Tips for Using the Body in Coaching

These days, more and more coaches are moving from head-focused coaching to include the entire body in their work with their clients. Some even use this as their primary coaching technique. Why? They understand that the body is more than just a vehicle to carry the head around! The body has its own way of thinking, holding memory, and understanding issues and challenges in the client’s life. As my friend and colleague Amanda Blake says, “The body is our social and emotional sense organ.”*

Here are a few ideas for working with the body in your coaching. None need to be the entire session–you can add in working with the body to increase awareness, generate new insights, and/or facilitate a shift. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but to give you either a place to start from if you don’t typically use the body in your coaching, or perhaps to provide some new ideas if you already do. 

1) Use Embodiment

• Have client sit or stand in a way that reflects how they are currently feeling. What do they notice from here?
  
• Have client take an empowered/strong stance. Here’s a few prompts you can use.
  • Stand up
  • Relax your shoulders
  • Open your chest
  • Raise your chin level with floor
  • Look ahead with soft eyes
  • Keep you hands loose
  • Feet firmly planted, as far apart as feels comfortable
  • After client is grounded in this body position, you can ask things like:
    • What do you know from here?
    • What does your topic look like from here?
    • What’s possible from here?

• When a client uses a body-related metaphor, have them embody it literally and ask what they notice. For example:
  • I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders. Have client pick up something heavy and put it on their shoulders. What do they notice? 
  • I have to walk on eggshells around her. Have client crumple up pieces of paper, put them on the ground to represent eggshells, and walk on them. What do they notice?
  • I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. Have client get between the wall and something else big (a chair, their desk, the couch, etc.) What do they notice?
  • I need to take a higher view of this. Have client (safely) get up on something – a stool, the stairs, etc. What do they see from here. 
  • What else can you think of? This is a very playful addition to your coaching that almost always generates amazing insights. The trick is not to have them do something different or “better,” but to have them do what they said. There are insights there just waiting for them.

• Have client show you how they are feeling or seeing the situation through gesture. 
  • I think of this as a clever “hack” to get the client using their body. People are used to using their hands, and for clients who are less in touch with their bodies just showing a gesture may be more accessible. It also works great on Zoom!
  • When client is in touch with a new commitment, goal, or way of being, ask them for the gesture of that, and have them practice this during the day as a way to support this commitment (don’t forget to have client create a structure to remember this).

2) Use Movement

• Have client move to a new place in the room to see how things look from there. This is particularly helpful when you are working with reframing/exploring new perspectives. (Many coaches have shared that they love to ask their clients to look out the window.) 

• Do a “walk the talk” coaching session – that is, go for a walk and have your client do the same (either in person or simultaneously while on the phone). Movement brings oxygen to the brain and helps us find new ways to look at things. 

• Ask client to stand during the session instead of sitting at their desk (bonus points, coach does the same). This is one reason I prefer to coach over the phone–as a coach I like to move around my house. Tell the client to feel free to move as they might be inspired, and check in – where in your house or office are you now? What does this tell you? 

3) Use Interoception (Interoception is a lesser-known sense that helps you feel and understand what’s going on inside your body.)

• Ask clients to check in with their body during the coaching. For some, this question can create a “deer in the headlights” response, so I prefer to say something like this:
  • I’m going to ask you to focus your awareness on your core. What do you notice in your face, throat, chest, heart area, stomach? Any sensations there? How would you describe them? 
  • Go slow, and help the client tune their attention to these areas. 

• If client typically says they feel nothing, you don’t need to push it, but don’t give up either. Higher interoceptive abilities correlate with higher emotional regulation. Just bring it back gently from time to time and see if client can develop this ability. (All humans have internal sensations, but some are cut off from feeling them.)

• If/when client has interoceptive awareness, you can expand their awareness by asking questions about the sensation, for example:
  • How big is it? (I like to use a standard comparison, such as tablespoons, cups, balls, coins.)
  • What color is it?
  • What texture is it? 
  • What shape is it? 
  • Does it have a sound? 
  • You can repeat this sort of question, because often, the more attention that is given to an internal sensation, the more likely it is to change. 

These are just a few ideas for using the body in coaching–it’s also a great place for coaches to be creative in service of their client having more awareness, insight, and shifts in their life.

*If you’d like to understand more about how the body thinks and processes, I highly recommend Amanda Blake’s book, Your Body Is Your Brain.

Ways We Listen (and the Brain)

Listening…. perhaps the most important part of coaching, and one of the first things we learn. I remember what a revelation it was when I took my first coaching class and they taught me how to listen. Like many of you, it had never occurred to me that there were actually different ways!

We can listen self-referentially where it is “all about ME;”  we can listen intently to the other person, focusing on their words; and we can listen to the other person with a softer focus, including their energy, their body language, their tone, etc. 

Let’s take a look at what I think is happening in the brain in each way of listening, and why all three are absolutely critical for coaching.

Listening to Self — It’s all about ME. Me, do you hear me? ME!

Understanding that much of human conversation is two radio speakers blasting the “me” channel at each other can be such an eye-opener, and often just this piece of information changes people’s lives. And one of the blessings of my own life for many years has been hanging out with fellow coaches, who know how to be truly curious about another person. How to actually listen. What a relief. It’s what our clients come to us for, and for many of them, it is a transformational experience to actually be heard, perhaps for the first time in their lives.

Listening to self is all about running things through your own filters, judgments and opinions, and no good coach, no matter what coaching school they trained with, does this. Coaching is all about helping the client find their own answers, and we can’t do that if you are only listening to ourselves, where all we are doing is mapping what the client is saying onto our own experience.

