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  • >>David Rock: When I'm not talking about the brain, I'm working with senior executives

  • from many large organizations and many technical people. I find my day job is kind of translating

  • what might be thought of as soft skills for a technical audience to, to understand how

  • to optimize processing.

  • So that's enough about me.

  • I want to talk about these four surprises.

  • The rational is overrated; massively overrated.

  • The emotions, we got emotions backward.

  • Social issues are primary; literally primary.

  • And attention actually changes the brain.

  • We're gonna spent most time on the probably the first and second and a bit, and a bit

  • on the third.

  • I'm gonna stop after each and see if you have questions or comments. And if I go too fast,

  • you can slow me down. If you want me to speed up, it's Google. I can speed up as well. Just

  • say: "get to the point." We can do whatever you like.

  • All right.

  • The rational is overrated. What do I mean by that? Let's do, give you a little, a little

  • metaphor.

  • When you're trying to hold information in mind; you try and actually hold information,

  • you're gonna start using your prefrontal cortex, PFC for short. I shorten it so it takes less

  • space in your PFC.

  • When you try to hold information in mind which is to understand, decide, recall, memorize,

  • inhibit; when you try to do that, you've gotta use your prefrontal cortex, which is a very

  • limited region of the brain.

  • Those of you who drove to work today, you didn't really use your prefrontal cortex to

  • drive here. You're using deeper regions that you can use without thinking. Like you can

  • drive without having to think about where you're going, if you've gone somewhere a lot.

  • If you're actually consciously thinking, you've got to use your prefrontal cortex. And this

  • is where the trouble begins.

  • Let me do a little experiment. What's - just call back, call an answer

  • out - what's one plus one?

  • >>Voices in audience: Two.

  • >>David Rock: No prefrontal cortex, right? No effort.

  • What's ten plus ten.

  • >>Voices in audience: Twenty.

  • >>David Rock: No prefrontal cortex.

  • What's 56 plus 175?

  • [pause]

  • [laughter]

  • >>David Rock: Laughter. No one wants to do it.

  • [laughter]

  • Okay. Do you get that - like why don't you want to do it? Why don't you wanna do it?

  • Because you've got to put in a bit of effort. You've gotta actually stop other things you

  • might be thinking about because when you use this process it becomes a serial process;

  • you can do one thing at a time.

  • You've gotta use effort and did you sense like a little bit of like a "Uh, oh. Don't

  • take me there." Like "I'm not going there?"

  • It's a subtle threat. The reason it's a subtle threat to have to think, is we evolved at

  • a time when resources - metabolic resources - were really limited; war and famine; we

  • lived to 20 at best; and so we're, we're kind of rewarded for minimizing mental resources.

  • It's very easy, in this country in particular, to make an absolute fortune basically helping

  • people put in less and less effort into any particular thing. Have you noticed that?

  • It's really difficult to kind of do the opposite. And in many ways Google exists because it

  • helps people find things with less effort, as well.

  • Okay. And you can measure that in milliseconds.

  • So using this cortex in, when you have to do an addition, we sort, we sort of avoid

  • it. We go: "I don't really wanna do that." It's a threat response. And that threat response

  • does something. So we kind of don't do it very much. And this is a bit of a, bit of

  • a challenge.

  • Now let me give you the metaphor to understand it.

  • If the amount of information you can hold in your prefrontal cortex at one time - sometimes

  • it's called working memory and it has other titles - if the amount of information you

  • can hold in this region is equivalent to say a cubic foot; a cubic foot, then the amount

  • of information that the rest of your brain holds is equivalent to about the Milky Way.

  • [laughter]

  • So they're kind of different. Do you get that sense? Right.

  • It's a little, disambiguous to say, but they're really massively different and this explains

  • a tremendous number of life's experiences. 'Cause what we do is we, we firstly try to

  • avoid using this region of the brain. We do things that we know how to do well, rather

  • than doing something differently.

  • And anything that we do do a few times, we quickly start to embed the pattern so we don't

  • have to think about it. And essentially when you're tryin' to make someone think, like

  • tryin' to change a pattern or change a system or install some software or do anything, you're

  • gonna get this threat response, because people are gonna have to think and we, they're attuned

  • not to.

  • So it explains a tremendous amount. But this is, this rational resource is what people

  • put so much kind of credence into. We've really got to be rational and Spock, Spock was all

  • about really being deeply rational. It turns out that rational is really, really overrated.

  • And it's overrated in two ways: firstly, what you can do with it; and secondly, it's actually

  • not how we solve most problems. The rational is not how we solve most problems, which I'll

  • come back to.

  • But there's some studies showing that every time you do a little math puzzle like that

  • or any conscious decision, you actually use up a limited bucket of resources.

  • Every time you make a decision, solve a problem, your blood glucose goes down and you performance

  • on the next task goes down. So it's a really of limited resource that depletes very quickly.

  • And you can actually start to look at this and, and sort of pull apart three types of

  • thinking that we do. And start to treat this resource of your, your prefrontal resource,

  • as something that you've got to kind of manage.

  • So Level 1 thinking is, is basically stuff like one plus one. You don't have to think.

  • And isn't it fun deleting emails? Does anyone else get joy deleting emails?

  • [laughter]

  • It's wonderful, isn't it? It's like: "Ah." You know I fly a lot and one of the things

  • I love to do when I'm flying, if I really can't do anything else, is delete. And one

  • time I was on a long flight. I saw the bottom of my email inbox.

  • [laughter]

  • Isn't that incredible? Just like never happens.

  • Anyway so you can do that without thinking.

  • Level 2: scheduling a meeting. You've got to hold things in mind: what time; where;

  • who; when. Maybe five seconds, ten seconds.

  • We're at writing a pitch; writing some coding; building a plan; building a strategy; that

  • takes a lot of glucose and it takes a lot of effort energy.

  • Now what many people do, they get to work, they do number one and then number two first,

  • and then they've got very little energy left for number three. And their brain actually

  • becomes tired and noisy. And I'll talk about the noisy in a moment.

  • And they become really, really ineffective. So the sort intuitive approach that we have

  • to tackling our day is wrong from the brain's perspective.

  • So this is one of the first things, the rational is overrated. It would be really rational

  • to get to work, start working on emails and work through. That's really rational. That's

  • not how your brain really wants to work.

  • Now, there's kind of a question that I pose to people often, and it's sort of one of the

  • questions in the book which is: if you truly respected attention as a limited resource,

  • what would you do differently?

  • If you really accepted that you've probably only got a few hours of really quality deep

  • processing time, Level 3 activity, what would you do differently, if you really like thought

  • about that? And it's, it's quite an important conversation to, to have, I believe, in an

  • organization that's processing a lot mentally.

