Energy Goes Where Attention Flows.
What Lies Beneath: Hypnotherapy is Helping Me Get to the Bottom of My Depression
Below you will find an informative, and humorous article about hypnosis that I was interviewed for by The Root publication. It provides information on how and why it works and reflections on the experience of hypnosis by a client.
https://www.theroot.com/what-lies-beneath-hypnotherapy-is-helping-me-get-to-th-1834881753
Communication: It’s the Emotional Undercurrents that Can Put a Ceiling on Creative Problem Solving
Management practices have advanced enormously over the past few decades. Yet, one area that remains hidden from public view is the emotional undercurrent that accompanies communication, which can be negative and destructive to performance. There is a long history of corporate culture to overcome, which has worked to keep negative emotions from seeing the light of day.
While pure expression of anger, sadness, hurt and fear is of little constructive value, leaders need to be aware of how emotions get in the way of creativity and identifying solutions to challenging problems.
One important issue to understand is that the meaning extracted from one person communicating with another does not come in the message content. Meaning is ascribed by the receiver of communication based on that individual’s life experience, spanning all the way back to childhood.
We each have a bank of memories that has led us to draw conclusions about ourselves and the world we live in, including the corporation. And these conclusions have crystalized into beliefs (e.g., I am creative and smart, I am not good enough, the world is a safe place, I have no control of these situations, I am defective, I have to try harder than others). The beliefs we hold act as filters for the information we take in, and sometimes an interaction in the present triggers an old experience, and we become angry or frightened, for example, for reasons we may not even be consciously aware of. Conversely, the memory banks of employees contain a wealth of positive, solution-oriented material that can be tapped for creativity and innovation.
Leaders who understand that each employee has their own mental map of the world through which they interpret communication and events can use this knowledge to improve outcomes in meetings, enable groups to generate more creative solutions and, overall, enable employees to feel comfortable enough to make use of their total self. Each and every employee has been solving problems throughout life and effective leaders know how to tap into the creativity of all.
So there are tremendous individual differences between the mental maps of employees, which serve to filter all of the data they take in through their five senses (i.e., vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell). That’s one critical level. But another is the commonalities. When employees gather in problem-solving groups, there is a natural tendency for members to habitually find the flaws in ideas shared by others (e.g., We tried that before and it didn’t work; That won’t work because…, etc.). And when an idea is shot down, the team member who share it definitely has an emotional reaction. That person is likely to feel defensive, angry or frustrated, resulting in a high likelihood that he or she will shut down. And do you think they are likely to listen to the next idea raised by the person who shut their idea down? Probably not.
Even very self-confident people come into meetings with a need to be heard, and to have their ideas received with ‘open-ears.’ Without training in areas of listening and constructive response, companies all over the world are shutting down creative, original thinking before germs of great ideas can be built, through teamwork, into great innovations and solutions to problems.
One easy place to start is to build in a communication process that shapes team behavior to give positive feedback to an idea that has been expressed before citing concerns or perceived limitations (e.g., What I like about that idea is…,I like that idea because…). And when constructive criticism is given, it can be followed with a question about how the team could work to resolve the challenge (e.g., Can we work together to find a solution to this obstacle?) Training people to build on the ideas of others—instead of reverting to what is frequently the old habit of picking out the holes or flaws first—is smart business. Over time, employees will engage in more risk taking around sharing their ideas and experience greater work satisfaction. And the company will benefit from greatly enhanced creativity.
William James, on the Power of Mind
The greatest revolution in our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing their inner attitudes of mind, can change the outer aspects of their lives.
#4 of 4: Four Core Brain Networks that Leaders Should Know About
Unlike the other 3 brain networks discussed (Default, Reward and Affect) by Waytz and Mason in their HBR article, the Control Network operates at a conscious level. The authors point out that the Control Network is what makes us distinctly human. Unlike animals that operate at purely instinctive levels, we have the capacity to reflect on ourselves, our actions and the world, and to make conscious choices about actions that counter what is instinctively driven at an unconscious level. We can decide whether or not to stay at a job, to pursue a goal, and even to break an unwanted habit.
As a consulting hypnotist, and from the perspective of vast study and practice in the field, the author’s discussion of the Control Network seemed to be least aligned with my experience. They describe the Default Network and the Control Network as “bookends,” because, “they are essentially countervailing forces.” According to the authors, “The more engaged the control network is in distributing resources to achieve goals rooted in the real world, the less engaged the default network is in detaching from the real world and imagining alternatives, and vice versa.”
