Lawsagna

How To Think Clearly Under Pressure

About a week ago, I was at a seminar conducted by David Rock, the author of the recently published book "Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long."  It was an engaging and thought-provoking presentation that challenged many of our typical work habits that we think serve us well.  One of the insights had to do with thinking clearly under pressure.  We've all been there:  when we need to come up with a solution fast in stressful circumstances, and our mind "freezes."  There's an explanation for that. 

The prefrontal cortex, the brain region implicated in planning complex cognitive tasks, decision making, and moderating correct social behavior, is easily overwhelmed.  We can process just about seven pieces of information in our conscious mind at any given moment.  The more data we have to deal with, the harder it becomes to think clearly. 

In addition, our frontal lobes consume lots of energy.  When we experience strong negative emotions, as when we are angry or under stress, the glucose goes to the amygdala in the limbic system of the brain, triggering the "fight or flight" mode.  The prefrontal cortex doesn't have enough energy to think clearly anymore.  That's how our mind "freezes." 

On top of that, our brain is more attuned to negative information and tends to perceive anything unfamiliar as a threat.  Uncertainty is a threat.  Change is a threat.  Loss of face is a threat.  This response has good evolutionary reasons, it helped our predecessors survive.  Most of the threats in our daily life, however, are not "life or death" scenarios, but the brain is wired to react to them as if they were that serious.  With all that negativity bias of the brain and the limited capacity of the prefrontal cortex, how can we think better under pressure?  The following three steps may help.

1. Become aware of the strong negative emotions and how they affect your thinking.  Self-awareness is the most important brain optimization tool.  Without it, you are prone to repeat the same patterns over and over again because the brain likes to conserve energy, predict your typical responses, and activate them automatically.
2. Label the negative emotion you are experiencing.  Studies have shown that labeling emotions with just a word or two reduces their effect.  Say the label out loud if you can.
3. If your emotions are triggered by a specific situation, try to reframe it in a less threatening way for the brain.  Your interpretation needs to make sense, and it must be believable to you.  One more thing.  You have just a few seconds to reframe before the prefrontal cortex experiences the energy drain.  Not a lot time, I know, but it's worth practicing if you want to learn how to think clearly under pressure.  Remember: things are rarely as good or as bad as they seem.   

Since your brain is most creative when it's well rested and not over-stimulated with data and distractions, for example, in the morning or during a walk in nature, it is a good idea to think about how you would deal with common stressors in your life while the waters are still calm.  It doesn't matter to the brain whether you see something with your eyeballs or in your mind's eye, so rehearse your reactions in advance.  Reframe your triggers and picture yourself handling a difficult situation with ease and grace.

Meditate NYC : Free Meditation Instruction at Open Houses Throughout NYC, November 9 – 15

Meditate NYC begins on Sunday, November 8 with an afternoon of meditation instruction by Buddhist teachers from a great variety of traditions. The event is free and open to all.  Meditate NYC's kick-off will be followed by a full week of free meditation instruction, November 9 – 15.  People from all faiths, backgrounds, and experience are welcome at Open Houses hosted by meditation groups and dharma centers throughout the NYC area.

Ongoing scientific research confirms meditation's positive effects on body and mind. Meditate NYC offers an accessible way to find out what various approaches to meditation involve and what the benefits are.  For more information, visit http://meditatenyc.org

The stressful way to happiness

If learning a new skill is stressful for you, don't despair.  According to a new study, people who work hard at improving their competence at something may feel stressed in the moment, but experience greater happiness on a daily basis and longer term. 

The study examined whether people feel happier when they fulfill certain psychological needs, specifically, the need to be competent, to feel connected to others, and to be autonomous or self-directed.  ScienceDaily reports in the article "No Pain, No Gain: Mastering A Skill Makes Us Stressed In The Moment, Happy Long Term":

Contrary to previous research, the study found that people who engage in behaviors that increase competency, for example at work, school or the gym, experience decreased happiness in the moment, lower levels of enjoyment and higher levels of momentary stress. Despite the negative effects felt on an hourly basis, participants reported that these same activities made them feel happy and satisfied when they looked back on their day as a whole. This surprising find suggests that in the process of becoming proficient at something, individuals may need to endure temporary stress to reap the happiness benefits associated with increased competency.

...

While behaviors that increase competency were associated with decreased happiness in the moment, people who spent time on activities that met the need for autonomy or feeling connected to others experienced increased happiness both [on] an hourly and daily basis. The greatest increase in momentary happiness was experienced by participants who engaged in something that met their need for autonomy -- any behavior that a person feels they have chosen, rather than ought to do, and that helps them further their interests and goals.

According to Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University, these findings may have implications for workplace stress management: 

Our results suggest that you can decrease the momentary stress associated with improving your skill or ability by ensuring you are also meeting the need for autonomy and connectedness, for example performing the activity alongside other people or making sure it is something you have chosen to do and is true to who you are.