But there is a way this sort of listening is part of the coaching dance. We actually have to use our own thoughts to inform how to listen to the client. I think of it visually as a series of circles, with self in the middle.

Here’s what is interesting about listening to self from a brain perspective. You have to include it. We never get away from our automatic self-referential thinking. In fact, if we did, we would not understand anything at all. This has to do with the fact that many of the neurons in our brain are “multi-modal.” That is, they fire if we do something, and they fire if we watch someone doing something, if we imagine something, and if we remember. Same neurons. You may have heard the saying “the brain doesn’t know the difference between reality and imagination.” It’s so well understood that many athletes use visualization techniques to improve their performance, and there is vast evidence it works. They are strengthening their neural pathways by imagining the action just as they would by doing it. In fact, better — because they can imagine an even better performance than perhaps they are doing.

But what does this have to do with listening to self? Well, as neuroscientist Jerome Feldman, an expert on how the brain understands language, puts it: “if you cannot imagine someone picking up a glass, you can’t understand the meaning of ‘Someone picked up a glass.'” We have to actually imagine what we are being told in order to understand it. We simply have to run it through our own experience. In neuroscience terms, we “simulate” things in our own brain in order to make them meaningful.

We are simulating others’ experiences in our own brain all the time, but because much of our imagination and memory is not conscious, we aren’t aware we are doing it. Our brains are meaning-making machines. Anything anyone says to us we automatically and immediately try to understand through our own mental simulation. If you say to me “I kicked a ball” my motor neurons (and yours) for kicking a ball just fired. In fact, they fired as you read that sentence. You are not conscious of this, but if we had you in a brain scanner it’s what we would find.

I’ll wrap this up by saying that as coaches, we can’t help but listen to self all the time — and we wouldn’t want NOT to. It’s a gift.  The key is to be skillful with it. To develop our ability to discern what is understanding and what is judgment. And then coach from curiosity. When we listen only to self, all we are doing is responding from our own experience. It takes the other levels in harmony to truly coach.

Listening to Words

Let’s start with a poem:

Why Poetry? 

Helen Keller said
she came alive
when she learned her first word
water
Anne Sullivan traced it in her palm
over and over
while the wetness splashed around them
water
from a chaotic background of everything
jumbled and banging together all at once
came one thing
alone and distinct
water
and she, the girl, the being
was there
her conscious life
now possible

we need distinctions and clarity
we need to know where one thing starts
and another ends
we need to shape our amorphous feelings
into some sort of understanding
poems are our Anne Sullivans
tracing something
again and again
on the contours
of our mind

~Ann Betz

While this poem is titled “why poetry” it could just as well be called “why listen to words?” When we listen to the client’s words we listen carefully for specifics. We tune our attention to what we need to pull out from the background so it can be distinct, clear and understood. It is a pointed, present, focused listening. 

In terms of the brain, when we listen this way, we are probably listening somewhat more with the left hemisphere of the brain. The brain, as I am sure you know, has two hemispheres. It’s because as humans we walk upright and have a lot to process. The walking upright means our heads can’t just keep growing and growing to accommodate a larger and larger brain, so our brains specialize by hemisphere. 

The big picture on the two hemispheres is that the left hemisphere is attuned to the details in our environment while the right is more focused on the big picture. Things like language and emotion and creativity, long thought to be “in” one hemisphere or the other, actually overlap into both, although they are dealt with very differently. The right hemisphere sees the big picture but not the details, the left sees the details but not the big picture.

When focus on listening to the words our left brain gets activated to pull out the figure from the background. When you do a word search puzzle, your left brain is what finds the particular word in the sea of letters. The right brain would only be able to see a bunch of lines and — here’s what’s really important – wouldn’t be able to make meaning of them. In Jill Bolte Taylor’s wonderful TED talk and book, My Stroke of Insight, she talks about having a stroke that took out much of her left brain. When she needed to make a phone call, she couldn’t recognize the numbers. She had to match them one by one from a business card in order to make a phone call, a long and painful process. Without her left hemisphere, the numbers had no meaning.

When we listen intently to the client’s words, we listen carefully for what is important and distinct and meaningful for the client. Sometimes this is a bit like doing a word search as they pour out their lives to us. And often when we reflect back “what we heard” such as a key value, longing, or frustration they are amazed and ask us how we got that from what they said! And then, in the coaching relationship, meaning and understanding emerge for the client, as well as goals and forward action. 

Listening to Everything

Here’s a story from Nietzsche: There was once a wise spiritual master, who was the ruler of a small but prosperous domain, and who was known for his selfless devotion to his people. As his people flourished and grew in number, the bounds of this small domain spread; and with it the need to trust implicitly the emissaries he sent to ensure the safety of its ever more distant parts. It was not just that it was impossible for him personally to order all that needed to be dealt with: as he wisely saw, he needed to keep his distance from, and remain ignorant of, such concerns. And so he nurtured and trained carefully his emissaries, in order that they could be trusted. Eventually, however, his cleverest and most ambitious vizier, the one he trusted most to do his work, began to see himself as the master, and used his position to advance his own wealth and influence. He saw his master’s temperance and forbearance as weakness, not influence, and on his missions on his master’s behalf, adopted his mantle as his own – the emissary became contemptuous of his master. And so it came about that the master was usurped, the people were duped, the domain became a tyranny; and eventually it collapsed in ruins. 

There is a wonderful book by Iain McGilchrist called The Master and his Emissary, which explores our divided brain. McGilchrist’s take — and I wholeheartedly agree — is that the right hemisphere, with its connected, global focus is truly the master, while the left hemisphere, with its more analytical focus, is its emissary. Or should be, at any rate. In our society we seem to have very much turned this around.

