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 second 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? Irreversible long-term elevation of your self-awareness and quality of your life's experience.
"Symphony of Experience" metaphorically represents the blending of diverse sensory perceptions, our thoughts, past memories and life experiences, knowledge, and perspectives to create our current perceived reality.
What makes this series unique is how we examine leadership. As we started uncovering in this series, leadership isn't just about job titles and managerial roles. It's about how you navigate your life daily, how you mold each thought, action, and emotion into a strategic masterpiece that shapes your world.
You see, leadership isn't as we have been taught, confined to the boardroom or the forefront of a team; it's the continuous process that unfolds in every decision you take, from the moment you rise to greet the day until you lay down to rest, including all the moments that you interact with others around you and with your environment.
What's different about this series is that it's very simple yet powerful. We examine complicated processes of the mind to understand them and consequently, raise our awareness in proactively leading ourselves and life around us.
In part 1, we talked about the simplest process of the brain: sensing information > processing > output.
So, the most natural consequence of laying out this process is to ask: where does the brain get the information from?
In this article, we embark on a journey to unravel the intricacies of sensory perception, exploring the science behind it and marveling at the incredible ways our senses shape our reality and instruct our decisions.
The five senses: A symphony of experience
Human beings are gifted with five primary senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. Each sense has its unique role, contributing to our holistic perception of the world.
Sight (Vision)
Our eyes capture and interpret the light that surrounds us. Then our brain works to perceive and interpret visual information, including color, shape, depth, and motion.
Sight allows us to navigate our environment, appreciate visual beauty, and connect with others through facial expressions.
Hearing (Audition)
The ears transform sound waves into electrical signals sent to our brain which works to discern various sound qualities, including pitch, volume, and timbre, and processes information critical for communication and spatial awareness.
Auditory perception lets us enjoy music, engage in conversations, and alert us to potential dangers. Sound even influences our sense of balance.
Taste (Gustation)
Taste buds on the tongue and palate detect different flavors that fire signals to our brain to help us distinguish between five primary taste modalities: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami.
Taste helps us savor delicious foods which enriches our experience of food intake and energy consumption.
Touch (Tactile)
The skin is our body's largest sensory organ, filled with receptors for temperature, pressure, and pain. Processing the information from these receptors in our brain enables us to experience physical sensations, manipulate objects, and navigate our environment with precision.
Smell (Olfaction)
The olfactory system in our noses identifies and processes odors. Our brain analyzes this odor information and helps us detect and discriminate odors that influence our memory, emotions, and even social interactions and can evoke powerful nostalgia.
Our perception of the process called life
This process of processing all of the environmental signals (stimuli) from the above different sensations to our brain is termed: sensory perception. This sensory perception that happens in our brain is the fundamental basis for how we perceive the external world and understand our environment. It influences every aspect of our reasoning, problem-solving, decision-making, learning, emotions, and other higher processes in our brain and hence, it influences our emotions, memories, and decisions.
The reality and illusion of the process called life
Situation: Say you were 6 years old and your mum taught you not to cross the streets except with her. One day, you were out of the shop and you saw an ice cream bar that you ran with enthusiasm towards and you heard screams at the back ''Come back right now I say, immediately!!!''- your mum yelled in front of everybody. You looked at her and her body language was scary to you (power of sight), her words were loud (power of audition), then you looked around and you saw everybody looking at you. You stopped listening to Mum as her voice went into the background and a loud voice inside of you said: What a weak powerless humiliated person you are! Everyone is making fun of you, you loser!
Analysis: Eyesight and auditory signals go to the brain that processes the information and talk to other parts of the brain to give the situation a meaning of humiliation.
Situation: Say you were 31 years old and you're sitting in a meeting room with your colleagues then your boss looked at you and he looked sharply with criticism and said "Your presentation was inadequate, and I expected better from you. Make sure you practice before your next presentation and listen fully to the audience's questions before you reply to them." You stopped listening to your boss as his voice went into the background and a loud voice inside of you said: What a humiliation, they are all better than me, I don't deserve to be in this team!
Analysis: In this scenario, visual cues (the boss's facial expressions and body language) and auditory signals (the boss's spoken words) are processed by your brain. The brain interprets these cues as a critique of you and processes them in the emotional center of the brain to give the situation a meaning of inferiority, shame, humiliation, disappointment, or self-criticism.