  • Now, here's the challenge though: most problems we solve are not solved rationally. And in

  • the lab we see that the PFC not only isn't the source of the solution, but it's actually

  • the source of not finding the solution.

  • The prefrontal cortex rational resources actually stop you solving problems a lot of the time.

  • And in the lab we see that about 60 percent of problems that people solve, they actually

  • can't explain how they solved them. It's just, you have that experience all the time. You,

  • you, you walking to work and suddenly you get an idea. Where'd that idea come from?

  • You weren't working on anything. Where did it come from?

  • You're in the shower; you're on the treadmill; you're doing something and suddenly you have

  • this, this answer coming to you. Why couldn't you have that when you wanted to? You know

  • that feeling? Why couldn't you have solved that problem when you; well you can if you

  • understand your brain a bit better.

  • And it turns out that the very thing that you normally use to solve problems, is the

  • inhibitor of solutions if the problems are complex. It's the inhibitor. Your prefrontal

  • cortex is the inhibitor.

  • And there's a whole framework around this that I won't go into too far, but there's

  • a study of insight now - about the last five years there's been a study of insight and

  • this was published in my last book that a few people here have been reading called Quiet

  • Leadership - and you can actually now understand how insights occur.

  • And I'll give you just the Cliffs Notes, kind of the most valuable piece: and that is that

  • in order for insight to happen, you actually have to stop thinking. You have to stop any

  • form of, of, of conscious mental deliberate process to have these insights.

  • And the, there's a couple of complex reasons for that, but let me give you a demonstration

  • of it first, and let's see, kind of how you go with this.

  • This is a simple puzzle - you've basically got five words there: "Time flies like an

  • arrow." And they, it normally means time moves swiftly in one direction. Time goes straight

  • ahead; time goes forward.

  • Can anyone think of a different interpretation of those five words? Like quite a substantially

  • different interpretation? Anyone think of one? Over here.

  • >>Voice in audience: If you are keeping track of flies, fruit flies, and you are trying

  • to time them using [unintelligible].

  • >>David Rock: Very good. So that was a record for that answer. So you guys have very good

  • hiring processes, because of

  • [laughter]

  • people never get so quickly to an answer like that. Anyone else get one?

  • Yeah. Over here.

  • >>Voice in audience: Some, some type of fly called a time fly [unintelligible]

  • >>David Rock: Very good. Okay. Anyone else get one? Absolutely.

  • So what does it require to come up with these different solutions? What does it require

  • mentally?

  • You've got to kind of dampen down this solution in your brain. You've got to consciously

  • - it's pretty easy to do with just five words - much harder to do with a complex project.

  • But you've got to actually dampen down the existing solution and go, and go: "I'm gonna

  • think about this fresh. I'm gonna unlock the word time in this sort of structure it is;

  • in the sentence structure. I'm gonna reimagine it." Okay? And I'll give you, I'll give you

  • five of them.

  • Check the speed of flies the way you would time an arrow.

  • Check the speed of flies only if they are similar to an arrow.

  • Check the speed of flies the way an arrow would.

  • Time flies (a type of fly) are fond of arrows, which you got.

  • And there's some more if you get subtle, but many people have tremendous difficulty with

  • this, because they're not experienced at dampening down their own thinking. And clearly you guys

  • have developed great cognitive control; you know when it's time to kind of stop thinking

  • one way and try thinking another way. It's a very, very important capacity for maximizing

  • internal processing.

  • So insight involves stopping thinking about the problem, and allowing a completely different

  • solution to come through.

  • And this is a summary of Mark Beeman's research on insight and they see an Alpha wave which

  • is, you can see the purple line up there - the Alpha wave is the brain going into idle

  • just for a couple of seconds. The good news is it's not two months; it's two seconds.

  • But when you put the brain into idle it's like putting a car into neutral, and things

  • just kind of can come through.

  • The basic signs of this is a little complex to explain in a short time, but essentially

  • a thought like if I say: "Picture an elephant." If I say: "picture an elephant" that's gonna

  • be a connection between millions if not billions of neurons. And the electrical activity given

  • off as that circuit creates, is quite high. It's kind of a lot, it's like a high amplitude

  • electrical activity on an EEG.

  • But if you're trying to solve a problem, the solution that your brain comes up with in

  • your unconscious - it's your unconscious that solves it, not your conscious mind. The solution

  • might involve a circuit between only a few thousand or a few tens of hundreds of neurons,

  • and so there's a lot less electrical activity.

  • And electrical activity means arousal, and it means dopamine, and you need to be able

  • to notice spikes of dopamine to be able to notice information.

  • So put all that together you basically get the fact that if you're operating really with

  • a loud brain all the time, you're not able to see the subtle signals. And it's like you

  • don't kind of hear a quiet cell phone at a loud party, if it's really, really loud.

  • So the ability to have these insights very much comes from this ability to quieten down

  • your overall mental activity at any time. And people who can do that, people who have

  • strong cognitive control, which you can tell on a scanner before you give them a task;

  • those people have a lot more insights.

  • The other thing that I can tell you about insights that's kind of surprising is basically,

  • and, an answer to the question of where they come from. Where they come from is weak associations.

  • If you wanna have insights you've got to practice detecting weak associations.

  • And there's a story about this which is a true story; it involves a monk so, but it's

  • not an apochryphal story; it's a real story with a monk.

  • This monk went into Mark Beeman's lab to test out kind of what happens when he has insights.

  • And he went into the machine and he, he tried to solve problems with insight and he didn't

  • really solve any. And that was very unusual.

  • And Mark said to the guy: "What, what are you doing? What strategy are using?" And the

  • monk said: "I'm really focusing on the problem." And Mark said: "Right. Don't focus on the

  • problem. Focus on being unfocused. Focus on letting anything come into your attention

  • on being actually completely unfocused." And what happened was the monk became an insight

  • machine.

  • And this ability to detect weak associations is really, really important. And there's a

  • very, very strong correlate between this and anxiety and happiness. The more anxious you

  • are, the less of these weak connections you notice. And the more happy you are, the more

  • of these weak associations that you notice.

  • And we think it's because you literally open up your field of view when you're happy, and

  • you close down your field of view when you're unhappy. And that occurs internally and externally.

  • So the table tennis table and the pool table and all that stuff where you just kind of

  • goof off and just have some fun, that turns out to actually be very useful for complex

  • problem solving.

  • If you can shift yourself from anxiety to happiness, you'll get a pretty substantial

  • shift in the total number of problems you'll solve from insight.

  • So that may be explaining a few things that you already know, but to, to kind of summarize

  • this idea, we, we, we significantly over emphasize the rational. And it turns out that our rational

  • resources are very limited; a few hours a day. And our rational resources are not used

  • to solve most problems.

  • And so, just, I'll just pose a question to you before we go on. A question to you is:

  • what does this explain that you already do and what does it suggest maybe you do differently?