The third way we listen, to everything, includes the first two ways, but is bigger and more global. It is like the master in the story. It takes in everything — that which is being said and that which is not said. It takes in everything going on around the conversation as well. The dog barking, the phone that cuts out or becomes full of static (I used to live by a railroad track. The trains only went by twice a day, but it seemed always at just the perfect time to underline something happening in the coaching).

When we listen to everything we soften our focus into a bit of right brain dominance and take it all in. And here’s an interesting fun fact for you: you may have heard that we have neurons in our heart and our gut. Talk about an embodied brain! Anyway, we do. But here is the thing — this information is somewhat more available to right hemisphere, which is more attuned to that which is new. This may be why it comes to us sort of vague and out of focus. Or why we get an image or a color or a sound. This is the language of the right brain, not words. And it’s why we need the left brain — listening to words — to help.

I love this line in the story: It was not just that it was impossible for him personally to order all that needed to be dealt with: as he wisely saw, he needed to keep his distance from, and remain ignorant of, such concerns. In order to take in all the information the right brain takes in, it can’t possibly focus on all the small details. It needs the help of the left brain to do this.

Integrating the Levels

There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.
~Arnold Bennet

I’ve been wracking my own brain trying to think of an analogy for how the three ways of listening (and the brain) work together. For some reason I keep thinking of a family at the zoo.

One wise parent (the Right Brain) is watching everything, aware and vigilant and taking it all in. This parent can’t really talk, so they use other means of communication. The other parent (The Left Brain) is looking at specific things, enjoying a particular monkey playing, for example. This parent is probably also reading all the scientific names and habitat information! And their child is acting out the animals themselves, making monkey noises, and putting their body in the shape of an elephant or giraffe. The child is always on the side of Righty, where Lefty can’t see it. So Righty has to poke Lefty or find other ways to get Lefty’s attention so Lefty can understand and explain what the child is doing, learning and understanding.

(Whew. Sometimes metaphors can be a bit strained! Let me say right now that this is a highly imperfect way of looking at how the brain and listening work, but it’s the best I can do at the moment.)

One way to think about listening in the coaching relationship is to think of the three ways of listening as different aspects of the brain. If we think of listening to self as the active child in this analogy, this is the part of our brain that makes sense of things through our own experience. As I mentioned,  we use the same part of our brain to think about other people as we do to think about ourselves. This child is experiencing the zoo by experiencing it, understanding what is going on by imitation and embodiment. What does it feel like to be an elephant? Let me try it! 

When we do this as coaches (and in general in human relationships) we do it pre- or sub-consciously. We map things onto our own experience in order to understand. And if we can’t do this, to a great degree, we can’t really understand. In other words we need to listen to self — but as coaches, we must be responsible for it. Acting like an elephant is of course not the same as being an elephant — this is where the otherways of listening and the importance of curiosity come in.

If we think of listening to words  as the second parent in this analogy, this is our Left Brain. It is attempting to understand the world by focusing on one thing at a time, gathering information, and analyzing. In coaching, we use this way of listening to hone in on things. To help our client see the monkey of their purpose in all the foliage of their life. 

But this aspect of the brain doesn’t connect well with the child, with the embodied understanding. The child’s wisdom comes to the other parent, the Right Brain, or listening to everything in this analogy. This parent is watching everything all at once and nothing in particular. And while the Left Brain parent can’t see everything, this parent (the Right Brain) can’t speak very well. So they look for ways to poke the other parent, both in terms of the interesting things the child is picking up on as well as the other things in the environment they are sensing. Then the Left Brain parent can speak about them, and focus them in a way that is helpful to the coaching client.

It’s a partnership, and I think the most effective coaching happens when this family is harmoniously exploring together. We never want to break them up, even though each member may lead the way at times. We need them all to work with our clients, to understand the world, and to enjoy the zoo.

.

The Power of Choosing a Perspective

(W)hen people are allowed to make their own choices, they feel empowered and alive. When we have no choice…our energy ebbs.”

~Rock and Page, Coaching with the Brain in Mind

Most coaches are trained to assist the client in shifting a limiting or stuck perspective, or in neuroscience terms, reappraising a circumstance for emotional regulation (emotional regulation being a neuroscience term for calming the heck down). As we all know, while there are things in life that we can’t necessarily change, we do have the power to shift how we look at them, and that can often be very empowering, freeing, and even transformational. In fact, one of my neuroscience instructors once said he thought the ability to change our perspective is the single most important life skill for resiliency he could think of.

By opening to new possibilities, coaches can help the client come to a place of choice and develop actions and accountabilities from there. While the idea of reappraisal can be used very simply by asking a question such as “what would be another way of looking at that?” often the client needs a more comprehensive process when they are feeling stuck. Best practice in helping coaching clients find a new, more empowering way of looking at things might follow this sort of process*:

1. Start with first clarifying the concept that having a perspective on something may be limiting their choices, and, as mentioned above, while we may not be able to change all circumstances, we can change our view of them.
2. Next, get very clear on what their topic is. This is critical to the process because often a perspective in embedded in the topic and for this method of coaching to work, they need to be pulled apart. For example, “Not being far enough in my career,” is a perspective (not being far enough) on a topic (my career).
3. Help the client identify and explore their current perspective–this is important so that client has the chance to bring to the surface and be present to where they are. The current perspective may not be in full awareness unless you do this, and may feel to the client as simply “how it is.” Exploration of the topic might include having the client check in on how the perspective makes them feel, what they think, say or do when they look at their topic from here) embody the perspective (how they stand, sit or move in this perspective), and/or check in with their internal state as they look at their topic from this perspective.
4. Help the client “try on” and explore a series of different perspectives. What would their topic potentially look like from different viewpoints? Have client explore each one as in #3 above. It can be helpful to have the client move their body physically to a new place in the room with each new perspective.
5. After ideally exploring at least two new perspectives (an experienced coach trainer once told me that less than that feels to the clients like options rather than choices), the coach asks the client to choose the perspective that feels empowering, one they can honestly stand in going forward. The coach then helps the client create an action plan from this new perspective and the client moves into action and reports back to the coach.