Food for thought: Did you ever ask yourself: Where did you get that this way of talking and facial expression means humiliation? What were your reference points of humiliation in your life experience? Do you remember similar situations in your life to the ones above what next actions did your mum or boss do? Do you ever wonder if this situation didn't happen in your childhood, that you'd react differently to your boss?
The overwhelm and noise cancellation power of the brain
We have a gazillion images, smells, words, and tastes to process as stimuli in our outer environment at a given moment. Now, think that this is what's happening all day, every day throughout the length of our lifetimes. In addition to processing and controlling our inner environment, our brain is left bombarded with stimuli to process and information to perceive about our experience in life.
How can our brain deal with all of this?
Meet our brain's magical spell: Sensory adaptation.
Sensory adaptation is the brain's incredible ability to filter out constant or repetitive sensory stimuli, allowing us to focus on new or changing information.
It's because of sensory adaptation that you can tune out the constant hum of background noise in a restaurant or the feel of your clothing against your skin. Sensory adaptation ensures that we efficiently process the most relevant information while conserving our cognitive energy and resources.
The aensory adaptation's trap
Let's go back to the ice cream story above, let's take the mum's side of the story, and to do that let's interview a mum with a 6-year-old kid and ask her to share her experience of the same situation.
''Mum, tell us what happened. Argh, how can I start? I have a very vibrant but stubborn kid who is always moving carelessly. No matter how many times I said, to be careful and stop at the street's end, they rarely stopped unless I raised my voice and warned them. I love my kid so much and I wish they'd listen but mostly, they exhaust my energy''
Let's see who and what got filtered by the power of our sensory adaptation capacity of the brain. ''You, the kid character filtered out:
Mum's orders when crossing the street.
The cars in the street.
Mum's loud and angry words when you attempted to cross the street without looking.
Mum's worry for your life.
Mum's emotional experience of the day (what happened before the situation and after, how was she feeling, what did she have to deal with on that day?).
Mum's energy levels to deal with your yet again desire to run without looking''
''Mum character filtered out:
The kid's joy and enthusiasm to get ice cream.
The kid's desire to run after what they want to get committedly.
The people around them both.
The kid's emotional needs to be appreciated, respected, and loved.
Now, Let's go back to the meeting story above. Let's take the boss's side of the story, and to do that let's interview a boss who's responsible for a team and ask him to share his experience of the same situation.
''Boss, tell us what happened. Well, I have the same complaint over and over again. Don't leave everything to the last minute. Give yourself time to prepare the presentation and sleep well the day before so that you're adequately prepared to answer all the questions to get better ideas to develop during the presentation. I feel that you're not listening to what I say you should be doing. Instead, you're wasting your time on doing things that don't move the needle for you or the team.''
Let's see who and what got filtered by the power of our sensory adaptation capacity of the brain.
''You, the team member's character filtered out:
Your boss's request to do things at a certain standard or level of performance.
Your boss's request to present the team in the best possible way.
Your boss's responsibility is to get things done.
Your well-being routine before presenting your team, ideas, and results.
That you're sailing the same ship alongside your boss. By being your boss, he can't be sailing a different ship.''
''The boss's character filtered out:
What you did well compared to last time and in the context of your overall progress.
The lack of a guiding system or strategy to help you perform well from his perspective.
The possible reasons from your perspective are that you're failing to deliver on your commitment. In simpler words, why do you keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again?
Other team members.
Isn't it marvelous, the depth and wealth of information that got blurred in the background of the situation?
Summary
In this ongoing exploration of self-awareness and personal leadership, we have uncovered the intricate workings of our sensory perception—the symphony of our five primary senses. These senses shape our reality, influence our decisions, and ultimately impact our experience of life.
As we journey through life, it's essential to recognize that our brains constantly gather information through our five senses. The way we interpret this information plays a pivotal role in our reactions, emotions, and decision-making processes.
Through the scenarios shared, we've seen how sensory perception can lead to both empowering and disempowering thoughts about ourselves and our experiences.
Our brains, astonishingly, possess the ability of sensory adaptation—a powerful mechanism that filters out repetitive sensory stimuli, allowing us to focus on new and relevant information. This process helps us efficiently process the most important data while conserving cognitive energy.
This leaves us with an important question: Can we rely on our sensory perception and sensory adaptation solely to make decisions? Could Our brain be unintentionally blurring out information?
Stay tuned for our next insight into our superhero component in the science of leadership.
Until then, remember the last call to action? Keeping a list of the events that led to your experience of being low or sad, are you now open to seeing the power of your sensory adaptation in connecting your experiences from the past with your current experiences?
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.
