I'm not a completer finisher, but you've just made me think because I'm the ultimate non-completer finisher, like people who know me well, laugh at me that nothing's ever finished. But I wonder if that's what I'm trying to put off. Is that actually, if something's finished? I know that I'm going to have this like oh, it's done.

Speaker 3:

It's over.

Speaker 2:

You've actually just made me feel loads better about being kind of a non-completer finisher, and I've always felt as though I should do better, amanda. So I just feel I feel better about that with you. Just having made that comment, it's given me a different way to think about it.

Speaker 3:

I'm so glad and Ian, as our neuroscientist in the room, having read the book, having worked with Dulcie for the last few years, what's the thing that you took from the book and from Dulcie's thinking that resonated the most for you?

Speaker 4:

I think you're hearing it as Dulcie speaks about it and it's the application. I worked with the BBC for a couple of years with a human mind outreach program and it's a real knack to be able to communicate science with a fidelity and, even more so, to reach people at just the right amount at just the right time. I think Dulcie's got a real knack for doing that and I've learned tremendous amount of how to communicate with people, certainly in business. And I think, dulce, when you say I'm not a neuroscientist or I'm not a psychologist, I see you as an applied psychologist, as an applied neuroscientist, for what it's worth I'm gonna put that on my cv Dr. Iain says, and what brought me to the book was and this is going back a little bit to imposter thinking when I read the book it was just through one of the lockdowns.

Speaker 4:

I can't remember which one, but I remember being sat outside and it was a sunny time, so I'm assuming it was in the summer and I was reading through it and again, with my previous experience and thinking, you know, this makes so much sense. I love the way that Dulcie's packaged it and there's a fun part, and I think we've spoken already in the past, at least in a previous podcast, about find your flock. I thought this is somebody that I would like to get to know and we happen happened to be working with a similar provider at the time. So I reached out and said hey, you know you've written this book. Can we have a chat? Little did I know, little did I know that I'd just thrown Dulcie into a complete imposter moment. And it's still. We quote it now and I just didn't think about that Because in my mind it was brilliant and it's so good.

Speaker 2:

Good, I've written a forward for the well I was gonna say it's a really good story. I mean, I'm, you know, hugely grateful for neuroscientists having written a forward for the second edition, right, because that's like oh it's, it's proper now. But, um, the story that Iain's talking about is such a salient lesson into how you don't know what's going on in somebody else's brain and how you have to take a really good look at what's happening in yours. Because Iain did reach out to me and he said oh, I'm Dr Imprice, I'm a neuroscientist and I'd like to talk to you about your book.

Speaker 2:

Well, at that moment, that is what I I thought this is the real moment where your past catches up with you. You know, we talk about the imposter thinking being like an old fashioned policeman in our house. So we envisage that at some stage in mine and my husband's life, this old fashioned policeman is going to like give us a whistle. Come on, the pair of you. We've been after you for years. You've had a good innings and fair play to you, good game, but your time is now officially up. So come on hand back the car, the house and you know the happy life.

Speaker 2:

And honestly, I thought that was my moment. I was like a neuroscientist wants to like point out the flaws. So I was thinking, well, it'd be a good thing if you face up to it, because then you'll know what's wrong and actually you are brave enough to face this. And if it's nothing illegal, if it's just wrong, that's easy enough, you can edit it and it'll be all the better for it. But I really had to sort of build myself up to getting back in touch with Ian to go yeah, sure, that'd be really good. I'd be really grateful for that. Anyway, it turned out he just really enjoyed the book and he just reached out so crazy.

Speaker 4:

I feel awful that I put you through all of that and because it there's some messages there ian for your email writing dulcey, we need a word.

Speaker 2:

There was nothing at all wrong with his writing. It was all my lies in my head about something that wasn't even a thing. So we joke about now. Because the thing is that when people see you like people see me on telly or hear me on the radio or on a podcast like this, people will go. Well, she can't possibly still be experiencing imposter thinking. She must now be at a stage where she's got enough evidence, but all that happens is you've got more evidence of all the things that have nearly gone wrong. So in my experience, you just build up that evidence. And certainly when I studied to become a coach at Henley, one of our tutors said the most coach coach topic at executive level is imposter syndrome, as they called it. But as I say, I don't call it that now, and actually everything in my own experience has borne that out is this doesn't go away, so mine just comes along for the ride now. Amanda.