  • That's a kind of a question I pose for you, or you can pose a question for me. We'll just

  • see if anyone has any questions or comments before we go on to the second one.

  • Over here. From a neuroscientist. Fantastic. I get a immediate threat

  • response. You're gonna give me a pop quiz. Okay.

  • >>Voice in audience: How does flow fit into this?

  • >>David Rock: Flow is an interesting phenomenon, obviously.

  • [pause]

  • Generally what happens with flow, is you're using deeply embedded circuits that you don't

  • have to think about much to use. But you're using them in a slightly different way.

  • So you're doing something you know how to do really well, but you're doing it slightly

  • differently in a way that's really stretching you. So it's not completely uncertain; what's

  • happening is you're getting a positive feedback loop of dopamine because novelty creates and

  • new circuits create dopamine, but you're not having to put in all this effort to create

  • this, this wide scale new circuits, you see that?

  • And so you get this lovely, positive feedback loop in dopamine that happens. So if you're

  • doing something really difficult that's brand new, you get a lot more norepinephrine or

  • noradrenalin, more of a threat from the uncertainty in that way.

  • Yeah. Anyone else?

  • Yeah. Over there.

  • >>Voice in audience: [unintelligible]

  • >>David Rock: Well not really, much given it's only a cubic foot in terms of the information

  • it can hold. They think of it as kind of the, the caretaker of the building. It does a little

  • sweeping around the edges and kind of keeping things tidy and, I mean it does a lot of things;

  • it's the only region of the brain that actually is connected to every other region.

  • And you guys had Dan Siegel here, he's one of my favorite people in the world. And he

  • talks about the model of the hand where the prefrontal here is connected to the whole

  • brain, and it's really the only region of the brain that has a braking system. This

  • is one of the important functions; braking as in stopping not breaking.

  • It's the only region of the brain that has a braking system in it. So you've got all

  • these brain regions which are huge, which are like Milky Way sized for thinking; for

  • emoting; for moving; for all these different functions, and you've only got one brain region

  • which is the right and left temple that is, is in the prefrontal. It's called the right

  • and left ventral lateral prefrontal. And this region is involved in stopping both motor,

  • motor functions and thinking and feeling and everything else.

  • So it's, it's your task, it, or it's your structure for inhibiting automatic responses,

  • is one of the things that we think. And, and, and actually deliberately, it's, it's for

  • many other things, but that's one of its really important functions.

  • Without that you're an automaton. If you don't activate your brakes, you'll do whatever your,

  • your fears, and motivations will have you do, which is often not in your or everyone

  • else's best interests, to put it mildly.

  • The other thing that the prefrontal cortex does is very unusual; a lot of primates don't

  • have much. It allows us to imagine. So if you think of this as a stage; you think of

  • your prefrontal cortex as a stage, putting aside the braking structure, what you actually

  • do is you get information from several places. You can get information coming in right now

  • and hold it on your stage, and compare it to existing information in your brain; and

  • understand a new idea as a result.

  • And that's kind of cool, but other creatures do that a bit. What you can also do though,

  • is you can get information from inside your brain and combine it with other inside information

  • from inside your brain, and make up something completely new.

  • So you can take info from long term memory and you can combine them in different ways.

  • So you basically get this kind of playing field where you can do stuff. They call it

  • sometimes a mental sketch pad.

  • And so you've got this ability to imagine and make stuff up; and that includes imagining

  • what it's like to be you; imagining what it's like to be other people; imagining all sorts

  • of things. And those are two sides of the same coin, as well, by the way.

  • So it, I think those are the two really significant things. You remember it's dramatically smaller

  • than the rest of the brain, but the braking system is really important so that you actually

  • regulate automatic functions. And the other one is so that you can actually invent and

  • create.

  • And this issue of regulating is, is, is really significant because your capacity to regulate

  • emotions, which is where we're going; it's a nice segue question. Thank you.

  • Your, your capacity to regulate emotions is absolutely essential to success in life. Has

  • anyone heard of the marshmallow experiment? You might have heard someone talk it's a

  • - where like a few more minutes on that is many extra scores in your SAT. That is pure

  • self regulation. It's pure right and left ventral lateral prefrontal activity that's

  • enabling you to, to dampen down other things.

  • So this ability to regulate emotions is really critical.

  • Now the thing with emotions is we have them backwards, though. And we've, we've really

  • completely misinterpreted how to manage emotions in the wide of society. I'd say people whose,

  • who are successful in this organization probably would not have this problem where you wouldn't

  • succeed.

  • But the wide of society we tend to have it backwards.

  • Let me give you a little primer. You've, I'm sure you've heard about the limbic system.

  • I won't do Brain 101, but the basic thing to know is it's extremely skittish. Your limbic

  • system is constantly on the lookout for potential threats and it does something very interesting.

  • I'm gonna turn, I'm gonna turn this one on and do a little drawing here.

  • You got that working? There we go.

  • I'm gonna do a little drawing here. This is a, not an anatomically correct drawing in

  • any way, but if this is your, your, your prefrontal cortex here, you've got the deeper limbic

  • system.

  • The limbic system is making a decision every moment about everything that you interact

  • with in the world. So every book cover that you see, you decide: "Hey that's, that's good.

  • I'm gonna go toward that." Or "that's a kind of a threat. I'm gonna stay away from that."

  • It's a potential reward or it's a potential threat.

  • You do that with every chair: "Oh that chair looks comfortable. That chair looks dangerous."

  • With every person. You actually do it with every phoneme; every sound.

  • And your brain does it with nonsense words that have absolutely no meaning. They classify

  • them into reward or threat. And it's a very important overriding principle. In fact, it's

  • probably the only major organizing principle of the brain according to a metastudy of thousands

  • of brain studies.

  • The organizing principle is firstly minimize danger; secondly maximize reward. That's the

  • organizing principle.

  • Companies have organizing principles, don't they? Minimize costs; maximize revenues. The,

  • some parallels there.

  • Anyway, with the limbic system it's dramatically more likely for you to go the threat state,

  • because you brain's kind of evolved at a time when the people who were hypersensitive to

  • threat survived, basically. You've probably heard that.

  • But what's fascinating is the difference between the threat and reward.

  • And if this is, if this is a reward and this is threat and this is time; you're walking

  • along the street to work in the morning, and assuming some of you walk, and you're walking

  • along to the street, the street and you see someone that you really like. You don't, you

  • don't stop and think about them, you just see them, you notice them. In that moment

  • - this is time in seconds - your brain will slowly kind of get a little slight reward

  • response, and it'll start to taper off. A little reward response.

  • For those of you, it's a little low and a little technical challenge there.

  • Then you're walking along and you see someone that like attacked you last week at work

  • - not physically - but they just said your ideas were crazy; which turns out to be actually

  • as bad as a physical threat for your brain, but we'll get to that.