Each aspect of this process helps our clients to become calmer and more centered. In steps three and four, the client is allowed to notice that both their the initial perspective as well as subsequent “optional” perspectives are, as neuroscientist Kevin Ochsner says, “interpretation(s) of the world that need not define (them).” An expert in cognitive reappraisal and emotional regulation, Ochsner notes in one paper that “amygdala activity drops during reappraisal, suggesting that reappraisal is successful in changing what the amygdala ‘sees’ – that is, it no longer detects an arousing and aversive event.” The amygdala — a small almond shaped part of the brain in the limbic area — plays a critical role in scanning for threats and activating “fight or flight” mode, thus, keeping it calm is an important aspect of emotional regulation.

Additionally, when the client is asked to notice their body’s responses as well as their thoughts and attitudes in each perspective, it brings in an aspect of mindfulness as (ideally) the client simply focuses attention on what is there, describing it without judgment. The research on mindfulness and attention suggests that even something as simple as focusing on what is right here, right now, can be highly beneficial in managing stress and regulating the brain.

Sometimes coaches get into a place of wanting to help the client find the “right” new perspective as they explore possibilities, but this actually isn’t needed. Generally, the client’s thinking is becoming more flexible and open as the process continues, leaving them more able to find an empowering way forward. This is because the act of trying on a new way of looking at something recruits activity in the prefrontal cortex — they have to actively think about it — and when the prefrontal cortex is activated, it typically secretes GABA, which is a powerful inhibitory neurotransmitter. In other words, the impact of stress diminishes as perspectives are explored.

Another interesting thing to note is that many studies have shown that we have a marked preference for the status quo when making decisions, as the brain saves energy when it can do and think what it has already done and thought. When the client is asked to “try on,” that is, somatically, emotionally and intellectually inhabit, a number of new perspectives, it creates new potential neural pathways. This is why spending some time exploring each perspective helps the client. It’s fairly well validated that our brains don’t “know” the difference between what is real and what is imagined (for example, releasing stress hormones when watching a scary movie even though we ourselves are not being threatened in any way), it makes sense that imagining with powerful resonance a new way of looking at something feels to the brain as if it is real.** Thus, when the client is asked to make a choice, it could be that the status quo bias has been moderated somewhat and they are actually truly able to choose more freely.

When the client actively chooses a new perspective, this tends to reinterpret the meaning of the issue or event in a way that changes its emotional impact. Again, this drops activity in the amygdala, thus enabling the client to see more clearly their options and create a plan for achieving them. In addition, the deep and thoughtful process for identifying, embodying, and choosing outlined above inevitably brings the client to a new state of calmness, creativity and insight.

Anecdotal evidence (and my own experience in working with reappraisal for over ten years) also shows that the essential neuroplasticity of the brain enables us to build what seem to be neural pathways for reappraisal. In other words, coaches report that their more experienced clients have learned to automatically reappraise a situation, showing up on a coaching call saying things like,  “I got hooked, but then I told myself to look at it another way.” I myself have seen my ability to reappraise go from a conscious, often laborious process to become almost instantaneous when I encounter a stressor. For example, I used to fume when cut off in traffic. Now I find myself thinking “That’s ok, two seconds won’t make any difference to me and I am glad there was no accident.”

Happy reappraising, everyone!

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* This is based on the process taught by The Co-Active Training Institute (CTI) called “Balance Coaching”
**The power of visualization is well-known in the world of sports, where it common for athletes to imagine a golf swing or ski run prior to competition. It is likely we have not even begun to tap the potential of this aspect of our brains. In The Brain that Changes Itself,  Norman Doidge cites numerous studies proving the power of visualization, from enhancing piano expertise to actually developing stronger muscles. (Doidge, 2007)

What Are You Predicting?

In which I attempt to describe the complex process of the prediction cycle in the brain, and why the traditional language of emotional response is failing me….. 

Like most of us, as part of both my personal and leadership path of development, I learned early on that we humans need to work on our tendency to react. That many things trigger us into “amygdala hijacks” and activate our lower, emotion-driven mammalian or even reptilian brains. And to be honest, I found this useful information. It’s good to know when I may have been taken over by an unreliable part of my brain, not clearly thinking, and simply acting in a manner dictated by a fight-flight-freeze reaction to something I perceive as a threat.

Except sorry, it’s not really how it works. First of all, we don’t have a so-called “triune brain” that evolved like a layer cake with each new (better) processor stacked on top of the ones that came before. (See my post The Orchestra of Your Brain for a more detailed exploration of this widely-believed fallacy.) In terms of our conversation here, that means that we don’t actually have an older, reactive brain that literally takes over during times of stress.

Rather, we have a highly complex, ever-evolving system. In fact, these days the way I like to describe the brain is as a system of systems, many of which actually involve the entire brain in some way. And most of which are far more complex than we even now have any idea. For example, researcher Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge has identified at least nine areas of the brain involved in the process of empathy. No one area can be said to be the location of empathy–rather, aspects of the system work together to bring us greater or lesser empathy. And, like every system, aspects can be missing, underdeveloped, or not activated under certain circumstances. (For more on this, see his fascinating book The Science of Evil.) At BEabove Leadership, we ourselves have identified at least nine areas of the brain and body involved in intuition–again, it is a system!