Speaker 2:

Literally, I've just got mine coming along for the journey and I just sort of have it as a reminder that I'm humble enough to still experience it, a reminder about what the science says that having that imposter thinking does indicate that you've got a brain that is capable of that kind of reflection. So that's a good sign. And also I read something that said it also means you're not a psychopath. So I just kind of go still not a psychopath.

Speaker 2:

So every time I have a burst of it now I just remind myself of the positive stuff and go, I'm just still not a psycho.

Speaker 3:

So that's really good, yeah not as narcissist, not a psychopath, love that. But we know also that when we're the most depleted, most tired, most drained, then we are more likely to have those imposter thinking, imposter moments, and so we need to look after ourselves. So, Kristian, what did you love about the book, what did you take away or was the most poignant or significant for you?

Speaker 1:

I really loved the imposter chapter. I think that you're the way that you frame. I was the same as you, amanda. I used to say imposter syndrome and never felt completely comfortable with it, but those that idea of imposter moments. I also loved the reminder of the importance of social connections and actually kind of jogged my memory around a quote that I absolutely love by a guy called Ed Halliwell, who's a psychiatrist and expert on ADHD, and his quote was never worry alone. Probably an extremely simple quote, but so powerful. Just that process of not worrying alone, I think, does two things it makes us feel less vulnerable and, number two, it means that it gives us a sense of control as well by talking and by sharing. And I think your book also reminded me of actually going back to that quote and developing connections with people when times are tough, I think, because it helps us to problem solve once we share the problem and then also we can laugh about it as well sometimes so I always get my quotes wrong.

Speaker 3:

But it's like a problem shares a problem halved. Is that right? Is that a quote?

Speaker 1:

yeah, yeah, never worry alone never, worry alone. Yeah, I've written that one down Kristian stealing.

Speaker 3:

That look literally written it down like a magpie stolen typical Dulcie three words even I can remember it, yeah and so what in your mind, Dulcie, are the real practical applications, because a lot of clients will say to us and so what? You've given us this incredible insight for us, within b talent, we have all these incredible tools that help us to raise self-awareness, to help people to acknowledge where they are on a journey of some kind, what their strengths are, their resilience, like safety and so on. But very often at the end of the workshop they'll say, okay, so what do we do? What's the so what that I need to take away? What's the so what of this book for you, Dulcie?

Speaker 2:

Well, I'm obsessed by the so what? Because my last corporate job was buying training and I used to ask that same thing, which is like, well, we've had somebody in the room and they've given us some really good training, but so what, what's changed? And it used to really frustrate me when nothing had changed as a result. So what I did in the book was actually put the so what's in it. I think the chapters are actually called got it, so now, so what? Because it's like, yeah, you can get the signs, but what are you going to do with it? So in the book there's things like top right questions to ask yourself or top right questions that you can ask other people, and by top right I mean questions of really high interest. They're there to build the relationship with somebody, but they're really challenging at the same time. They're strong questions that should get you somewhere. I suppose the top tip that kind of sits across the whole thing is to get into the habit of thinking about your thinking, and this takes us back to the first point I made about you can't trust yourself in some ways, and it links into your quote about not worrying alone, christian, that actually, if you're talking to yourself, and that's the only way that you're processing the challenges that you're facing. How can you see them for what they are when you're likely to get in your own way? So I've got a number of ways that I personally use to think about my thinking and I sort of pass those on and share them.

Speaker 2:

Journaling is really well known about, and that is a great way to think about your thinking and all you need is, like you know, literally a pen and a piece of paper. Right, you can buy a journal, but literally you just get a pen and some post-its and think about your thinking. But what I really like to do to help people to have a framework for it is I call it the sphere of influence, and I get people to literally draw three rings. So I'm trying to describe it on here. I'm going to make it sound much more complicated than it actually is, but if you imagine a fried egg, that's sort of two rings. If you were going to draw a children's version of a fried egg, that's two rings. Now put another one around the edge of it and that's your three rings, and the idea is to write down all the things that are bothering you, and sometimes with clients, we might do this on a flip chart, we might draw on the wall and we might use post-its, because then you can move them around. But the idea is dump or download everything that's on your mind and then put it into one of those three rings.