  • Anyway, what happens is, you, you see that person and you go "woof." And you go straight

  • down immediately, and you don't just go down faster you go down much deeper; you stay down

  • much longer; and it, it takes, it's much harder to displace.

  • So the statement bad is strong than good doesn't do it justice. Bad is stronger, longer lasting,

  • deeper, harder to move and all the rest of it. Which is why when a really tragic situation

  • happens like last week, something difficult, terrible news, the only people who are really

  • happy are media conglomerates who know that it's gonna get a lot more people's attention.

  • Because this - literally bad gets attention. This is what this is about. Attention goes

  • to the negative.

  • So, this is an important function to understand, because your brain's gonna go to the negative

  • all the time and you might say: "Well, so what. Why does that matter?" Well the reason

  • that matters is this limbic system has a very important function of keeping you alive.

  • But I'm just gonna draw this here. This is the threat response and this is the reward

  • response. This is, sorry, threat and reward. There we go. So you can see it there.

  • It's easier to hold things there then hold it in your mind. Less, less glucose to process.

  • So what happens is the degree of activation of this limbic system, which can be either

  • threat or reward, and this is activation, right? That's a lot of activation; a little

  • bit of activation.

  • The degree of activation of your limbic system is the degree of deactivation of your prefrontal

  • cortex.

  • And it turns out that even a small thing like seeing someone that you don't like much, has

  • quite a measurable impact on your ability to solve problems and make decisions. And

  • the more this is aroused, the less function you have here.

  • So this can go very quickly from a cubic foot to a cubic inch, or even less.

  • And it's really remarkable how this happens at such low levels.

  • And I'll give you one story I write about in the book. It's a study of two groups of

  • students completing a maze; it's just a piece of paper.

  • One group of students, the, the maze has a mouse in the middle and piece of cheese at

  • the end. The other group there's a mouse and an owl. And there's no priming deliberately

  • involved; the experimenters just say: "Complete the maze and then do some creativity experiments

  • afterwards."

  • And the differential in problem solving afterwards was about 50 percent. There's about a 50 percent

  • better problem solving ability in the people going for the cheese.

  • So this is like an amount of threat you can hardly even sense, you don't even know it's

  • there, has a very profound impact on all sorts of things.

  • And the other thing to know is that's deliberate problem solving, but also the unconscious

  • problem solving, the insight, that little bit of threat creates a lot of noise; and

  • your brain needs quiet to solve problems.

  • So what we need to do is learn to regulate emotions and this is where we get it backwards.

  • This where we get it backwards, because in society we tend to do the exact opposite of

  • what we need.

  • And let me give you a little context.

  • This is from actually James Gross from Stanford who's down the road from here. He's the founding

  • father of emotion regulation research, and his work's been repeated by Kevin Ochsner

  • and other neuroscientists in the last five years and some fascinating findings.

  • What we see is that when you experience a threat, things change. When you experience

  • the moment when it's sort of something kicks in, your world changes. What happens is this

  • gets aroused and this goes down.

  • By the way, it happens with strong positive threats; it's just they're much rarer.

  • Does anyone here play poker or willing to admit to it? Anyone here? A little hand in

  • the corner, there you go. What happens if you get like two aces on the flop?

  • >>Voice in audience: I think I [unintelligible] a smile.

  • >>David Rock: You start internally smiling and you feel, you feel pretty good. Have you

  • ever lost a lot of money getting two aces on the flop?

  • [talking in audience}

  • Have you ever noticed like, yeah. Yeah. Most people I've spoken to who've played it until

  • they learn this trick, what happens is that you - the strong positive actually inhibits

  • your, your processing, and you miss things that you wouldn't normally miss. You become

  • like too happy, and too happy actually isn't a really good state. What you wanna be is

  • just to the right of neutral for maximum processing.

  • Remember I, this session is about maximum, optimizing internal processing. You want to

  • be just to the right of neutral. Just slightly positive.

  • So what happens is when an emotion kicks, in everything changes; strong negative or

  • strong positive; strong negative more likely. You've got three choices you can make at that

  • moment.

  • One is the one my six-year old does very well, which is to let the emotion out. We all came

  • out like that didn't we? We came out kicking and screaming. And then we learn to what?

  • We learn to suppress. We learn to push it down, which is to try not to let other people

  • feel, see that you're feeling it.

  • One of the funniest things in the world is watching a six-year old try to pretend that

  • you can't see what they're feeling, when you can absolutely see what they're feeling. It's

  • very funny.

  • Anyway, you try to, you try to suppress the emotion, and the other technique which we'll

  • talk about it is cognitive change.

  • Cognitive change requires the very thing that diminishes very fast when an emotion kicks

  • in. So you may only have one or two seconds to use a cognitive change strategy when a

  • threat response kicks in, because your square foot which is your braking system is needed

  • for cognitive change.

  • That square foot shrinks fast like in fraction of a seconds it's going really fast downhill.

  • So let me explain this towell firstly let me tell you about the challenges of suppression.

  • When you suppress an emotion actually your limbic system stays as battle gets worse;

  • your memory goes out the door and you make other people uncomfortable. People's blood

  • pressure goes up; even third parties that know nothing that's going on.

  • So suppressing emotions has a terrible cognitive effect, and it's really the worse thing to

  • do and it's the very thing that most people do.

  • Cognitive change strategies, on the other hand, there's no impact on arousal, no change

  • to memory and no effect on others.

  • So they're very, very good, but they require being aware of internal states quickly.

  • If you're someone who doesn't know what you're feeling anytime and you sort of oblivious

  • to that and you're thinking about the world, but you never think about what your states

  • are, it will be very difficult to use cognitive change strategies.

  • So what are the two major ones? Well firstly let me tell you the two major ones put on

  • the brakes automatically whether you mean to or not. And the two cognitive change strategies

  • activate this more and this less. So they reverse the, the seesaw that's the

  • other way.

  • The first one's called labeling; emotional labeling. It's where you define an emotional

  • state in a word or two. You define an experience without going into the story of it. If you

  • go into the story it'll make the emotion worse.

  • The ironic thing is when people are polled, people say: "I don't want to talk about emotions

  • 'cause it's gonna make them worse." And so we instead suppress.

  • But actually in the lab we see that when you speak about an emotion and just label it in

  • a word or two, even when you have no idea you're in an emotional regulation task, it

  • automatically puts on the brakes and automatically dampens down the threat response.

  • So you're in a meeting and you're feeling just weird and something's going on and you

  • just go: "Ah. I don't know what's going on." And then you go: "Oh. That's right. I'm hungry."

  • [laughs] "That's why I can't focus."