My experience has taught me that the Control Network (which is commonly called the Executive Function) is indeed the part of mind that sets goals, plans, prioritizes and makes decisions. But, very importantly, the Default Network (i.e., part of the unconscious mind) is the part of mind that follows through on, and executes those goals and decisions. The Default part of mind does not make decisions, but it is THE powerhouse of resources that can offer creative solutions and innovations in response to a decision made by the Control Network. People have far more power than they may have ever imagined when the Default (i.e., unconscious) part of mind is aligned with the Control (i.e., conscious) part of mind.
You may recall that when discussing the Default Network (i.e. part of unconscious mind), I made the point that the conscious mind and the unconscious mind can be guided to work seamlessly together. When the Default Network understands what the Control Network intends to accomplish, it sets about scanning the internal landscape for ideas, opportunities and solutions to meet the goal. And it can do this concurrently with activation of the Control Network. While the Control Network goes about its daily tasks, the Default network can be instructed to work beneath the level of conscious awareness in finding a creative idea or solution. And when it has discovered a response to a question or a solution to a challenge, for example, that answer or solution is delivered up to conscious mind, and voila, you have a Eureka! Experience.
I often describe the conscious mind as the captain of the ship. It is that part of mind that stands on high and calls out instructions through a megaphone to the crew beneath the deck. The crew beneath the deck is the part of mind that simply follows through on the instructions given by the captain, without judgment or veto power.
Hence, the idea presented by Waytz and Mason of the Control Network being tasked with “policing all the brain’s other networks,” and “suppressing” the Default Network simply doesn’t fit with my experience. I believe that the powerful alignment of both the Control Network, operating at a conscious level of mind, and the Default Network, operating at an unconscious level of mind, can work in beautiful, harmonious synergy.
#3 of 4: Four Core Brain Networks that Leaders Should Know About
The Affect Network, or in the parlance of brain anatomy—the Limbic System—is the emotional system of the body. Events that take place in the world, as well as thoughts in the mind trigger a whole host of internal biochemical chain-reactions within the body that ultimately lead to physical outcomes such as alterations in heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature. And that biochemical and physical process is what emotion is comprised of. Heart rate, for example, goes down to normal levels when experiences and thoughts are happy, and up when they are anxiety producing. This is important to understand for a wide variety of reasons. But for our purposes here, let’s apply it to the experience of ‘gut instinct,’ and leveraging this internal compass for business success.
It’s important to start with a step back, to look at how memory and learning work, because memories and learnings stored in the brain are the elements that trigger emotions. Over a lifetime, people continuously build up a bank of memories that are categorized by association (i.e., this experience is like that experience and that experience is like this experience). Each time we have an experience in the world, the mind automatically compares that experience to the bank of memories stored and either finds a match—this is like that—or finds that experience to be a novel one.
Waytz and Mason, in their HBR article, use an example of someone having a powerfully bad encounter with a habanero pepper that burnt the mouth and left an indelible lesson: habanero peppers are bad. “The point is,” say the authors, “you don’t have to do any rational analysis to decide whether to eat habaneros the next time they’re presented to you.” You now have a fast track to decision-making in which you don’t need any further data to analyze. I would add to this example that the mind, even at an unconscious level, can generalize to other kinds of peppers, concluding that all peppers are bad. In this scenario, the individual may be unnecessarily limiting their eating experience, because all peppers are not hot, or not as hot as the habanero. In some cases, the associations made by the brain are unnecessarily generalized.
Now, let’s round this back to leveraging the gut instinct by imagining a professional with a big, high risk decision to make, the outcome of which will have significant impact on the business, either positive or negative, depending on the outcome. And the decision maker is a seasoned professional with great depth of experience, who has had a large team analyzing data gathered to facilitate making the big decision. Let’s say the decision is around whether to invest significantly in a new partnership. All of the due diligence data looks good, pointing to a ‘go’ as opposed to a ‘no go’ decision. Yet, the decision maker is uncharacteristically plagued with sleepless nights over this decision, waking up frequently in the middle of the night with a pit of soreness in her gut. She knows that all of the data point to a positive outcome, but she just can’t rid herself of a ‘feeling’ of doom and gloom. What should she do? Because she is operating within a business culture that relies on data and logic at the expense of ‘gut feelings,’ she procrastinates on bringing her concerns to her boss.