Speaker 2:

So the inner ring is things that you can control, things that if you've got that poster and it says I'm really frustrated about this and it's something you can control like I don't know, I've had a dripping tap in my bathroom for ages and I keep forgetting and it's keeping me up at night, you could do something about that right now. So you would just do it now and get it off the list and that would be something that's kind of in the control box. The next box around is that you can influence it circle. I get people to think about this one carefully, because quite often we've got something that's bothering us that we could influence it, but we can't control it. So it could be something that's happening at work, it could be a process that's frustrating you, or it could be a relationship with a member of your family where you can influence it to some extent, but you can't change somebody else's behavior. You can hope to influence it by being truthful with them.

Speaker 2:

But you can't control the outcome, and what I say to people with stuff in this middle circle is have a really good think about how much influence you've got over it, have a think about how much time and effort it's going to take you to influence it, and try and match the amount of time and effort it's going to take with the amount of influence you have over it and also how important it is to you, because I've spent hours trying to influence things that fundamentally, when I step back from it, I don't care that much about. It's just I've got my soapbox about it and now I feel like I'm almost going to waste even more time if I don't fix it, and it's a real fool's errand, right. So try and balance the amount of time. Try and do some maths with the ratios, if you like, because I'm quite a logical person. Match whether it's important to you with how much time you're going to spend on it, and only spend time on something that's genuinely important to you and you've got high influence over.

Speaker 2:

Now it's not beyond the wit of us all to realise there's an outer circle, and the outer circle is things you can't control or influence. Now, seriously, if I had a pound for every hour I've spent thinking and pondering and trying to problem solve around things I've got no control or influence over, I'd be a really, really wealthy woman. The amount of airtime this stuff gets in our heads is awful when you think about it. But you only really start to see it when you've kind of mapped it out. And I love doing that with clients because we'll map it out.

Speaker 2:

As I say, quite often we'll do it in big with post-its, because then we can move them around. Because you know what all you can do with the stuff in that outer circle which you can't control, you can't influence, is learn to live with it as soon as you can. And for me, when I get clients to physically take the post-it off and go, how are you just going to learn to live with that? Even just taking the post-it off, the piece of paper, or crossing it out, if you're journaling or sending it to somebody and say, if you ever hear me talking about this again to Kristian's point of you know, never worry alone. It's like maybe don't rant alone, literally go. Can I have permission to rant? And then your friend says remember every minute you're spending on this, dulce, is actually a waste of your time and effort. Do you really want to put your time there?

Speaker 2:

For me, that's one of the simplest things that I do with people. I use it myself all the time on me and I think that's one of the most simple tools that comes out in the book and people tell me all the time well, I love, I love that one because I go back to it, and that's always the biggest compliment, isn't it? When people don't use a tip once they go oh, I use that all the time. Now it's really helpful. Now I've shared it with with loads of other people. That's the moment where my heart sings, because I'm not trying to build a training empire, I'm trying to change the world, one cup of tea at a time, and when people use your stuff over a cup of tea with somebody else, that's the bit that makes me I'm reluctant to say proud of myself, because I find it really hard. You should be proud.

Speaker 3:

I know.

Speaker 2:

I'm practicing at being proud of myself yeah, come on Dulcie, absolutely yes but it's those moments where I do try and allow myself to be proud of myself in that moment.

Speaker 3:

So let's just summarize that. Then we've got three circles centre circle, what you can control. Yeah, Second circle, what you can influence, but it's not completely within your control.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

And you need to balance your time and effort for that one, and then the outer circle, what you can't control and can't influence, and let's not spend too much energy focusing on that.

Speaker 4:

I just we said about an applied neuroscientist I was hearing there transformational neuroscientist because that transformation in, as you said, over a cup of tea.

Speaker 4:

One of my many interests is around that of Metacognition.

Speaker 4:

We're sharing other people but externalizing what we're thinking, because absolutely that's the thing that makes us spiral, and when we start to spiral we tend to get into our threat response and suddenly, a little bit, if I may, Amanda, like you know, you were saying breaking bad habits. Well, the thing is we go back, our brain will still go back to those habits. We know that and it just re-emphasizes, I think, when I work with clients as well, and for myself, is that recognize that actually the proof ultimately is in the pudding when we were under pressure go back to the new, healthier habit and that's genuinely the thing we go to, at the same time being kind to ourselves. Amanda, I'm totally hearing that you know when you're not hitting, you know if you're going back to the older habit, because ultimately, this is about creating habits that are healthy, and the healthy ones are creating newer habits, essentially creating stronger pathways, and it's those stronger pathways that we wanted to come back. The old pathways don't just disappear so they're there they stay there and they become smaller.