New Legal Resource : Laws.com (Guest Post)

There are thousands of laws in the legislation of the United States.  Understanding every single law is an impossibility, especially for the general public.  In reality, legal information is one of the most complicated topics in the entire world. 

Fortunately, Laws.com is one of the largest online resources specialized in legal information.  We have information regarding the many different aspects of law.  Whether you are struggling with a divorce, issues of immigration, accidents & injuries, bankruptcy or any other legal issue, there is a section with information that fits your issue.  We also have information regarding the many different types of attorneys out there, including DUI or Family Law attorneys.

Even if you only need a simple legal question answered, such as "What is the difference between civil and criminal law?"  We've got you covered. 

How to deal with difficult people, rejections, and negative opinions of others

How do you deal with difficult people?  Are you bothered by conflicts, rejections, or negative opinions of others?  Most of us are.  Somehow, it's hard to stay detached and let go.  Some of us spend much time reflecting on past conversations, thinking of what was said, and how it was said, and what it meant.  

I notice how my 4-year-old daughter is learning her social skills.  When she comes back from her playschool, she now likes to talk about who her friend is and who isn't, and who is "mad" at whom.  Their friendships and preferences come and go, and their little disagreements and disappointments with one another are easily forgotten.  It's all light-hearted at this point.  Interestingly, it is in this tender age, before our cognition is fully developed, when we form many of our subconscious brain maps and beliefs.  And as we grow, these subconscious beliefs may make it more difficult for us to forget, forgive, and move on.

The good news is that we can change our reactive patterns.  We cannot control other people's behavior, so the best approach is to learn to manage our own responses.  It becomes easier if we understand how our brain responds to perceived threats.  Because so many of our beliefs are subconscious, as adults, we may not even be aware of what pushes our buttons and why.  We may just notice that we become defensive, stressed, or self-critical.  If the brain recognizes something as a threat, it activates the amygdala, which is part of the limbic system of the brain, responsible for the emotional control and memory of our emotional reactions.  The limbic system can process something as a threat even before the stimulus reaches conscious awareness, triggering the "fight or flight" response. Our body is then flooded with cortisol, and the decision-making and rational parts of the brain shut down to mobilize our resourced for the attack or retreat.   

In addition, the brain evolved to be sensitive to status and authority, i.e. how we look relative to someone else.  As a result, we tend to worry about what others think of us.

Sometimes, just understanding these "quirks" of the brain and becoming aware of what's happening to us in the moments when our buttons are pushed can be helpful. Reframing the situation to lessen the threat is also helpful. We can change the brain's processing of our usual triggers if we consciously choose a behavior different from what we tend to do.  In other words, we can create new neural pathways in the brain with better responses.  So, once we become aware of what's happening, it helps to switch our mind to something that produces positive emotions fast and can reward the brain with the "feel good" molecules, like dopamine. The quicker we can replace the negative reaction with a positive one and the longer we can sustain the positive, the easier it will be for the brain to rewire itself. 

Next time you have to deal with negative reactions, difficult people, or explosive situations, start practicing this "reframe-switch-sustain" approach.  A similar process was used by psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder patients and described in his book "Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior."   The consistent application of his neuroplasticity-based technique helped the patients improve their OCD symptoms and caused the corresponding physical changes in the brain, which were confirmed by brain scans.  This practice can also help us with our everyday worries and anxieties.

Finally, it's good to remember that our brains are social and mirror emotional responses.  We have the power to manage our own reactions and help others step out of their trigger points if we engage with love, kindness, fairness, and support.

Recharge Your Brain - Brain Minute Video

Negative subliminal images are better detected than positive messages

According to Wikipedia, "[a] subliminal message is a signal or message embedded in another medium, designed to pass below the normal limits of the human mind's perception. These messages are unrecognizable by the conscious mind, but in certain situations can affect the subconscious mind and can negatively or positively influence subsequent later thoughts, behaviors, actions, attitudes, belief systems and value systems."

A new study by a UCL team led by Professor Nilli Lavie provides evidence that people are able to process emotional information from subliminal images and are better at detecting negative subliminal messages.  ScienceDaily reports: 

In the study, Professor Lavie and colleagues showed fifty participants a series of words on a computer screen. Each word appeared on-screen for only a fraction of second – at times only a fiftieth of a second, much too fast for the participants to consciously read the word. The words were either positive (e.g. cheerful, flower and peace), negative (e.g. agony, despair and murder) or neutral (e.g. box, ear or kettle). After each word, participants were asked to choose whether the word was neutral or 'emotional' (i.e. positive or negative), and how confident they were of their decision.

The researchers found that the participants answered most accurately when responding to negative words – even when they believed they were merely guessing the answer.

"There has been much speculation about whether people can process emotional information unconsciously, for example pictures, faces and words," says Professor Lavie. "We have shown that people can perceive the emotional value of subliminal messages and have demonstrated conclusively that people are much more attuned to negative words.