  • That's a kind of gross example of the situation. And suddenly you feel more able to focus by

  • knowing that you're hungry or, or "I'm angry" at this person over there; it's really taking

  • up cognitive resources. And as you put words on, it decreases it.

  • If you can say that out loud, if it becomes part of the culture to say it, you activate

  • a stronger braking network and it dampens it down even more then just thinking it. Because

  • speaking is more attention density than just thinking.

  • So that's one strategy; it's not what we do in society; we do the opposite; we generally

  • suppress with a terrible cognitive load as a result.

  • The other strategy is one that anyone who wants to make it as a leader in any organization

  • has to develop. It's called reappraisal; it goes by other names like reframing, recontextualizing,

  • and all sorts of things. In the lab we call it reappraisal. It's what you need for strong

  • hits.

  • It's very simple; it's changing your entire interpretation of an event.

  • So you're driving to workwe seem to have a theme of driving to work today - I've been

  • doing a lot of traveling, can you see, can you tell? And you're driving to work and you,

  • you hit some traffic and you suddenly find you're absolutely stopped and you're starting

  • to get really anxious. And you notice it and you say: "Hm. I'm gonna have to reinterpret

  • this or I'm gonna have a really bad day." And you go: "How could I do that?" You've

  • got to use your resources fast. You go: "Gosh. What kind of opportunity could I turn this

  • into?" And if you don't do it quickly you won't see any opportunity in it, you'll only

  • see a threat.

  • If you do it quickly you can go: "I know. I'm gonna call my mother and have a great

  • chat with her. I'm gonna use the time to do something really great. Or I'm gonna use the

  • time to pull over and do some yoga, which I really wanted to do; I'm gonna really get

  • into that." Like it's, it's changing your interpretation of the event.

  • The other night I was at the airport and for the second day straight my plane was massively

  • delayed, and I had a big presentation the next day and I reinterpreted and said: "Oh,

  • cool. I've got two and a half hours, totally unplanned of total down time undisturbed where

  • I can plug in and just like really get some things out." And I just focused and really

  • got some things out.

  • So you all do that. You wouldn't survive in this kind of organization without a strong

  • capacity. The trouble is, people who are logical and linear say: "No. I wanna deal with the

  • data. I just want to grin and bear it. I want to suppress." Men are more likely to do that.

  • "I, I don't wanna make up stories and reinterpret, I am gonna see things as they are." That's

  • not so good and I'll show you the evidence.

  • There's a study of about several hundred people by James Gross actually. He classified people

  • in just very simple [unintelligible]. He said: "What do you do when a strong emotional hit

  • comes along? When a strong emotional experience comes to you, what do you do? Do you suppress

  • it or do you invent a different story and reinterpret it?"

  • And he then measured them on all sorts of scales and the middle line is the average.

  • I should probably point this one it's hard to see all of it.

  • Middle line is the average. And what he found is people who suppress more, significantly

  • below average on optimism, environmental mastery, positive relationships and life satisfaction.

  • The people who reappraised more were significantly above average on this side.

  • The only definer whatsoever was do you suppress or do you reappraise?

  • It's a sig - excuse me - it's a really significant determiner of success as a leader, or even

  • just as a team member because you get strong emotional hits all the time.

  • If you're someone who suppresses, your problem solving ability is gonna go down every time;

  • your memory's gonna go down; other people won't like you. If you learn to reappraise

  • it's different.

  • Now one of the coolest things I ever heard and it blew me away so much - I sort of had

  • to lie down for an hour - was that the more you understand about your brain - listen to

  • this - the more you understand about your brain, the more you can actually reappraise

  • all sorts of internal strong threats that come along.

  • Because you can go: "Oh gosh I'm so crazy. I'm such an idiot why did - oh hang on -

  • that's just my brain." You can actually recognize internal experiences and reappraise them as

  • brain functioning, not you; as things that are something that you can change, but you

  • change the interpretation. And you shift from a threat state towards that you start to see

  • more options.

  • Question over there.

  • >>Q:Yeah, what about the third [unintelligible] you know

  • [unintelligible].

  • >>David Rock: Yeah. Expression. The question was what happens to the third access? What

  • if you express?

  • Well, that will depend. I have got an actor friend, and she expresses all the time; it's

  • great. If you express, if you just get pissed off and you express, that's fine, but it's,

  • how should we say, it's maladaptive in the workplace.

  • [talking in audience]

  • You also notice you'll get fired fast because no one wants to work with you. Expression's

  • fine if it works for your environment. It's just nonadaptive.

  • As a leader what you'll want to express all the time is your intense desire to throttle

  • your employees because they're not doing what you want.

  • [laughter]

  • You won't have many followers pretty fast. So expression's fine; the emotion may pass;

  • it may go; but it stays in the people around you. So that's often not so good.

  • I want to get to the third piece, because we've got little time left and then we'll

  • - I think this is where it kind of comes together.

  • Let's bring this together into this, this final piece which is that social issues are

  • primary.

  • And, and we really, as I say, we've really got emotions backward. We tend to actually

  • do exactly the wrong thing to manage them. But there's even bigger insights from the

  • brain about social issues. And it's quite surprising.

  • Has anyone here heard of Maslow, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and the triangle? It's

  • really great. It's really organized. There's a really teeny, tiny, small problem which

  • is it's kind of wrong. And it's right in many ways, just to honor his work, it's, it really

  • helpful.

  • But Maslow sort of says primary needs are primary, and that's what we focus on first;

  • like food and water and shelter. We've gotta have that stuff. Social needs - where does

  • he put those? Right up there. That's not how your brain functions.

  • How your brain functions is social needs are primary needs. And the experiments on this

  • from the social cognitive effective neuroscience field are phenomenal.

  • Let me give you a little, a little metaphor. Let's say - what's your name again?

  • >>Voice in audience: Johnny.

  • >>David Rock: Johnny. Let's say Johnny you come to work and on the way to work you, you

  • sort of trip and you hurt your leg and you got a little bit of pain. Then as you try

  • and focus on a coding project or something, every few minutes the pain will take over

  • your attention because it's an alert signal; it's a threat response saying your life is

  • in danger; focus on this pain. And so you won't be able to focus as much.

  • Now if you then take some aspirin which inhibits the pain in five different pain regions, you

  • will be able to focus more because the threat response goes down. So pain is the threat

  • response saying you're in danger, do something.

  • Now if, if you don't fall like that, but you're on the way to work and someone says to you:

  • "Hey, I, I, think there's a real problem with that project that you worked on." And you

  • decide that that means, maybe incorrectly, you decide that means that they're putting

  • down your work, and saying that you've made a mistake. You're gonna get also a threat

  • response. And you might feel really angry and actually in a kind of pain.

  • And what's really surprising is that if you also then took an aspirin, that pain would

  • also diminish and you would see diminished activation of the same five pain regions as

  • if you were feeling physical pain.