Speaker 4:

They're essentially like an old road that starts to get a bit grassy and overgrown and we know that things are working well in our healthier habits. And that transformational space that Dulce is talking to us about in fact we're all talking about that's that space where we know, under pressure, we've gone to the new healthier habit. And what I love about that lovely diagram is, again, we know, under pressure, we've gone to the new healthier habit. And what I love about that lovely diagram is, again, it's just helping us to focus where our attention goes, where the tension goes, the energy flows, and that is biophysically absolutely true, still still my favourite quote from the last podcast and still going to be one of my favourite from this podcast too.

Speaker 3:

Can I just check then, Iain, are you saying if I had two habits I'm a bit unclear about this and one habit would be healthy, so it's the go out, take in the panorama, go for the walk in the morning and get the exercise. And then I had another habit which may be less healthy. I don't know. I don't drink coffee, but imagine a cup of coffee and a piece of toast each morning. Are the healthy habits more enduring than the unhealthy habits? Is that what you said?

Speaker 4:

I was just a bit confused what it is is that, again, where the attention goes, the energy flows. So this is about reusing the pathways that you want, and particularly when under pressure. So what Dulcie's just talked to us about, there is things that are in our control. Sphere of influence is the next part of that diagram. Beyond that is the things that are beyond our control. And the reality is that we all know this and feel this, that when we feel threatened, and that generally is things that are out of our control.

Speaker 4:

Because one of the things and again Dulcie talks about this brilliantly in the book when she talks about the model scarf, the a for scarf is autonomy. So one of the things here is have, have we got autonomy, and can we allow our brain to have autonomy to reinforce the behaviour that we most want? Unfortunately, Amanda, as much as we would like to have the healthy habit and as much as we practice's under pressure. That's when we know ourselves. It's why, you know, Winston Churchill, I think, says bravery is, is not just a virtue, it's by which all other virtues are tested. There's something a bit like that with the brain, because ultimately, that's when you know something has become a genuine habit when we're under pressure so it's that practicing for and I think again this is the other thing that we do as coaches.

Speaker 4:

Right is that we clients to consider and I think Dulcie's again mentioned that really in the diagram was we help people to think how could it feel and what could you do and what would you do if something got in the way? Because ultimately, one of the best things you can do is you can train your brain in preparation for. But then there's that going through a difficult time, through a difficult time, and this is why you know, if you think about any emergency services or armed forces and the like, particularly under stressful situations, they practice and train hard and the idea is that you fight easy. But it's not just about that. It's about actually the debrief afterwards. What are we going to learn? What will we take away?

Speaker 4:

One of the things I think brilliantly that Dulcie captures in It's Not Bloody Rocket Science is chunking. You know, review and chunk down, and then that's what your focus becomes and that's again what we're ultimately saying with that diagram. Dulcie right is that you chunk it down to things that are tangible and doable. If you aren't, incrementally do that in a pathway that's healthy for you, then you're going to get more of that. We are what we do. Yeah, we are what we think. Actually, more importantly, do you what?

Speaker 2:

I suppose what I've just done there is exactly that.

Speaker 2:

You call me, like a transformational neuroscientist I'm going to have that or an applied neuroscientist, but the only reason that that has potentially become true is because I've repeated that science and shared it with people so many times, so I didn't know that stuff until I was past my 30s. I then knew it and read about it. I then knew it and practiced it in my own life. But it's only when I've shared it with other people, and then I've kept sharing it with other people and kept sharing it with other people and kept sharing it with other people, that now, even under pressure, those habits stick. For me as an individual who's always learning and growing, is never finished and whose own brain lies to them. So actually it's only in retelling those stories time and time again in front of audiences, in front of clients, that actually embeds it for itself. For me personally and you just talking about that then, about the neuroscience of that, helps me to understand now why I'm better at doing it for me can I add to that as well.

