Chapter 1 – Knowing How The Brain Works
- Jan 27, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: Jan 29, 2024
Written by: Sara Hegy, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Welcome to the first chapter of "Leadership Mastery Unlocked," a 10-part series dedicated to helping you harness the power of your brain for both personal and professional growth. This journey is tailored for ambitious leaders like you, aiming to dissect critical life processes in simple, scientific terms. Our goal? Long-term elevation of your self-awareness and enhancement of the experience of life around you.
The diagram depicts the universal transformation from stimulus to result through the processor in an abstract, conceptual way. Similarly, stimuli are processed through our brain into output results.
The most important process to start with is the process of leadership. This is not a dictionary textbook definition of leadership or the phenomenon of being a boss of a team functioning at work in a certain context. No, It's not about titles or positions; it's about how we lead our lives every single day, in every decision we make.
Leadership in this series as we uncover it is about the process of interacting with one's self in the level of thoughts, feelings, actions, one's environment, one's surrounding people, and one's resources in a way that creates the outcome.
At any given moment, you are leading yourself, the people, and the life around you. The question is: are you content with where you are? Are your past visions unfolding as you hoped? If yes, let's celebrate and envision the next steps. If not, let's explore together what might be holding you back, and how you can overcome these hurdles.
We live in one of the best human eras in terms of opportunity and technology, nevertheless, now more than ever we are flooded with information and our mind is racing to catch up. If we are not self-aware, we will be bombarded by one piece of news to the next, one problem to the next, one circumstance to the next and soon, our energy batteries will become depleted.
To start understanding the process through which we interact with ourselves and life, we must take a step back and ask:
How do we perceive life? What makes up life?
Take an example of this moment: what are you doing? Probably reading right?
Are you skimming through the text?
Are you present? Or are you thinking of the next meeting? Or tomorrow's to-do list? Or are you blaming yourself for not doing what you've set eyes on for the day?
How do you feel? Happy? Sad? Worried? Inspired?
Ok, For a moment, don't think about a vibrant parrot with a red beak in the forest.
I thought we just agreed not to think about a vibrant parrot with a red beak in the forest. So now how do you feel?
What's your experience? Are you feeling indifferent, laughing, or pissed off?
What are you making this exercise mean? Is it getting you curious? Do you believe it's silly? Is it getting you intrigued?
What is your next action? Will you stop reading? Or will you continue? Before you close the article, let me tell you,
I just led you. I did! By reading this article, you permitted me to lead your brain toward my intention of sharing knowledge and raising awareness. But I led you only because you led your actions that led you to me.
Here's how:
I prompted you with questions that got you to think, slow down, and reflect on your current experience (thoughts, feelings, experiences, actions).
Then, I asked you NOT to think of the elephant with a clown nose under the tree, oh sorry I mean a vibrant parrot with a red beak in the forest. but you did visualize those two images, didn't you?
(If you didn't that's ok, you're probably too busy with the thoughts in your head, if that's the case, I invite you to be more focused on the words and see if you will be more intrigued as you continue reading)
I had an intention to lead your mind in a certain direction and it responded, right? And your mind didn't comprehend the negation!
So for this exercise to work its way into your life, you must start to be willing to examine and pay close attention to all the ways that your mind is responding to what your senses see, hear, touch, taste, and smell (what we term from now on, stimulus).
Then, it quickly processes the meaning of the stimulus and gives you a result, like a complicated machine reading its environment to make sense of the data it is receiving, quickly processing and displaying a result.
So in the simplest terms: what do machines usually do? A. they perform a certain task like a washing machine or B. they prevent a drastic result from happening like a thermostat that prevents devices from overheating.
Consistent with the same train of thought: what do our brains do? A. they perform a certain task like cooking a meal or B. they prevent a drastic result from happening like not being hit by a car every time you're crossing the street.
So can a machine do 1000 tasks from category A and 1000 tasks from category B at the same moment?
Well, the most complicated machines you are aware of can, and so can your brain!
The problem is: that you rest and maintain the machine by following the instructions manual but you are not aware of the instructions manual to rest and maintain your brain so you end up overloading your brain with 10,000,000 tasks from category A and 1000 tasks from category B.
End result?
Anything from overwhelm to burnout to long-term diseased psychology.
But don't worry,
I have your back, that's why this series is designed.
To help you become aware of your brain's design and processes it rules in very simple terms so that you can gain a deeper understanding of its manual and lead it to a better function, thus a better outcome.
Before we wrap up, let's review the important key takeaways here.
Key takeaways
Your brain is a huge processor that receives stimuli from your senses, tries to make sense of them, and gives you an end result.
You're very easily led by what you perceive by your senses and how your brain processes the information it receives.
The mind doesn't process a negation very well (look at how you don't like to be told what to do by most people in your life, also examine how I asked you not to think of the red parrot in the cage, oh wait when did I say that? I mean the elephant under the tree ;)) you thought of both again didn't you?
In today's world, you're probably maxing out on your brain's capacity to hold, and process stimuli and information to create certain outcomes and that's the most straight road to overwhelm.
Your brain's simplest yet, most critical process is sense > process (according to the brain's understanding) > action > output.
Before thinking of leading others, consider you're always leading yourself somewhere, the question is where to, and are you happy with the road you're taking?
Stay tuned for our next insight into the rarely discussed, yet critical components of real-world leadership. We'll delve into the science of leadership, offering you new perspectives and tools for your journey.
Until then, I invite you to take this call to action: whenever you experience being low or sad, ask yourself, what happened that I ended up this way? Keep this list for later, and I'll tell you what to do about it.
If you're eager to dive deeper and explore how our leadership services can accelerate your path to success, book your coaching call with us today here and if you're interested to join our growing Facebook community for leadership development, join here.
Until next time, embrace your journey with kindness and curiosity. With warmth and wisdom!
Sara Hegy, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Sara Hegy is an award-winning scientist and a leadership coach who is dedicated to helping other leaders achieve their full potential while being fulfilled. She grew up in an environment where producing results is a measure of self-worth. Hence, she always struggled to apply self-development teachings until coaching helped her gain clarity on her struggles and gave her tools to overcome them. Through harnessing the power of her mind and taking effective action, she graduated with honors, won a scientific prize, and her findings raised a$2.7 million research grant. She's the founder of her coaching business that globally serves. Her mission: Passionate leaders who create massively and live a life that they love.