But I digress. The systems regulate processes, and the key process we’re going to explore here is what the brilliant researcher Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett calls the Prediction Cycle. (For a deep deep dive, see her book How Emotions are Made.) Here’s the thing that blew my mind–Dr. Barrett makes a very convincing argument that our emotions are not as we have probably been told:

• Reactions;
• Classic, true across all cultures (and identifiable to emotionally intelligent people through the eyes); and
• A result of our “emotional” brain getting triggered.

Rather they are unique, individual, contextual, predictive constructions based on our personal history, language culture, and more.

Wait, what?

Emotions are not a reaction to what just happened. They are a prediction of what we think will happen (based on our context–which includes culture, language, and past experience) so that we’re ready for it when and if it does. This prediction can (and often does) happen so fast that it feels like a reaction. It’s just not.

You see, the prime directive of our brain is to keep us alive. And it has a limited “body budget” it uses to do so. So for our brain, emotional prediction is kind of like planning your bills–what am I going to need, what can I juggle around so that I am not overdrawn? And if there is a big-ticket expenditure, man, we better be ready for it. So we anticipate, the event happens, it lines up with our calculations (or doesn’t), and we readjust. For example, I recently had to take my car in for its 10,000 mile service and had budgeted a couple of hundred dollars because, since it was a new car, I had no idea what to expect. Turns out the car company covers the first 30,000 and my cost was zero (yay!). Now for the 20,000 mile service I won’t budget for it and can plan to use that money elsewhere.

So how does this apply to emotions? In order to understand that, here’s a diagram of how the Prediction Process works in terms of the emotional systems in your brain. We predict, and that prediction has us simulate feelings associated with the prediction and interpret those feelings using emotion concepts (the richness of the emotion concepts will vary depending on language and our own ability to be “granular” with our feelings). Then what we are anticipating happens, and we compare what happened to our prediction. If it was right on, we go forward with more evidence for the accuracy of our predictions, if not we have to resolve any errors. Let me give you a concrete example to illustrate.

1) Predict: Your brain automatically predicts what will happen based on past experiences, and your current goal. This is a very complex process involving various parts of the brain and body, not just what we have been told are the “emotional areas” (therefore the whole brain and body can be thought of as emotional).

I have to talk to my boss about a raise (goal) and (based on a lot of past experience) I know she will be difficult and unreasonable.

2) Simulate: This prediction leads to an internal simulation before anything actually happens. We’re getting our body budget ready for what we think we will need.

I simulate sensations of unease, heart beating faster, and butterflies in my stomach. (I am getting prepared for what I am expecting and the energy I might need.) I interpret these feelings as my emotion concepts of anxiety and dread.

3) Compare: The simulation is compared to what actually occurs.

I meet with her and she tells me she is working on her overly abrupt management style with a coach, listens to me more thoughtfully than usual, is reasonable, and we negotiate a fair raise.

4) Resolve Errors: If simulation is in alignment with what happened, simulation is validated and will be used for further predictions. If it is not, the brain has to resolve the errors.

4) Error message! I internally resolve the dichotomy and use it for further prediction. In this case, I realize that she actually has become somewhat easier to deal with lately and perhaps I have been mis-predicting. I predict more positive outcomes in the future, simulate differently, etc. 

Key points (and this probably isn’t all of them!):

• Prediction can happen well in advance of something–like a performance review three months away–or so quickly it doesn’t even feel like a prediction (like getting cut off in traffic);
• The Prediction Process is neutral in nature, as are all components within it. You could just as easily predict your boss is going to reasonable based on past experience, simulate a calm nervous system, interpret that as confidence, and have her be awful. Then you have to figure out how to resolve that error;
• Coaching can occur (and by the way, already does) at any point of the cycle. As my friend master coach Rick Tamlyn likes to say “It’s All Made Up!” Asking a client what they are making up about a situation is a way of asking what they are predicting. Asking how they feel about something is a way of asking what they are simulating and interpreting. Asking “what happened and is it what you expected?” is a way of opening the conversation for comparison. Asking “what do you make of that?” is helping them to resolve any errors. In other words, if you’re a coach, you’re already doing aspects of this cycle.

So why does this matter? I think the thing that struck me the most as a coach, is that if it is about prediction, there is a place for intervention. I can poke into whether or not my client’s prediction is fair and reasonable, and if there is current evidence for this prediction. And many times there is not–they are predicting based on old stories and saboteurs. We can look to see what competing evidence and context they have a prediction that is more life-affirming.

If my client is simply “triggered” or “reacting,” it’s too late and the best they can hope for is to do better next time. But an understanding of this prediction cycle and the fact that we are predicting can lead to more personal responsibility — our whole brains are constructing our emotional experience, we have not been taken over by some lower, animalistic part that needs to be controlled, suppressed or punished.

And so I have been stymied by language at times. Everyone knows what I mean when I say “sorry, I reacted,” or “oops, I got triggered.” But when you look someone in the eye and say “I seem to be having a negative prediction” they tend to think you’re a bit odd. (Wait, maybe I need a new prediction around that!)

The Boxes We Grow Up In: identity, development and the prefrontal cortex

Ask anyone–I was a hot mess in my teens and early twenties. Disorganized, unfocused, and completely unable to finish anything I started. I dropped out of high school because I found the graduation requirements overwhelming, and by the time I finally graduated college at age 30 (remember the age, it’s important) I had credits from five different institutions on my transcript. And a story about myself that I was flaky, undisciplined, and unreliable.