The point of this example is that the negative feeling this professional has about her situation should be deemed important, because she has a wealth of experience that the inner mind has to draw upon to set off alarm signals, even if she is not consciously aware of what is triggering her concerns. This is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and discard or dismiss data and rational input. But the subjective, internal knowing could be at the very crux of what this company needs to pay attention to.
‘Gut feelings’ are by no means always accurate. Take the example above in which learning and associations have led to the belief that all peppers are bad. On this very small scale, this can lead to a life of unnecessarily bland eating. Associations can be distorted, as well, all the way up to the scale of a critical business decision. Having said that, more business are embracing the full scope of inputs, including emotions, to guide their judgments and decisions and reaping excellent returns.
#2 of 4: Four Core Brain Networks that Leaders Should Know About
The second core brain network discussed by Waytz and Mason in their HBR article is the Reward Network. This network should be understood by organizational development professionals, marketers, and anyone who manages and leads people. (Please note that you can find discussion of all 4 Brain Networks discussed by Waytz and Mason in a recent HBR article under the category of “The Brain Terrain” on this blog.)
This Reward Network is activated whenever one experiences pleasure in life. When this brain network receives a ‘rewarding’ stimulus, such as when eating a favorite food, it sends a signal for activation of a part of the midbrain known as the Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA), where dopamine is produced, and we feel pleasure. Dopamine transmits the sensation of pleasure and this experience encourages us to want to repeat the behavior—in this case eating a favorite food—in the future. So, for executives and leaders with responsibility for generating good feelings among employees about a workplace, loyalty and optimal conditions for top performance, this particular network is worthy of attention. Likewise, marketers and brand managers who seek to create trial, repeat purchasing and loyalty among their customers are greatly benefited by knowing what types of products and experiences engage and activate reward networks of customers.
Prior to the late 20th century, the level of scientific understanding was that the body’s reward system was activated when primary survival needs were met, such as eating, drinking much needed fluids, and having sex (i.e., survival of the species). According the Waytz and Mason, research has now demonstrated that the reward network in the brain is also sensitive to secondary rewards, including money. And with further research, ‘immaterial rewards’ were added into the mix of what activates the reward center, including status, social approval and anticipation of learning. Curiosity is central to human nature and, for most people, learning is very rewarding.
Delving deeper into the applied realm, a body of Reward Network research has focused on discovering the types of experiences that motivate employees, which Waytz and Mason outline in their HBR article. If a company conducts a survey, they may or may not get honest answers, but direct observation of activation or deactivation of the reward center, through the use of brain scanning technologies, always tells the truth. Waytk and Mason describe research by Jamil Zaki of Stanford and Jason Mitchell of Harvard, that demonstrates that ‘fairness’ is critically important in motivating people, even those who are part of the “privileged few.” When research subjects were assigned the task of dividing up small amounts of money between themselves and others, findings indicated that the reward centers of their brains were much more activated when they made “generous, equitable choices.” Hence, one among many suggestions made by Waytz and Mason is that “companies that maintain a reasonable level of internal pay equity would do well to publicize that information among employees. A workplace deemed to be fair is a happy workplace that garners respect and loyalty.
Conversely, unfairness, in all of its expressions, demotivates and deactivates the reward center. This ‘unfairness,’ say Waytk and Mason, includes experiences such as being left out of strategy meetings when one is fully qualified to be there, withholding information from employees, and skyrocketing executive pay. All of this knowledge provides a wealth of information about how to structure cultures that motivate and engage employees, and promote job satisfaction, company loyalty and high performance.
# 1 of 4: Four Core Brain Networks that Business Leaders Should Know About
I really enjoyed reading the Adam Waytz and Malia Mason article called Your Brain at Work in Harvard Business Review’s special issue titled, The Brain Science Behind Business. They reviewed four networks in the brain and provided direct linkage to how their processes can be leveraged to both add value to the companies that understand their respective inner-workings, and how they can also create disadvantages, if left to function without guidance. Out of the reportedly 15 brain networks and sub-networks that have been identified by brain researchers, the following four networks have the most consistent backing by neuroscientists, as reported by Waytz and Mason:
- The Default Network: Pathway to Unlocking Breakthrough Innovation
- The Reward Network: Pathway to Structuring Incentives that Motivate
- The Affect Network: Pathway to Leveraging Gut Instinct
- The Control Network: Pathway to Creating Achievable Goals
I will address The Default Network in this post, from my vantage point as a consulting hypnotist, and move into the other three networks in subsequent posts. As a consulting hypnotist, having worked with hundreds of clients, I would refer to the Default Network, along with the Reward and Affect Networks as comprising unconscious parts of mind, and the Control Network to be the core mechanism of conscious mind.