  • And in placebo controlled studies, we've seen very clearly that social pain activates the

  • same regions of the brain as physical pain; and social rewards like even saying to someone:

  • "Good job" in a computer voice to a simple task, activates the dopamine reward center

  • more than money.

  • It's insane. It's not rational.

  • But the brain is deeply, deeply social.

  • Now it does make sense and here's how. If you're a wolf, you get resources from the

  • wild; so you've got great wiring for smell, smelling a dead carcass a thousand feet away.

  • My daughter can smell chocolate from the other room, but she can't smell a carcass across

  • the suburb. Right?

  • [laughter]

  • But you don't get resources from the wild, do you? Where do you get them from the moment

  • you're born? From other people.

  • So you've got massive circuitry for other people; for reading their intentions. That's

  • one of the biggest ones. For reading their goals, intentions, their emotions. Can I trust

  • or distrust? You've got huge scwaves. At six months old you detect - there's jealousy,

  • all sorts of things.

  • So we've got massive amount of social circuitry and I summarized a whole ton of the social

  • neuroscience hap - that's been happening into a paper that's been currently one of the most

  • popular papers out there in, through the business world called "Managing With The Brain In Mind."

  • And it's a summary of the major social threats and rewards that are actually driving our

  • behavior. And these are actually the brain's own goals, when it comes to the social world.

  • The first one is, is status.

  • [pause]

  • The second one is certainty.

  • [pause]

  • The third one is autonomy.

  • [pause]

  • The fourth one is having taller white boards.

  • The third one is relatedness.

  • [pause]

  • And the final one is fairness.

  • I'll put this up on screen so you can see this. It'll be a little bit easier. I didn't

  • think ahead that far for how low that would go.

  • Status; certainty; autonomy; relatedness; fairness.

  • Let me just put this up on screen so you don't have to hold it in mind. It'll be easier to

  • see it.

  • Here's how it works.

  • Your brain keeps track of pain and when you experience pain, you get a threat and it keeps

  • track of pleasure. When you experience pleasure you want more of it; you go toward it. It

  • keeps track of domains like water, like temperature. Your brain keeps track of a whole series of

  • environmental domains, using the primary reward and threat circuitry.

  • Your brain also keeps track of these social domains using the primary reward and threat

  • circuitry. When you feel like there's more food coming you get rewarded; less food you

  • get hunger. When you feel like your status is going up, you feel fantastic; when you

  • feel like your status is going down because bad is stronger than good, you feel like death.

  • When you feel like certainty is going up, you feel pretty good, when you feel more certain

  • about something; when you feel uncertain, you again feel like pain is coming, 'cause

  • bad is stronger than good.

  • Uncertainty activates a threat response in a big way. Even ambiguity lights up the limbic

  • system in a big, big way. Just a little ambiguities.

  • Autonomy; when you sense that you have choices; a small stressor becomes - sorry, when you

  • have, when you detect you have choices a big stressor becomes small.

  • When you think you have no autonomy, you just gotta do what someone else wants, a small

  • stress becomes really big.

  • And finally fairness which is kind of self explanatory, but fairness, fairness in and

  • of itself is activating either a reward or a threat.

  • Now in study after study after study from about 400 different neuroscientists working

  • on these and other fields, what we've seen is that these threats and rewards are very,

  • very overwhelming and much more than people realize. Much more than people realize.

  • So, Yeah, question.

  • >>Q: [unintelligible]

  • >>David Rock: Related, um, you, I so did. Sorry about that. Uncertainty, suddenly rises

  • up.

  • Relatedness is a decision that you make about: "Are you in my in-group or my out-group?"

  • And you make very different decisions when someone's in your in-group. You actually,

  • you don't feel pain of someone in your out-group; you don't feel empathy. When someone in your

  • out-group speaks to you, you don't really listen to what they say; we know that intuitively,

  • but in the lab you actually don't create maps of what they're saying; you use different

  • circuits to actually hear them.

  • When someone's in your in-group you do experience their pain; you do actually see what they're

  • seeing. You actually see what they're saying, literally. Your occipital lobe lights up;

  • you see what they're saying.

  • So it's friend or foe; it's trust or distrust. It's a decision we make with people. And by

  • the way, foe is the default. So we automatically decide that, that everyone is a foe until

  • proven otherwise, with a couple of exceptions. One is really attractive or familiar people.

  • Babies, there're all, everyone stares at babies. And the final one is if you've had too much

  • to drink.

  • [laughter]

  • And in that case everyone is your friendmaybe not everyone - but in some instances,

  • you suddenly feel like able to talk to strangers. You know that feeling? You go to a party,

  • don't know everyone, you're freaked out; have a few drinks; I talk to everyone. You've shifted

  • from foe to friend.

  • Now this is very important for collaboration because you don't collaborate well at all

  • with people that you think are foes. Even a slight foe, you'll get very poor collaboration

  • compared to if people think that you're a friend.

  • So, now you put this together; you see a whole bunch of things. There's a tremendous amount

  • to say about this, but the biggest two seem to be status and certainty. Although everyone's

  • different; everyone's individual. You can't maximize them all at once because too much

  • certainty is no autonomy.

  • But it's about recognizing ahead of time kind of what's going on. And using this to improve

  • rewards.

  • This concept of workplace engagement, of being really into what you're doing, means that

  • people are experiencing rewards, they're on the right-hand side. That's what engagement

  • is.

  • Engagement is a brain that's making new connections; has lots of dopamine; is experiencing flow;

  • and it's going for these kinds of status rewards.

  • Now, what does that explain?

  • Well first thing let me just say this: if someone comes up to you at work and says,

  • "We need to talk about that project." What's that feeling that you get in your stomach?

  • It's like, ooh, it's like a jolt, it's a threat.

  • And what about if someone says to you: "I need to give you some feedback?" It's a jolt,

  • right? It's like a little, it's a concern.

  • That's the status threat. Status is kind of the scary one. We don't talk about it much,

  • but status is really driving our behavior massively. And I'll tell you why.

  • When we feel like we're sma - it's about better than or worse than - when we feel like we've

  • gone up in status in the communities we're in - and it's not about Rolexs and houses

  • it's just about number; agreed pecking order. When we feel like it's gone up, we get a wonderful

  • reward and when we feel like it's gone down we get a very intense threat.

  • The same with the expectation. We feel like it might go up, we get a nice reward; we feel

  • like it might go down we get an intensely strong threat. So we really, really avoid

  • threats like we avoid pain.

  • And so we avoid things where our status might go down. And where this plays out is you get

  • this tremendous push back when you try to change anyone in any way.

  • If I want to change you in any way, I've gotta start with the premise that there's something

  • wrong with you, and I've got more information, or I know something, and immediately you're

  • gonna get people pushing back, 'cause it's a status threat. You see that?