None of that is actually true about me. It’s just that my brain hadn’t grown up yet.

But I carried that identity with me for years, even as much of I was doing was actually the opposite. I finished college with straight As, was a successful sales manager for a large region, managed the publishing division of a national non-profit, co-founded a non-profit, and more.

And yet I carried a story about myself based on who I was as a teen and young adult, which I was blind to (as we often are to the stories we have about ourselves). It was my dear friend and business partner who finally called me on it a couple of years ago when I said something along the lines of “Well, you know me, I have no discipline,” and after she got finished snorting coffee out her nose and laughing hysterically, she said, “Oh stop it! That is ridiculous. You are the most  disciplined person I know.”

I was completely taken aback, but when I looked more objectively at my life, I saw she had a point. Somehow, somewhere along the way, I went from a haphazard fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants adolescent to a focused, capable, organized adult.

Now you could chalk this up to the general process of learning, and you could assume it was just me developing skills and getting feedback and becoming more effective. And part of that is true. But there is something deeper here: the truth is, I have focus, discipline and organization in my nature. It is actually core to who I am, not just a learned adaptation. So why was I such a mess as a young adult? What happened?

I grew up.

These days we’ve all heard that the brain doesn’t fully develop until approximately the mid-twenties. What we’re referring to is the prefrontal cortex, the last part of  the brain to come fully “on line.” Known as the seat of executive function, this part of the brain is in charge of calibrating risk and reward, problem-solving, prioritizing, thinking ahead, long-term planning, emotional regulation, and the ability to stand in someone else’s shoes. (It’s not that these things aren’t possible before maturity, it’s just that it takes a lot more effort and isn’t very reliable.)

And so, for over 25 years I was telling a very old story, based on an immature version of myself, which I had taken on as true, despite a great deal of evidence to the contrary. Evidence I couldn’t see because the story was blinding me to the truth.

So now, I have a new story, that I am disciplined and focused. And the power of being conscious to this is huge. Probably the main thing is that I am able to trust myself more. When I am about to take something on, instead of hearing an internal voice say “Well I don’t know, you know you don’t tend to follow through very well,” I hear “Good for you, you’ll get that done easily.” The old story was like fighting an uphill battle. The new one is more like riding a wave. And I much prefer riding a wave!

I wonder how many of us have taken on a very old and inaccurate story about ourselves, based on who we were as an adolescent or young adult work-in-progress? And how often do we label kids and teens as “this way” or “that way,” when honestly, we don’t know who they will actually turn out to be once their brains are fully developed?

Take a look and see if what you have been saying about yourself is true, or if it simply was true, before your brain grew up and you became who you actually are.

 

 

Why Am I Taking Your Money?

I am going to out myself here. But first, a little context. I’ve been a coach for 14 years. I teach coaching. I teach advanced coaching. I write about coaching. I analyze the neuroscience of coaching. I can demo any coaching process or skill in front of a room with practically anyone and have it work. Usually masterfully. And I still have the occasional client where, to be honest, no matter what I do, they just need someone to listen to them, and it doesn’t really feel like coaching.

I have turned myself inside out over this. I have berated myself, gotten coaching and advice from my peers and mentors, tried everything short of tap dancing with a trained elephant, and still, it comes back to, they just need someone to listen to them.

And so I do that. I end up mostly just listening. And as I talk with experienced coaches from around the world, I find that many of my colleagues often confess to the same. There are some clients who need, more than anything, a non-judgmental ear and place to verbally process.

Often these are clients who, for whatever reason, have nowhere in their lives where they can say everything they are thinking or feeling without filters. It may be because they are in the public eye, at a high position in a company, or simply because they aren’t surrounded by any curious and open people. Or they are intensely verbal processors who have to speak–a lot–in order to know what they think and how they feel.

For the brain, just the process of speaking to an open ear is highly valuable. In the book Supercoach, Michael Neill gives the example of being coached by a lamp post. Imagine, he advises, that someone heads home from work every evening and stops to talk to a lamp post on his way, unburdening himself from the day’s issues and problems, and speaking out loud possibilities and options for tomorrow. The lamp post doesn’t talk back, give advice, or do anything. It’s just there. And the person, by developing the habit of talking to the lamp post, begins to find his life improving. He feels less burdened and a bit more in touch with what is possible. The process of speaking his ideas out loud even triggers new thoughts and insights.

Now add to that the fact that we as coaches, even at the most basic level, do so much more than the average lamp post. We listen with both our hearts and our minds. attuning to what they are saying (in a sense, feeling it with them), and responding thoughtfully and non-judgmentally. This sort of listening tends to elicit what neuroscientists refer to as a “towards” state in the brain, where it is open and receptive. This is in sharp contrast to an “away” state, where your brain basically says, let’s get the heck out of here. We can easily activate an away state in others by being critical, giving unsolicited advice (especially in a judgmental and/or superior manner), or being actively distracted while another is speaking.

When the brain is in a “towards” state, it is more receptive and creative, learning and remembering much more. Insight can happen, where disparate neural networks find each other and connect, causing “aha” moments. The person is emotionally open and actually sees more of what is going on–literally–because the visual processing centers are activated.