Speaker 4:

This is about you know the same circles in a sense, because it's a comfort zone, stretch zone and then panic zone, and what we're talking about here is I don't like it when something ends. I like the idea of that stretch right. So we're into that sort of stretch space. So comfort beyond that okay, stretching is to try and accept or want to challenge myself in a certain area, in a certain direction.

Speaker 4:

Diagram that Dulcie's just described helps us to be intentional about that whole process again, far more efficient, more effective, it's easier to review, and then what happens is that sort of middle circle, that sort of you know comfort zone, starts to expand, it goes into that stretch zone and one of the things we know, if you want the brain to be particularly receptive, it's getting that lovely balance and it is unique for every person and it changes throughout life.

Speaker 4:

Of course, that balance between something that is new and there's sparkly and there's that element of, yeah, dopamine and serotonin and all of those sort of things, but it's also counter to that is that you know being careful of the cortisol and the stress response. So you know, pressure's good, stress is not so good, and it's getting that right balance and you know, both Dulcie and I have worked with the athletes in particular. That's something athletes really really understand stretching in a defined space of what it is the behaviour that they're after, in a way in which they can easily sort of feed back and get into that again habit. And this is all the stuff that ultimately we're trying to are what we think. Our habits ultimately reflect a lot about who we are. It's about going from conscious incompetence all the way through to unconscious competence. It ultimately comes through repetitiveness and practicing what we need and again, I love the idea this shouldn't be done by yourself, maybe even never train alone.

Speaker 3:

In that sense, what's lovely about this is that quietening the busy mind. So when I'm anxious, when I'm stressed not in a good way, I have a really busy mind and I find it hard to sort my thoughts out, and I really like that model for actually just quietening and helping myself to recognize what's within my control and therefore how can I take action. What can I influence? I'm already thinking about family and home situations, things that are outside my control, and therefore how can I take action? What can I influence? I'm already thinking about family and home situations, things that are outside my control, but hopefully I can have some influence. And then some things that, like you say, Dulcie, they're completely outside of your control. So drop it, leave it, walk away from it. I think that's great, Kristian, over to you. I'm thinking about the psychology now and also from your therapeutic side. What can people do to help quieten a busy mind? From your side, great question.

Speaker 1:

I think, when I reflect back on some of my current work and coaching, particularly around helping people to manage difficult, challenging, sort of high pressure situations, and then also experiences as a therapist as well, particularly as a hypnotherapist many years ago A few things I think really made the difference. So I think you know we've talked about this before. I think something as simple as breathing techniques, relaxation. I know that when I'm feeling more relaxed and I feel more grounded through doing either the physiological sigh box breathing or a breathing technique, it calms the mind. Your racing thoughts can slow down, I think, just purely through that physical relaxation. I think the way that we talk to ourselves and we all talk to ourselves, even if it's not out loud. So our internal dialogue, when we've got that sort of racing, chattering mind, if we think about how we talk to ourselves in that way, it's often frustrated, high high pitched, aggravated, the opposite of calm. So I think being self aware of how we're talking to ourselves and practicing self compassion which I know we've mentioned on a previous podcast and actually just taking stock, slowing down and saying, okay, would I be talking to myself like this if I was talking to a six year old? So I call it the six year old rule. So would I say this to a-old and what I'm saying to myself now. There are lots of other really powerful self-compassion techniques just to bring down that cortisol level. And I think, lastly, visualization most of us can visualize.

Speaker 1:

I think there's a disorder called aphantasia, where people do struggle to come up with visual stimuli, but the large majority of us can actually physically create images.

Speaker 1:

We can close our eyes and we can imagine a beach scene, we can imagine being stressed and we can imagine being relaxed. I think not enough of us leverage that visual imagery to actually, as you said, Iain, where your focus goes, energy flows. Visualization, I think, is one really powerful way to be able to direct that focus. So if I think about how I'd like to be talking to myself, how I'd like to feel during that day, one of the things I do in the morning is I imagine my best self and I close my eyes for just a couple of seconds and I visualize how that best future self, Kristian, will be overcoming challenges, how he'll be talking to himself when he's going through something difficult, and I find that and that's helped a lot of my clients too to be able to face the challenges and direct people's attention lots of different techniques, but those are some that I think I've found really useful for myself and for others stolen again.