The Default Network is the state of consciousness that the mind defaults to when one is not focused on a task, or outwardly engaged in the external world. The process that takes place in the Default part of mind is sometimes referred to as ‘mind-wandering’ in which spontaneous thoughts arise. Again, through years of practicing hypnosis, I would argue that this mind-wandering state can be directed by conscious mind to wander in the direction of one’s choosing, targeting creative input—from the inner mind—to solve a problem or meet a goal, and I will be bringing out much more on this subject as we move along. The conscious and unconscious parts of mind can work seamlessly together.
When the Default Network is highly engaged, say Waytz and Mason, “people’s brains ‘detach from the external environment, meaning they stop processing external stimuli,” which the HBR authors’ call a state of ‘transcendence.’ From my perspective as a consulting hypnotist, I would call this state of mind ‘trance.’ Anytime a person moves their focus from engagement in the external world to engagement in the internal world, that is trance. Without the scientific backing that the Default Network has today, the state of mind produced by it has had many names throughout history. John Locke (1632-1704) said that the French referred to the state of mind that can now be called ‘Default,’ as a state of reverie.
Waytz and Mason also describe the Default Network as the part of mind that is conducive to Eureka! Moments. I agree with that. As you may have experienced, a Eureka! Moment frequently occurs after you have walked away from a challenge and allowed the inner mind to continue its inner search for a solution. And sooner or later, when the unconscious mind offers up a solution to conscious mind, you say Aha, that’s it! For this reason, the Default Network has been identified as the place where innovation takes place.
In a chapter called An Exploration/Exploitation Trade-Off Between Mind-Wandering and Goal-Directed Thinking in The Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought, Chandra S. Sripada refers to the workings of the Default Network as a state of ‘Exploration,’ wherein pattern recognition and creativity are the outputs. Conversely, ‘Exploitation’ utilizes that which has been discovered through “Exploration’ to seize new opportunities.
Psychologists and neuroscientists who study the cycles of human nature (i.e., Circadian and Ultradian rhythms) may refer to the Default Network as the ‘Rest’ component of the Basic Rest-Activity Cycle (BRAC). BRAC is the natural ebb and flow of Ultradian rhythms that people move through in 80 to 100 minute cycles throughout the day. We flow from a state of alert consciousness where task-focus capacities are at their peak, to a state of mind with less focus, wherein daydreams can occur, the mind wanders, and streams of spontaneous, creative thought arise.
Researchers have zeroed in on the Default Network from many perspectives, all pointing to the tremendous resources for creativity and innovation it offers. Hence, it is becoming increasingly clear that creating the right conditions for employees to leverage the benefits of the unfocused, ‘default’ state of mind is a critical advantage for innovation.
So the question is, how can companies create the right environment to tap the creative resources of The Default Network?
As described in their HBR article, Waytz and Mason cite several companies that are already on the path: Google, Intuit, Maddock Douglas, Brighthouse and Twitter. It is the HBR authors’ contention, however that while the leading-edge programs at these companies appear to offer some benefits, their initiatives do not go far enough. Their reasoning is that because the ‘default tapping’ initiatives of these companies are designed to unearth solutions to problems, this means that employee default networks do not detach from external stimuli, a condition they deem essential. Further, after a brief review of the various approaches used at these companies, Waytz and Mason suggest that better approaches would focus programs on the ‘quality of detachment’ created, not on the ‘quantity of time’ offered for internal focus.
Waytz and Mason elaborate, saying that companies could ‘detach’ employees from email, calendars, phones, job duties and other employees, sending them away on trips. While they do mention meditation as an effective way to detach, I would go one step further and say that all of the HBR authors’ ‘detachment’ recommendations can be accomplished through the use of hypnosis, by guiding employees to focus inward to access the creative and innovative resources of their deep inner minds. Employees can be guided inward and taught to use self-hypnosis to travel to any remote, uninterrupted destination of their choosing—in the mind’s eye—and allow the unconscious mind (i.e., default network) to explore solutions, innovations and creative resolution to business challenges. This has a multitude of advantages, not the least of which is less travel costs!