And again, even with those clients who just need to be listened to, the truth of the matter is we are usually actually doing much more. It may not feel like coaching at its best, but we are probably also at least:

• Asking powerful questions designed to have them reflect more deeply;
• Helping them focus and organize their thoughts;
• Underlining and highlighting key things that they are saying so that the client is more aware;
• Bringing it to a “so what” so that they have a new way of moving forward;

So let’s all give ourselves a bit of a break when this happens, and stop the little voice that says “why am I taking your money?” It happens. Sometimes because the coach needs more skill, and sometimes because maybe, just maybe, this is what the client needs.

Although I do need to add, as I often tell my coaching students, that of course these are not the clients I would want to submit for my ICF credential assessment. It’s not best practice in coaching, it’s not the full potential of what coaching can be and do, it’s not what we are capable of as coaches. But sometimes, it’s what happens, and it’s ok.

Your Brain is Basically a Three-Year-Old (and what to do about it)

During a recent workshop in Atlanta, one of the participants came from out of town with her mom and young son. Grandma and grandson hung out in the hotel during the day, and the little boy delighted us all when he stopped by for mom time on the breaks. At one point I happened to have a battery-operated timer in my hand when he came in the room, and being a well-adjusted, open and extremely curious little guy, he of course wanted it, so I gave it to him to play with. Ah, the buttons and bells! He was enchanted and (you probably saw this coming), not at all interested in giving it back at the end of the break. Having had some experience in the mom arena myself, I knew better than to wrest it away by force. The last thing I wanted to do was make him cry! So I dug around in my purse for something else I didn’t need, which turned out to be a bright orange (clean) handkerchief. He was a bit dubious, but took this in exchange for his toy, tears were thus avoided, and the workshop went on.

I tell this story because it reminds me of something I often say to my clients: in some ways, your brain is basically a three-year-old. (Now just to be clear, I’m not saying that you are a three-year-old. You are a marvelous creature of insight and possibilities. It’s just that your brain, well, your brain can be difficult.) Here are a couple of ways in which our brains exhibit three-year-old behavior, and what you might want to do about it:

1) Telling your brain NO often creates resistance, especially if it is currently doing something where there is a reward. Just like a toddler who is experimenting with the boundaries of her own needs and desires, our brains want what they want when they want it. We’re highly primed and encoded to move towards pleasure and away from pain. Dopamine, one of the happy chemicals in our brain (it also has many other functions), helps motivate us to do what is rewarding. And the sharpness of pain helps to keep us safe. Interestingly, perhaps because social connections have been evolutionarily critical to survival, the pain of social rejection (being severely criticized, having one’s heart broken, feeling like an outsider) are processed in a part of the brain adjacent to the pain centers. Not being part of things can literally hurt (and astonishingly, pain relievers can even help).

What to do about it: As every good parent knows, it is most effective to reward good behavior whenever possible and keep punishments to a minimum. The same is true with your brain. I occasionally have clients ask me to “be really tough on them,” and my response is (usually) that they are probably doing just fine in that arena themselves. I’m not interested in yelling at my clients or making them feel bad (I don’t get paid enough and that sort of work probably requires a completely different wardrobe). Instead, I’m more interested in helping them find something to move toward. It’s less of an internal battle to give the brain a compelling alternative and thereby make a new neural pathway (see my many posts on neuroplasticity, including this one for more) than to constantly try to stop doing what we have done a million times before by now inserting punishment or pain.

And negative commands have a way of strengthening the emotional salience of things. Just like when we tell a toddler not to pull the cat’s tail and they immediately do it, saying “don’t” to ourselves reinforces the idea that “Hey, there is something important and perhaps interesting here!” Again, far better to give the child a fluffy toy so that they ignore the cat in favor of something else. And so, instead of “getting tough,” my strategy tends to be to look for the fun way. You hate exercise but want to get in shape? Well, what do you love to do? What would make it not feel like a burden? What would compel you? Imagine being as kind to yourself as you would to an adorable child, and asking, “sweetheart, what do you want to do?”

2) Your brain makes many decisions emotionally and then tries to defend them rationally after the fact. Ever ask a three-year-old “Why did you do that?” Hah! Unless you are just going for the pure entertainment value, this is a losing proposition. Why? Because they don’t know why they did it. They did it because they wanted to. Because it was there. Because, why not? They’ll usually make up something, but the deeper truth is probably more along the lines of “I was experimenting to see if you really meant what you said about not getting out of the bathtub (cutting my doll’s hair, throwing my peas, etc.),” or “You said not to so I thought something interesting might happen if I did it,” or “I don’t know, I just wanted to,” or “It feels good.”

The only difference here between some of our own decisions and those of a three-year-old is that we learn to make our explanations more plausible and rational. Here’s how I understand this — our brains need to conserve energy. The brain makes up about 2-3% of our body weight, but it uses 20-25% of the calories we consume. And as such an energy consumptive part of our body, it is always looking for ways to conserve. Thinking, analyzing, and making decisions all take a lot more energy than emotionally responding, activating existing belief systems, and operating by assumptions. Psychologists call this type 1 processing: automatic, intuitive processes that are not very strenuous. Type 2 thinking, on the other hand, is is slower and involves processing more data and cues from all around us, and activates more of the highest part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex.

In addition, all the research points to the fact that we are much better at type 2 thinking when we are well-rested and well-fed (See this fascinating study on the leniency of Israeli judges as one example) and not overly stressed. Add physical needs or emotional stress to the works and your brain just doesn’t have enough juice to operate at its highest level. It’s also the case that some of us just never learned how to move to a higher level of analysis. The brain is like a muscle–if certain parts are not exercised, they won’t be strong. And if someone’s background and training did not include practice in analyzing data and examining many factors when making decisions, all that is available is type 1 processing.