  • It'll happen with your kids; it'll happen with your partner; it'll happen at work; it'll

  • happen everywhere. When, when you try to chance someone you get a big status threat and a

  • certainty threat as well, of course.

  • Now, what about - there are two things that are pretty much guaranteed to create very

  • true and full emotional responses that sort of overwhelm you.

  • One is the threat of physical violence. If you think you're about to be physically attacked,

  • you're gonna have pain; you'll stop everything and freak out and really freak out. Right?

  • You know you do that.

  • Now the other one is the expression: "Let me tell you what other people have been saying

  • about you."

  • [talking in audience]

  • It also activates, maybe not as intense as real physical violence, but it activates a

  • really strong threat response and it's also known as the Performance Review.

  • [laughter]

  • "Let me tell you what others have been saying about you and what's been going on here."

  • It's a very threatening response.

  • So we've got to work out how to mitigate that and we try and do that. And it's also known

  • as you're getting some coaching now you've gotta watch out for that because people will

  • go, what have people been saying about me; why am I getting coaching? Unless you reframe

  • that, it's quite dangerous.

  • So as someone who - in this room some of you manage people; ask someone who's a manager.

  • It really, really plays out because it's very easy to be very logical and when you manage

  • someone, tell them all the things that they should be doing, which impacts this status;

  • and to not provide clear expectations and to micromanage and to not trust them, and

  • to not be open.

  • And you get a jackpot; you get a negative jackpot, which is not so good.

  • So it's very easy to drive people crazy as a manager, and you may have experienced that

  • with your managers when they don't let you have autonomy and they, all that stuff sends

  • people really crazy.

  • Now when you're experiencing lots of rewards, your world is bigger. You actually perceive

  • many more layers of data; you perceive more width of data; you perceive more information

  • because you've got more prefrontal function and more insight capacity.

  • So this is not a small thing to minimize threat. Minimize threat in these social ways are really

  • important.

  • Now, what about when you find a project that is kind of yours and you can make your mark

  • and you think it's a project that's really cool, and maybe it sort of helps the world

  • in some way, even just a small world, like your team? What if it sort of like improves

  • and rights a wrong in some way? Then you get passionately behind that. That's what deep

  • engagement is.

  • Now deep engagement actually involves people who feel like they're increasing their status;

  • and they're increasing their certainty by fixing something that was uncertain; and they're

  • increasing their autonomy by actually doing something, taking action; they're increasing

  • relatedness because you can't do this alone, you gotta connect with others; and they're

  • increasing some unfilled, or decreasing some unfairness. And you start to get the positive

  • jackpot.

  • So the more you can focus on how what you do makes a difference in the world, the more

  • you'll also get that. Then the more as an organization you focus on how what you do

  • makes a difference in the world, the more the organization gets these positive rewards

  • as well.

  • So there's a whole bunch of layers that you can look at this framework on, and if you

  • wanna know more about this, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna say buy the book 'cause you'll

  • get an immediate threat response and class me as an out-group rather than an in-group.

  • But I will say that I'll send you a paper, I'll send you this paper, just drop your card

  • up here if you wanna kind of read into this more.

  • There's a paper called "Managing with the Brain in Mind"; anyone who wants it, drop

  • a card and I'll - you'll get one email shot from me - you won't go on a database - you'll

  • get one email shot with this and some other links to other resources.

  • Okay, so the social is primary and it really has a huge impact. Social issues are primary.

  • The final thing to say, then we've got five minutes of questions - the final thing to

  • say is that attention changes the brain.

  • Attention actually does change the brain. It changes it in seconds, it turns out. Not

  • just in months or weeks or days or hours. It changes it in seconds.

  • The trouble is, your attention normally goes to the negative; that's where it always goes.

  • If you wanna focus your attention on the future, on something uncertain, it's tricky if you've

  • got a threat response because the space shrinks.

  • If you wanna focus your attention on a goal, you need to, to be kind of feeling safe first,

  • because attention won't go easily there. But as you focus attention on things that are

  • intangible which require a lot of space here, you actually thicken those circuits and you

  • start to see those pieces of the world become alive.

  • So attention changes the brain, but what you gotta do is develop the capacity to control

  • your attention.

  • And I wanna finish with this one idea that really the more you understand the brain,

  • the more you become able to control your attention and make attentional choices.

  • And it's almost like this issue of, of kind of the brain as a Swiss Army knife. And the

  • more you're able to understand what's in this brain of yours, the more you can actually

  • go: "No, I'm not gonna be problem focused now, I'm gonna be solution focused. No, I'm

  • not gonna be driven by status here, I'm gonna focus on the organization's goals. No, I'm

  • not gonna be thrown by all this uncertainty, I'm gonna actually quieten my mind down for

  • a minute."

  • So the more you understand your brain, the more language you have to make difference

  • choices. The only trouble is, the brain's a little bit more like that.

  • [laughter]

  • So you want to practice this and all this. But there's tremendous benefits from very

  • short amounts - like a week - of starting to practice just noticing, noticing what your

  • brain's doing. For a few minutes a day is having very measurable impacts on all sorts

  • of mental functions and, and, and processes there.

  • So I'm not an advocate for tryin' to teach people to do long term attention training.

  • There's tremendous benefits in literally a few minutes a week of practicing different

  • things.

  • So I want to wrap up with this one statement, is that it's possible to optimize internal

  • data processing; and one of the ways to do that is by understanding your brain better.

  • The more you understand the brain, the more you can minimize that threat response; maximize

  • the space in your prefrontal cortex and maximum insight problem solving.

  • Thank you very much.

  • [applause]

  • We've got a couple of minutes for questions, if people have any questions. One over there.

  • >>Q: How, I wanted to ask a question about [unintelligible]

  • >>David Rock: There's some mics. We'll use those mics. Thank you very

  • much.

  • >>Q: In the, in the dichotomy between reappraisal and suppression -

  • >>David Rock: Yeah.

  • >>Q: how do we evaluate something like, I'm thinking of a Buddhist monk who's extremely

  • serene, is that extremely suppressed or extremely reappraised or something -

  • >>David Rock: I think they've practiced staying in a toward state.

  • There's a funny quote that comes to mind for me from the Dalai Lama, which someone asked

  • him - I don't know if you've heard this - someone asked him: "Why are you always so

  • happy?" He said: "Because it feels better."

  • [laughter]

  • In other words, he's, he's kind of doing a reappraisal; he's constantly choosing to be

  • happy, choosing to look at situations and choosing that kind of compassion, that happiness.

  • And it seems that anything you do over and over becomes easier to do and becomes more

  • of a, of a trait not just a state. So that kind of training is, is what happens.

