Empowering Questions

Part of this process means asking more effective questions—our brains are designed to answer questions; we are answering questions machines. 

We are designed to make certainty out of our environments so we do that with questions—oftentimes unconscious ones—but we can do it consciously as well. And just asking and reframing the questions you ask yourself—what about this do I know, what about this do I understand, what can I control—your brain will begin to come up with answers. And high performers begin to do this habitually and they reframe their questions in the way that they are positive. 

Most of us do it unconsciously and negatively—why does this keep happening—and some of them or most of them will be bad ones, and mostly untrue. 

Yet if we reframe those questions, we get the same type of answering machine—what can I learn about this, what about this can I become stronger from—those are the habits that high performers, especially those that are consistently finding themselves in challenging situations begin to do—asking yourselves empowering questions, utilizing that very effective by design neurology that allows us to start putting better certainty into our environment.

Restoring Control

The ideal controlling something—like chaos with younger ones at home—is conditions like those where you pick one thing, maybe it’s making yourself a cup of coffee from start to finish, and you are suppressing spontaneity and you are in the act of starting something and moving through it, and completing it. 

It’s not about the cup of coffee, it’s about restoring order to your neural processes, so you are reactivating the decision action circuits. How you do it is almost irrelevant as long as you don’t do something that’s counter to your goals. 

By doing something neutral or in the direction where you want to go, you restore your ability to steer the car, you restore control over that frontal cortex circuitry, you are grabbing a hold of your neural circuitry.

Top-Down Circuitry

In some ways, focus can be thought of as the ability to suppress spontaneity. Think of a puppy—everything is a stimulus. As we grow older—not everything is a stimulus. 

Forebrain starts developing and exerting top-down circuitry. People with frontal damage—pick up a plan of action and go and then switch to something else—that is ADD. 

Something that you can control is trimming down on the circuitry—it’s not about the coffee. 

Control is about straining the circuitry that allows you to set things aside and make an action plan, and refer to the action plan; then you can start pivoting into action plans that are more in line with what you need to do. 

But if you feel like you are in a spin, you have to pick something that’s either neutral or in the direction where you want to go. Just like if you want to access flow, you need to ride that elevated level of autonomic arousal to a more narrow point with the trust and understanding that there’s a more elaborate open landscape for you to access flow, be onto that.

Forward Action

Forward motion calms you down. 

Two major filters for taking in the information, one is fear, the second is your goals. Two main things that screen most of the data that’s coming in. 

How you want the equation to work in your favor is—more focus on your goals because you will get less fear as a result. Clear goals keep that forward motion. At the start of the day have a specific to-do list, not too long, 5-6 minutes; it helps to focus. 

Life is a maze, not a sprint or marathon; movement forward can also be a movement sideways or backwards. A forward movement can also be ‘stop, do nothing, collect information’. 

So, in times of uncertainty, forward movement, either physically or cognitively—or even sideways or backwards—is, at a minimum, changing perspective. 

So we think of focus as suppressing spontaneity, yet the spontaneity is kind of the hallmark of high performance. 

We can think of creativity as spontaneity with a purpose. Entry point is a constraint process. Protocol, protocol, protocol. 

And then, suddenly, it’s flow, and you find yourself performing at the level you never thought you could. But you have to go through this narrow trench first. 

Focus, you need to suppress spontaneity, head in the right direction and then invite spontaneity back in—but it’s not that you deliberately invite spontaneity back in but it finds you. 

Creativity is the thing that emerges when you do ‘the thing’. 

This whole process of suppressing spontaneity and moving through the narrow trench to access flow has to require forward action. 

In ‘fight, flight or freeze’ situations only the forward action activates the right circuits in the brain and brings the release of dopamine. 

So only the forward action, even if it starts from the place of intense discomfort, stimulates the release of dopamine. 

Forward action can be thinking as well. Even every time you think you are on the right track or sense you are on the right track —dopamine is released. 

Dopamine is designed to pull you along. 

Forward movement is going to engage all the right circuits. So little chunk goals—just get through that, just get through this, in a difficult day, that is like marking little milestones—will result in multiple release of doses of dopamine, and result in non-depleted stress response. 

That will enable you to get through under the conditions of exhaustion or stress.

Real Time Tools

You don’t want autonomic arousal and stress to spin out to acute levels where you can’t organize your behavior. How do you know, you have acute stress? You can’t organize your behavior. In fact, experiencing periodic peaks in stress enhances your immune system— the immune system gets a boost. However, if feeling too stressed, you can push back on stress in that particular moment with the these real time tools:

⇀ Panoramic Vision

Going into panoramic vision is a real time tool because your eyes, or the way you are viewing the world, has a powerful effect on your internal state. Keep your eyes stationary, dilating your field of view, broader and broader, until you can actually see yourself in the environment that you are in. The cool thing about this is that you can do it well while talking or moving through space. 

⇀ Proper Sigh

Ideally through nose, strong inhale, another inhale on top, then long exhale. 1-3 of these will immediately get your system into parasympathetic dominance.