Professor Lavie explains that there are evolutionary advantages to responding quickly to subliminal negative information because those emotional messages may have helped us avoid danger. 

Visual Attention Guides Perception and Quiets Background Noise

In the article "Attention Makes Sensory Signals Stand Out Amidst Background Noise," ScienceDaily reports on a new mechanism that explains how our brain is able to process and make sense of various details in our environment that our visual system takes in:

When light hits the retina, visual information is translated into a cascade of nerve impulses sending signals deep into the brain. It is here, in the brain's visual cortex, which resides in the occipital lobe at the back of the skull, that these signals are interpreted and give rise to perception. But the visual system has limited capacity and cannot process everything that falls onto the retina. Instead, the brain relies on attention to bring details of interest into focus so it can select them out from background clutter.

Scientists had known for some time that attention to visual details increased the firing of neurons that responded to those details.  What they didn't realize until now is that attention also reduces background noise, improving the clarity of the signal:

The findings of the Salk researchers, published in the September 24, 2009 issue of the journal Neuron, reveal that the uptick in the firing rate is only a small part of the story. "What we found is that attention also reduces background activity," says postdoctoral researcher and first author Jude Mitchell, Ph.D. "We estimate that this noise reduction increases the fidelity of the neural signal by a factor that is as much as four times as large as the improvement caused by attention-dependent increases in firing rate. This reduction in noise may account for as much as 80% of the attention story."

The study reminds us that attention is our window into the world.  The results seem to support the following practical observations:

1. When you present visual information, less is better if you want more control over what your audience notices. 
2. The old saying is true:  We see what we want to see.  The rest is noise.

Fortune Cookie

Laugh at annoyances,

Smile at provocations,

Breathe through the frenzy,

Be grateful for all life lessons.

If you want to improve focus, ask these two questions

"What we call thinking is also a process whereby psychic energy gets ordered.  Emotions focus attention by mobilizing the entire organism in an approach or an avoidance mode.  Goals do it by providing images of desired outcomes.  Thoughts order attention by producing sequences of images that are related to each other in some meaningful way."
~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, "Finding Flow"

Back in the fall of 1997, I was getting ready to apply to law school.  As part of the application process, I had to take the LSAT exam.  All I remember about the day of the exam now is that it was beautiful and sunny, and I didn't look forward to spending most of it in a classroom full of agonizing law school applicants, like myself, trying to figure out logical patterns and compose essays.  The rest is murky in my memory right now.  What I also remember is that a couple of months later, I got a big yellow envelope in the mail, and I was very anxious to open it because I expected to see the results of my test.  To my surprise, the envelope didn't have my LSAT score.  Instead, it had a letter stating that I had an option of retaking the exam if I wished because something had happened during the test.  Apparently, a car alarm went off nearby while the exam was in progress, and the noise lasted for a while and distracted a number of test-takers.  They complained to the organization that administered the LSAT, which resulted in the option to retake the whole exam.  Interestingly, I didn't remember hearing any car alarm during the exam.  I wasn't distracted by it - it simply didn't register in my mind.  Nevertheless, I had a decision to make whether to take the LSAT again, in which case it would override the score of the earlier exam, and of course, I had no idea how I did on the first test.  I didn't want to take it again, so I opted out.  Fortunately, I did all right the first time around, so I didn't come to regret my decision. 

You may be wondering by now why I am telling you this story, and I promise, it is relevant to what I am about to share with you.  The reason I was able to tune out the noise during that exam is not because I can focus so well or because I have hearing difficulties.  More likely, it was because I incidentally tapped into the secret ingredient of focus power.  If this ingredient is present, your ability to focus increases significantly.  When it's absent, your mind may be looking for a distraction or preoccupied with worry, doubt, or anxiety.

So, would you like to know how to turn your mind into a laser beam?  Getting the secret ingredient right is not always easy but well-worth a try.  It was discovered by psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi and described in his book "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" :

The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile….Such experiences are not necessarily pleasant at the time they occur.  The swimmer's muscles might have ached during his most memorable race, his lungs might have felt like exploding, and he might have been dizzy with fatigue – yet these could have been the best moments of his life. 

Csikszentmihalyi calls this state of engagement "the flow."  If you want to have a better chance to be absorbed in an activity, ask yourself the following two questions:

•    Is this too easy for me? 
If it is, you will likely become bored quickly and lose focus.  Your brain will look for something else to attend to.
•    Is this too difficult for me? 
If the activity is too hard, your brain will view it as a threat, triggering strong emotions.  In this case, you lose concentration because you feel anxious, stressed or full of doubt.      

The magic happens when you get it right, when you are challenged and stretched by what you are doing, but your mind perceives it as doable.   

That's what probably happened during my LSAT test.  I had practiced and believed I could do it, so it was a challenge that matched my skills, which helped me stay focused. 

As you go about your days, ask yourself the two questions above and remember that your power to focus lies somewhere in the middle between "too easy" and "too hard."