  • So I think there's subtle distinctions and you've got to kind of find the differences

  • in your own, in your own brain. But you can - it's very obvious to external person or

  • do some skin conductance technology or to a scanner, it's very obvious and to ourselves,

  • when we're suppressing and the emotions are still there, versus when we've actually changed.

  • And one of the troubles with reappraisal - though it's fabulous - it's really hard

  • to do on your own, because it takes cognitive resources.

  • And I'll give you a trick. If you need to reappraise and haven't got much time and you're

  • overwhelmed, the cheapest form of reappraisal is humor.

  • When things are tough and you go: "Oh, I'm just gonna laugh at this." What do you do?

  • You actually completely reduce the threat, the stress dramatically, don't you?

  • So in an extreme emergency, laugh and it shifts you from a threat to a toward state. And that's

  • one of the ways that you can, you can manage this.

  • Thank you.

  • Another question.

  • >>Q: Hi. I walked in a little bit late, so you'll have to forgive me if you covered this

  • at the beginning.

  • >>David Rock: David is my name. That's where I started.

  • >>Q: Okay. A friend of mine forwarded me your paper "Neuroscience of Mindfulness".

  • >>David Rock: Oh, right. The, the

  • >>Q: The article that you did.

  • >>David Rock: The article. Yes.

  • >>Q: Yeah. And I was trying to paraphrase it for somebody and I did a bad job and I

  • wanna see if maybe you could help me out.

  • >>David Rock: Oh fantastic. I've got one minute to explain the "Neuroscience of Mindfulness."

  • >>Q: Oh. Sorry.

  • >>David Rock: Awesome.

  • >>Q: Well.

  • >>David Rock: I'm gonna do it.

  • >>Q: You talked about basically kind of the brain's in two modes. There's a -

  • >>David Rock: Let me explain it. Basically that you have two ways of experiencing any

  • moment. One is called the direct experience circuitry. You're taking in data right now.

  • Right now you're taking in data - not focusing on it much. But you could actually stop and

  • take in data like the sound of my voice going: "Oh." Just hear me saying "Oh." You could

  • listen to that data. When you listen to that data and focus your attention on it, you dampen

  • down what's called the narrative circuitry, which is all the stories and thinking.

  • They're two separate circuits. And when you actually can focus on direct information coming

  • in right now, you actually then perceive more information in all senses; and you stop the

  • kind of story and threat and rambling that goes on; but more importantly you see more

  • choices. And this is both in the external world and in the internal world.

  • So when you're able to distinguish between directly taking in data and story about data,

  • you become much better at cognitive control.

  • And you can practice that for just moments every day. You can practice that in the shower

  • for ten seconds a day and you'll get benefits. You can practice it anywhere; the start of

  • a meal.

  • What you just want to do is focus on any kind of incoming data and see how long you can

  • focus your attention on it, and notice when your attention goes back to the narrative,

  • which is story.

  • >>Q: Right.

  • >>David Rock: So you're tasting some food; notice yourself tasting the food and the flavors,

  • and then notice yourself thinking about something else entirely and go, "ooh, narrative" and

  • come back to tasting.

  • And the more you can split, see these things, the, you develop this great cognitive control

  • that really helps you with many other ways.

  • The article is called "The Neuroscience of Mindfulness". It's been one of the most popular.

  • I had a whole lot of Buddhist put a fatwa against me, which I only say half jokingly,

  • although if you're gonna have a fatwa it's probably the best religion to have one -

  • [laughter]

  • by. But interestingly, the Dahli Lama sent a, re-Tweeted it and thought it was fabulous.

  • Because they, they thought it's really important for people to understand mindfulness.

  • I sort of said something as important as being aware of internal states shouldn't be tagged

  • to any religion.

  • >>Q: All right.

  • >>David Rock: And I kind of said that's really a problem that it's being tagged to that religion,

  • and everyone should develop the capacity to notice internal states. That's how you optimize

  • data processing. It's the only way to optimize data processing.

  • So it's kind of a controversial one, but the "Neuroscience of Mindfulness." I'll send that

  • as one of the links.

  • One last question.

  • >>Q: Thank you.

  • >>Q: Just, you were talking about the direct experience thing, reminds me of, I've done

  • a lot. My mom's an art teacher,

  • >>David Rock: Yeah.

  • >>Q: Most of my family are artists. I'm sure you've heard of the book Drawing on the Right

  • Side of the Brain.

  • >>David Rock: Yeah. It's a great book. Yeah.

  • >>Q: Which, which reminded me a lot like the whole way that that sort of gets you to push

  • down your sort of representations of the world and just look at the -

  • >>David Rock: And just experience directly. Absolutely, and that right half is a little

  • bit more about direct experience: body and emotions and directly; and the left is more

  • about language and verbalizing.

  • In schools we tend to teach the left massively and not the right.

  • I'm involved in a project with Dan Siegel, we're both on the board of a school, kind

  • of a showing a whole other way of building education and, it is more about the right

  • as well. Yeah.

  • >>Q: Right. So I have, it, have you - I don't even know what my actual question is here

  • - but just about, have you looked at sort of artists and the way that they're, they

  • work while they're doing their sort of thing?

  • Because, you don't like any sort of a

  • >>David Rock: You know -

  • >>David Rock: I think issue shows up everywhere.

  • >>Q: Okay. Sure.

  • >>David Rock: And whether it's an artist or a kite surfer or a table tennis player or

  • a coder, somebody's doing coding, whatever; many people have experienced this feeling

  • of like taking in data in real time and how amazingly energizing it is and how much more

  • information you have and how much smarter you are; how much more creative you are.

  • Many people have experienced this and they become so excited by it, they become evangelists

  • and build a whole body of knowledge, but it's essentially people discover the impact of

  • the direct experience circuitry, and you notice a lot more information about the outside and

  • the inside world. You notice many more things about internal visceral states.

  • It has nothing to do with meditation, it has nothing to do with a religion; it's simply

  • your ability to control your attention to optimize data processing.

  • And I think, especially for senior executives who have massive amounts of data to process,

  • I think it's extremely important that they develop these muscles, in any organization.

  • That they develop these muscles to be able to shift between these two states as needed.

  • And it's not about being in one or the other all the time, it's about being adaptive and

  • being able to know when you need to be in which state.

  • So, I think it's extremely important.

  • With that, I want to thank Ming and the whole team putting this on. And for you and your

  • attention; I know hardly, hardly anyone was on a laptop, which I don't know if that's

  • a record or what.

  • [laughter]

  • But I'm really impressed with that.

  • And hopefully you've made, and I think you've made some new connections and some insights.

  • Drop your card up here. I'll send you links to that paper and a bunch of the papers to

  • kind of read, listen to things, and all the best with optimizing your internal data processing.

  • Thank you.

  • [applause]

>>David Rock: When I'm not talking about the brain, I'm working with senior executives

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