Speaker 2:

I've written down six-year-old rule it's like yeah, it's like I'm conscious about how we speak to ourselves, but having a six-year-old in your mind is really helpful, isn't?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Would you say that yeah?

Speaker 2:

100. I was going to add Amanda to that about. Iain mentioned SCARF in my life. I find that sharing that bit of neuroscience sometimes helps people to just understand what they physically feel, because SCARF's not a mind model.

Speaker 2:

David rock came up with a model and it's an acronym and it's the things that trigger our Palaeolithic fight or flight response. Iain's helped me to describe this accurately enough in science. But we've got some really old wiring basically that used to be dead useful when we lived in caves but is not terrifically useful now in modern life. And David Rock's SCARF acronym helps us to understand the modern threats that trigger that Palaeolithic threat response, which is either fight, argue back, not always the best strategy in modern life. Flight, so running away from a bear used to be a really good idea, but running away from your problem or your workplace and just leaving the room often not a great one. Freeze is another one, less well known, but you know those moments where you literally can't think of anything to say not great, but actually when you were standing stock still, so that the bear didn't spot you moving in the trees, really, really good move. Or appease. So appease is one where you are saying yes when you mean no, or you're going with the crowd, you're going with everybody else to keep you safe. So they are four fundamentally really good ways to survive, but they're not ever so useful if we don't understand the triggers, and the SCARF acronym helps us to understand that.

Speaker 2:

Threats to our sense of certainty. We thought this was going to happen and now it's not. And status I thought I was the expert on this and somebody's just pulled the rug from under me. So that's why I kind of got into that zone when Iain phoned me up as a neuroscientist and wanted to chat about my book. You've then got autonomy, which Ian's already mentioned, so I thought I was in control of this and somebody's removed that control from me. Relatedness, which is I thought we got each other and you've just said something that means I don't think we do get each other, and actually that's made me really react. Or fairness, and they think this is one of the primary triggers, that when we don't think something is fair, that threat response is triggered. Now, so far, so good.

Speaker 2:

But it's when I understood the physiology of this. It helped me hugely with applying the tips that Kristian's talked about, like breathing. It's kind of why it matters, because what the science helps us to understand is that when we are in the grip of fight and we feel our muscles tense up, what's actually happening in our bodies is that the blood and oxygen that normally powers the prefrontal cortex so the bit of our brain that deals with all our decision making, our critical thinking it's depleted of blood and oxygen to go and get you ready for a scrap. So, physically, the tensing in your muscles. We don't walk around with an oxygen tank and a blood transfusion monitor. The blood and oxygen's got to come from somewhere.

Speaker 2:

And turns out we didn't need that prefrontal cortex all that much when we lived in caves, so our body got used to draining it from here to go and power our threat response. So just knowing that science means that if somebody at work feels really cross and loses their temper or freezes and thinks I don't know what to say, when they know that actually it's just physiologically really normal and that Kristian's tip about a deep breath actually works because it gives you a minute and it restores the blood and oxygen to the prefrontal cortex that was in your muscles and making you tense, it means that you understand why those things are real, practical, actionable tips that actually work for your physiology and you can't like argue with where blood and oxygen is going in your body. It's like irrefutable fact. So when somebody used to say to me, oh, you just need to take a deep breath and calm down, it's like how do you know what I need? Yeah, you just get even more.

Speaker 2:

Whereas if you know that actually taking a deep breath and just having a pause sends the blood and oxygen to your prefrontal cortex that was in your muscles, it's like, ah, I'm not being patronized by somebody taking a deep breath. It's actually real hard. Irrefutable science and just sharing that science. Some people have told me that learning about scarf has changed their lives, because they no longer get their imposter trigger by the fact that they couldn't think of what to say when this really important person asked them something, or that they didn't speak up when something was really unfair and they should have done and therefore they don't deserve the job they've got or the positional power they've got. You just go. No, it's really normal. It's just the blood and oxygen leaving your prefrontal cortex. When people get that, they go. Oh okay, so I don't need to feel like an imposter. I'm perfectly capable of doing this. It was just in the moment I physically couldn't.

Speaker 3:

I found helps people so much so, ian, what's actually happening then in the brain when we take a deep breath?