Offline Tools to Build Resilience

You want to take your system the other way, you have to deliberately enhance your autonomic arousal. A practice away from stress, maybe once a day—looks like Wim Hof Method or Buddhist monk Tummo breathing. As a result, you notice that you are immensely calm despite having heightened levels of adrenaline in your system. You do this as offline practice. 

This has 2 major effects:

(1), this pattern of breathing stimulates the innate immune system to secrete these bacterium and virus fighting molecules. And

(2), elevating your nervous system restarts the immune system. 

If you deliberately bring yourself into a heightened state that we call stress, the interpretation is completely different. It resets what your body and brain consider to be stressful, and, being a practitioner of this, you will not be as triggered by things. Being in a state of arousal is a familiar state to be. I’m not totally calm here but I’m comfortable being uncomfortable. 

Eustress

Eustress is a positive stress; stress that we interpreted as a good thing. Distress is the opposite. 

Flow as eustress. Studies in longevity show it’s not the people who live stress free lives who live the longest and healthiest lives. It’s the people who have positive stressful lives who live longest and seem to have the healthiest and happiest lives.

Interruption Recovery

The best way to immediately get back into flow after being distracted or interrupted depends on how far out of flow you were sent. Not that you need to go all the way back to the beginning. 

Let’s look at the frustration that comes with that.

If you are going to be focused on the frustration that comes on top of your flow track—being out of your flow state—you’ve got to learn how to quickly channel that frustration into a tighter, more narrow focus. 

Frustration is really like discontent, a spontaneity that’s showing up.

It’s going to involve some very deliberate decision making. Rather than suppressing negative thoughts, one good way is to put something else in its place—introduce a positive thought on top. 

Thoughts are very much like deliberate actions; one needs to get into the mode of deliberate thinking. Very few people practice the art of introducing a positive thought. 

One way of why journaling is so powerful is that it’s deliberate action linked to thought. If you link, you create a physical manifestation of the thought. 

So, if struggling with frustration when knocked out of flow, start introducing positive thoughts on top of what’s going on and trust that it’s going to put your compass back on track.

Gratitude and Neurochemical Systems

Data shows, people with a regular gratitude practice have higher flow lifestyles.

Question, can you use gratitude in a moment as a way of reframing it and getting rid of stress? Will it work in an acute situation? 

The molecule of dopamine is secreted any time our goals, our actual vision or mindset are centered outside of our immediate reach, really outside of the extent of my reach. 

People talk about serotonin, oxytocin and the opioids as the ‘here and now’ molecules of content of being within my body and my immediate sphere of experience, and dopamine of being more, more, more. 

Look at the drugs of abuse that emphasize dopamine like amphetamine and cocaine —they tend to make people rabbit in a pursuit of things that are not in their immediate sphere. Think of drugs of abuse that tend to enhance serotonin and some other molecules like heroin that make people be content to kind of just sit and bathe in their own neurochemistry. 

Isn’t it interesting, two neurochemicals, both in the same body, one inspires outward motion and looking and seeking and the other inspires to be placid and potentially just self-contained. 

Gratitude is very interesting because gratitude probably strikes a chord of each of these neurochemical systems. People who practice gratitude regularly —I didn’t know that they entered flow states more easily, but they have this ability to then restore their excitement for pursuit. It’s not only oh, I’m just so happy, I’m just gonna bathe in my own neurochemicals; it actually inspires them for more forward action. It makes the possibility seem real-looking. 

Gratitude is a phenomenal way to enhance neurochemicals that make you feel well enough in the moment but also inspire seeking and forward action and your sense of possibility in the world.

Keep Teams Calm

In teams, obviously, we are talking about leadership and our businesses and our work teams, even our home teams. A high performance team doesn’t have to be business, it doesn’t have to be in a sports field or in the military; it can be at home, too—it can be a great marriage, great friendship. High performance teams are everywhere. 

Leadership is a behavior, not a position. You behave in a way that allows someone to look at you like a leader. It is my opinion and it has been my experience that we are not allowed to call ourselves leaders, we can’t self-designate, we don’t get to choose—the other person has to choose. The idea is you behave in a way that allows someone to look at you and designate you a leader. And that, in essence, is the answer. 

If you want to have your team feel better about uncertainty, be able to perform better in uncertainty. You need to behave in a way that you model; and show them these things, and tell these things. Panic is as contagious as calm. You can see these as a parent, or just take pets, too—pets are empathy machines—if you are panicked, your pets will be panicked; if you are panicked, your kids will be panicked. If you are calm, that will be the response. So it’s contagious; this type of behavior is contagious—a sense of calm, a sense of direction, a sense of purpose, and an understanding of this helps, as does a sense of and a willingness to be vulnerable. 

In every team, trust is paramount and part of that trust relationship in a team is the willingness and the ability to be vulnerable. So even as a leader it’s okay to say, hey listen, I don’t have the answer on this. In effect, what’s that doing for your teammates it’s saying, I am not the person with all that answers and I need you as a team member, as a teammate. 

It shows ownership, it bonds teams together, and it shows trust because we all know intuitively that if someone is willing to be a little bit vulnerable, willing to show our strengths as well as our weaknesses that is not only going to be gelatin in the skills and attributes sense, and it is also going to be gelatin in trust and bonding.