And so, whether we are stressed, hungry, tired, or just never really learned how to think in a more complex way, our type 1 thinking takes over, we respond more automatically, and then, when asked why we did something or think that way, our strong interpretive center takes over and makes something up that sounds good in the moment. Whether it’s rational or not. (For more on this, just watch American politicians for a while — many of them are experts.)

What to do about it: I am actually a huge fan of intuitive knowing, trusting one’s gut, etc. The body has wisdom and our internal sense of what fits and what doesn’t definitely deserves to be cultivated. So I’m not talking about dismissing one’s intuition. Rather, this points to strengthening our muscles of type 2 processing so that we can expand our decision-making capacity. We will always be dual processors, running both our emotional response (type 1) and rational analysis (type 2). If all we have accessible is type one processing, the three-year old in us takes over. And it’s also true that if all we have is type 2, we do not link what is most important and resonant to our choices.

One way to develop type 2 thinking is to take a philosophy (especially logic) or science class. The rigors of this kind of analysis will help to develop your capacity to move your thinking to higher areas of the brain. As coaches, we can also push in this arena to help our clients strengthen their brains by helping them analyze decisions logically, and then linking this consciously to the emotional resonance of their more type 1 thinking (and vice versa).

3) The good news–we can grow too! As I watched the adorable little boy in Atlanta, I noticed something else. He was a scientist, and life was his laboratory. For example, he’d give someone a high five, and then watch intently for their reaction. Like all healthy and well-adjusted toddlers, he was deeply engaged in the process of ongoing learning, pretty much at every moment. Checking things out, seeing what happened, and internally making micro-adjustments. We call this development, and we tend to think of it as the realm of children. But our brains continue to wire and rewire all throughout our whole lives, and when we bring consciousness, intent and support to this process, we can even give ourselves as adults some of what might have been missing in our early years as well as continuing to learn new skills and explore expanded ways of being.

This is one of the most important and significant connections between coaching and neuroscience, the fact that we as coaches help our clients create lasting change by supporting their self-directed neuroplasticity. And yes, children’s brains are more of a blank slate, but ours have unlimited potential as well. In that way, being like a three-year-old a great thing!

Coaching, Stress and the Pre-Frontal Cortex (VIDEO)

Here I am explaining and then demoing how to work with stress and the pre-frontal cortex as part of Boom Boom Go‘s great video library of coaching tools. Click HERE  to watch (and HERE to read the article this tool is based on).

Note: this coaching tool is just one of many we teach at BEabove Leadership  in our Neuroscience, Consciousness and Transformational Coaching program!

The Power of Hopelessness

From our sister site at BEabove Leadership, some musings on the power of Hopelessness:

http://www.beaboveleadership.com/2015/04/09/the-power-of-hopelessness/

 

The Power of Dreaming, The Power of Action

Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.

~Anias Nin

Ever wondered why some people seem to lose relationship connection when they are focused on getting things done? Or why some creative dreamers can’t seem to move anything forward? Ever wonder why you get some of your best ideas and “aha” moments in the shower or daydreaming on a walk? Well, guess what? Like many human mysteries, there is a brain explanation.

The Default Network (DMN) and the Task Positive Network (TPN) are two distinct neural networks in the brain. The DMN is a network of brain regions that are active when the individual is not focused on the outside world and the brain is at wakeful rest. It’s called “default” because it is the network that is activated unless we are specifically engaged in goal-directed activity and external input, the realm of the TPN. Probably one of the most interesting aspects of these two networks is that to the degree Default is active, Task is not. And to the degree Task is active, Default is not. Like a playground see-saw, as one side goes up, the other goes down.

I like to think of the two networks this way: imagine your brain is a horse. Task Mode is when you put blinders on your horse, hitch it up to a cart, and drive it forward. It just pays attention to what is right in front of it, and its main job is to DO. It’s not interested in anything that isn’t relevant to the job or task.

Default, on the hand, is when you unhitch the horse (your brain), take the blinders off, and let it loose in a field with nothing in particular to do. The horse, while roaming the field, finds many interesting things, often makes new connections between existing information (“aha” moments), and is able understand others and itself.

Here’s a few specifics about each network (by the way, it’s important to note that while some of the aspects below may sound similar to Right and Left Hemisphere operations, each network actually includes both):

Default Mode Network	Task Positive Network
Dreaming Envisioning the future Long-term memory Gauging other’s perspectives Theory of mind (understanding others) Introspection Self-referential thought Rumination	Focus on task Actively paying attention (external) Goal-orientation Reacting to and working with sensory information Short-term (working) memory Planning Abstract reasoning

In today’s busy world, most of us don’t allow ourselves enough Default Mode time, and it’s important. I really saw this when I was driving across country after taking my only kid to his freshman year at college. I was using my drive as a time to listen to an audio book, which meant my brain was actively paying attention to external stimuli. And yet, I had just dropped my only son off to his new adventure, and was starting a new one of my own. I realized that I needed to process how I felt. So I turned off the book and just drove, letting my horse of a brain wander in the field. After about half an hour, all sorts of metaphors came to me — I saw taking my son to college was like the end of a really really good book. One you don’t want to end. I cried a bit over that. Then I saw that now there were two books going forward. His and mine. And we were big characters in each other’s story in these new books, but not in the way we were in the first book.

Giving myself Default Mode time really helped me integrate this big change, and by the time I got home, I felt much more ready to embark on my new life without a child at home. The “aha” moments that the Default Network gives us are precious, important, and don’t happen when we are focused on task.

I find with my clients that this tends to resonate — we probably all need a bit more intentional daydreaming in our lives. Knowing about these two networks may help convince people to let their horses loose now and then to find the flowers and other treasures in the field.