3081: How Humans Experience the World by Alexis Chapman of Smart Tribes Institute on Neuroscience & Behavior Modification

[00:00:00] This is Optimal Living Daily Episode 3081 How Humans Experience the World by Alexis Chapman of Smart Tribes Institute.com and I'm Justin Malik. Welcome back to a Sunday bonus episode where I give you a little extra content from a podcast in the Optimal Living Daily Network

[00:00:19] that I think will also help you live a life that's a bit more meaningful and happier. And this episode is coming from Optimal Relationships Daily. So without further ado, here's Greg with another post as we optimize your life.

[00:00:36] How Humans Experience the World by Alexis Chapman of Smart Tribes Institute.com What makes us who we are? What drives our behavior? These questions are key when we want to change a repeated and ineffective behavior pattern in either ourselves or in someone we care about.

[00:00:56] Since behavior is driven by beliefs and identity, how do we change or upgrade both? As a neuroscience-based executive coach, I've invested 30 years of my life studying this and helping leaders at all levels to modify their behavior in order to get what they want,

[00:01:13] grow their businesses, have happier, more productive teams, and more fulfilling lives. How to Understand Your Experiences First, we need to understand how humans have experiences and how human experience is structured. Here's how it works. What we call thinking is actually a series of pictures, sounds, and feelings

[00:01:35] that go by at light speed in our brains and create meaning. We see the world around us as we experience it, and then we internally store these pictures or images to craft our experience.

[00:01:48] Think of your favorite place in your home. Chances are good you just called up a picture. We'll call these visuals or Vs in NeuroShort-Hand. Sometimes our brains distort the stored picture, V, to give it a different meaning. Maybe we don't want the intensity of a stored picture so

[00:02:05] we store it in black and white rather than color, or our brain wants to scare us from repeating a dangerous situation so we store it in lurid color. Additionally, when we have

[00:02:16] or recall an experience, our brains hear sounds which can be tones or words and can either be outside of ourselves existing in the environment or inside of ourselves talking to ourselves or hearing an old soundtrack. Think of the last time you made a mistake and internally said,

[00:02:34] I can't believe I did that, shish! That's an internal soundtrack. Think of the sound of a rotary phone ringing. That's a tonal memory. We'll call these sounds Auditory Input or A's in NeuroShort-Hand. The visual and auditory experiences lead to feelings or kinesthetic

[00:02:53] K's in NeuroShort-Hand responses. From these Vs, A's and the generated K's, we make meaning about the world, other people, situations, and about ourselves. The decisions we make about these experiences formulate beliefs. Beliefs about ourselves are

[00:03:12] called identity. How Behavior Happens Our beliefs about the world, others, situations, and ourselves drive our behavior. Let's say you walk into a conference room you've never been in before to do a high stakes presentation and the phone on the table rings. Your brain already probably

[00:03:31] has conference room pictures and you instantly associate that ringtone, trigger, with a stored picture of another conference room, different time, different place where you totally rocked a presentation and your boss happened to call midway through the ringtone and was thrilled

[00:03:48] to hear about it. The external trigger hearing the telephone in the conference room created a whole series of stored internal Vs and A's that led to a whopping great positive K and

[00:04:00] the belief, my boss is awesome, I am awesome too. So you've never been in that room before and you were a little nervous but all you know is now you feel great and you really like that phone.

[00:04:13] The sound of the telephone in that setting is an anchor for you to experience confidence and create positive meaning for yourself. Vs, image of the phone in the conference room plus A's the ringtone equal K's confidence which leads to beliefs, my boss is awesome,

[00:04:32] which leads to identity, I am awesome is a belief about self so leads to an overall confident and competent professional identity. What makes this really interesting is that we can create those reference experiences and associate them with something anchor them

[00:04:48] to something a space a sound or a touch and create the meaning we would like to create. Why we repeat behaviors both bad and good. Every day all day we are having experiences creating meaning and forming new or reinforcing old beliefs forging a new or reinforcing our

[00:05:07] current identity and we are doing this with the people in our lives too. Let's experience this. In a moment I want you to close your eyes and recall a positive memory,

[00:05:18] a time when you had a positive experience. Do this now and open your eyes when the experience is super clear. In your positive memory what did you see? What did you hear outside or inside yourself

[00:05:30] like yourself saying this is awesome? What did you feel? What did you decide, believe, about the world or others or the situation? What did you decide about yourself? Your identity is beliefs about yourself. Example, perhaps you recalled a recent team meeting. In it you saw

[00:05:50] V's everyone gathered around the table excited alert ready to roll. You heard people A's making suggestions brainstorming making commitments. Inside you said this is great I love meetings like this we're making progress. You felt K's powerful optimistic positive. You believed these

[00:06:11] are the right people in the right roles. Your identity that you were successful. You were a good leader. You were adding value was reinforced. Note that the behavior can also start first. For example an external trigger like a flame email etc happens then you launch into a behavior

[00:06:29] routine getting irritated or choosing to feel compassion for the angry person and a reward follows feeling self-righteous or feeling proud of your ability to not get sucked into their anger. For the next week please start to notice what associations you have with places and people.

[00:06:46] What feelings K's do you get from certain sounds A's and certain visuals V's? What meaning do you make from the experience of the resulting positive or negative feeling K positive or K

[00:07:00] negative and what does that cause you to do? You just listened to the post titled How Humans Experience the World by Alexis Chapman of SmartTribesInstitute.com and thanks so much to Alexis

[00:07:18] for this really informative piece to help all of us understand ourselves a bit more. You know what's really great about this one is that not only is it educational but it also leaves us with a lot

[00:07:28] of clues for how we can deliberately improve our feelings towards situations that are emotionally difficult for us. Many of us already do this you know we do this by bringing good luck charms but consider what kinds of good luck charms you can use from really specific experiences.

[00:07:45] If you're giving a presentation in a new place can you wear the suit that you wore last time you gave a great presentation? If you don't have the suit anymore can you style your hair the same

[00:07:55] way? Can you eat the same breakfast or give yourself the same pep talk and don't forget we can also assist the ones we love in this way this is why it's so great for relationships.

[00:08:05] If your spouse is nervous before getting on a plane can you maybe bring them a postcard you guys bought on your last fun and safe trip? Using items to rekindle old positive feelings

[00:08:15] is a great means of bringing control to challenging times and is a great way of reminding yourself or your loved ones that there are things you can do to stay in the driver's seat

[00:08:25] and center yourself. So that's going to do it for today everyone I hope you enjoyed this post as much as I did and that you can think of some ways to use this knowledge to improve

[00:08:34] the experiences of yourself and your loved ones. We are done for now so please be sure to share this episode with someone who may need it and do come on back tomorrow for more where your optimal life awaits.