Our Social Brains

Imagine the brain, that shiny mound of being, that mouse-gray parliament of cells, that dream factory, that petit tyrant inside a ball of of bone, that huddle of neurons calling all the plays, that little everywhere, that fickle pleasuredome, that wrinkled wardrobe of selves stuffed into the skull like too many clothes into a gym bag.
~ Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind, 2004

Left Brain, Right Brain image by vaXzine

The Heart of Panic and Poise

A wave of panic passed over the vessel and these rough and hardy men, who feared no mortal foe, shook with terror at the shadows of their own minds.
~Arthur Conan Doyle

Life is full of close calls and undertakings under pressure, for which we'd all like to demonstrate appropriate nerve. Possibly poise. A clutch performance. Too often, what we end up displaying, however, is unruly panic.

Where is our unflappable cool in the midst of stress, crisis, or spotlight calls to action? What switch can we pull in our brains to trigger calm speedy thinking under pressure? We may not be on a battlefield, in an earthquake, hanging by ropes from a sheer cliff, or on staff in a hospital emergency room, but we regularly face golden job interviews, first dates, and public performances. We walk down dark alleys filled with slow-moving shadows, we face critical licensing examinations, and we are confronted by sudden overwhelming deadlines. The creeping everyday anxiety of modern life may have put us out-of-touch with our innate ability to cope with fear. The heart of panic and poise.

In NERVE: POISE UNDER PRESSURE, SERENITY UNDER STRESS, AND THE BRAVE NEW SCIENCE OF FEAR AND COOL (2011), Taylor Clark explores the cutting-edge science of who cracks under pressure and who thrives. That super-hero within us is apparently willing to emerge, if we get a grip on how our brains experience worry, fear, and anxiety. Clark's writing evidences both storyteller and a science consumer, so as we read, we don't mind giving some thought to the research behind the New Science of Fear. Who doesn't want to raise their coolness factor?

How about that split second, when fear bursts into being in our bodies? What's that about? Clark describes a surprisingly rich and complex sliver of time that neuroscientists are now demystifying. How do the complex superstitions of athletes help them control performance anxieties? Our second brain, the clutch paradox, why athletes excel or choke under fire, the zen of shock trauma, how people react, think, and survive when someone's life is on the line—this is stuff you want to get a grasp on, before your next crisis hits. It's what we all need to get a grip on for developing more compassion for the people in our social lives: our coworkers, friends, family, and neighbors, all of whom are regularly facing close calls and unwanted pressures.

Want more clutch, cool, and grace under fire? (Do you parent, coach, teach, lead, or guide children? No one's going to give them a course on clutch-cool in school; yet, they yearn for a clue, right NOW, about the science of cool under pressure.) These stories of real world people facing the worst days of their lives, together with new scholarship on neuroscience and our tricky brains, are compelling.

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Blind Spots

If we don't understand blind spots, we don't understand human nature.
~Eric Maisel, Ph.D. (author of Ten Zen Seconds)

One of our favorite exercises may be jumping to conclusions. Unfortunately, we mess up a lot when we're engaged in it.

As functional as our brains are most of the time, when they backfire or blunder, we nurture wrongheaded viewpoints, stupid mistakes, and socially shoddy thinking. BLIND SPOTS: WHY SMART PEOPLE DO DUMB THINGS (by psychologist Madeline Van Hecke) takes us on an overdue romp through the maze of our brain's unavoidable blind spots. We see blind spots most clearly, of course, when the blind spot in question is someone else's.

The idea that anything should be "obvious," Dr. Van Hecke points out, is at the heart of our judgment when we think other people are acting (or thinking) stupidly. We adore, in fact, telling tales of the dumb behaviors of other people.

Blind spots are hardwired into the way our brains function, just as blind spots are part of a car's side mirrors. After the fact, we feel stupid when we realize there was something we should have known or thought about. It seems quite obvious, in retrospect. How could we have missed it? Our blind spots are frustrating evidence that we don't know what we don't know. It was, after all, in our Blind Spot.

Even though we are often wrong, it seems we are rarely in doubt at the times we are being wrong. We miss opportunities to think, happily rushing to conclusions with the best of fools. The brain is a cognitive miser, so it likes to assume that things are the way they appear and the way they have always been. Spend some time with this book—it'll shrink your blind spots.