Speaker 4:

it's bringing on what we call the vagal tone, so one of our many cranial nerves, and it's an interesting nerve in itself actually, because it's afferent and efferent. So it basically means you can send information and then receives information. So when we're taking a breath it really brings on what we call the vagal or parasympathetic tone. Sympathetic is that actionable stuff and I can see Kristian nodding set. Sure, you've seen this all the time with your therapy. So when you come, somebody's very sympathetically activated. They're saying you know ready, g'd up physically, you know can't sit still, all those kind of things. And as those you're saying you know ready for a fight or running away. So the breathing is a really good way and that square box breathing you're talking about and I always amazed that square box breathing is essentially breathe in through your nose, hold for four, breathe out through your mouth for four and then repeat and it's that ultimately. It's that kind of square box breathing that it's really one of the best ways of very quickly in fact you're just taking a deep breath. As Dulcie said, you're activating that parasympathetic, a really powerful thing here and I'm relating it actually in this conversation and the way that I haven't done before, which is that six-year-old, because there's two parts of that I think. The first part is we are not just more logical when we allow our brains, our prefrontal cortex, to be more perfused that's more blood and oxygen coming to it but we're actually becoming more creative. And what I mean by creative is that we see opportunity. So one of the hard parts is that when we're in that sort of fight, flight, freeze or appease mode that dulce is talking about we all know this we get sort of blinkered. But that sort of breathing and again David Rock talks about this in terms of opening up your bandwidth you, you see more things, you're more creative.

Speaker 4:

Navy SEALs have, as have, a mantra slowest moves, smoothest fast. I think we spoke about that in a previous podcast, about how powerful that is. And the other thing that Navy SEALs are told to do at any time, no matter where they are in the world, is to do that square box breathing, because it's training and we've talked about habits, training them in the moment when it is really under fire. Literally, you can go into that creative and you start to open up the possibilities. You can slow down, and this six-year-old part is coming to this as well is that I think we've mentioned this in off-air talks, but the saddest thing for me is that NASA did some research looking at where would they find the next rocket scientists and this is back in the 60s and 70s and the tests that they were doing and we could argue about that, but the tests that they were doing ultimately said that pretty much 98 plus percent of the population in America at the time of being about three could be a rocket scientist. There were genius levels. As we go through primary, secondary or equivalent tertiary education that unfortunately diminishes and you can sort of see these different steps in the research that said ultimately that any two percent of the population by the time we're adults or young adults could be that genius rocket scientist.

Speaker 4:

Again, this is coming back to how Dulcie talks about this in her book. She talks about literally a breathing allows us to become more clever. I'd also add from this conversation, it allows us to become more childlike in the possibilities that we now see and the choices that we can choose in that moment to go with whatever the training or the best habit that we actually wanted to have, rather than that sort of knee jerk. It works on so many different levels and here's the real, real best bit of it, I think, for me is the more you practice it, the more you just take in that moment, the more confident and competent you become. With that uncertainty or that moment and rather than people looking at you going, oh my goodness, you're hesitating, you're not very confident, it's completely the opposite. People go, oh my goodness, you took a moment and you were thinking about it and then you were more intentional about your actions. And from a therapy point of view, I mean it'd be interesting to hear from you, Kristian, but certainly therapy that I've had for myself that has been one of the most powerful things.

Speaker 4:

Takeaway for me from this, this little conversation today, is can we be more childlike if we do some good breathing, if we're aware of the neuroscience that are going on? And I mean that in the sense of could I allow my genius six-year-old out? Funnily enough, I did a what's your mental age? And my family came out with all sorts of like children of like 20s. My wife was way beyond 50s. My physical, mental age, apparently in theory, was seven.

Speaker 2:

Love that so maybe I'm closer than I thought can you send us a link to that? That was a really tall test I want to be. I want to be six now based on what Kristian said I know you're almost there gosh, that's just incredible, thank you.

Speaker 3:

I just going to add a few extra things. If we're really having a busy mind and struggling in the moment, I love all the breathing. Self-compassion is definitely one for me, gratitude is another, because we want to access those positive neurotransmitters. Proud achievements what are you proud of having achieved in your life? Have a look around you family, friends, good relationships, maybe some work things in there too. So there's a number of things that we can do that just to reframe our minds, refocus our minds in a much more positive way when we're really struggling. So

People on this episode

Contributor

Dr Amanda Potter

Host
Contributor

Tim Hepworth

Host