Play your brain now

It’s dead easy to turn your brain into an opponent. The brain follows a certain logic and if you don’t know what that is and how to make the most of it, you will continue to be the prisoner of a thousand ingrained habits. You may even be making life more difficult for yourself, because you are a novice in “playing your brain.”

The manager, Mike, found out about this the hard way. He had the best of intentions: “making my people grow”. But when he gave feedback to his employees, he noticed that a number of them turned defensive and did not really seem to get his point. When learning about the brain, he realised that his style was rather judgemental which triggered their threat responses – and activated areas of their brains that made them start looking for flaws in his feedback. Mike might then have chosen to count them out (lots of managers do!) – thinking they were “just not willing to learn”. But instead he started experimenting with his own behavioural repertoire until he found a style that delivered better results: by engaging their minds, making the situation safer and his good intention clearer.

Ease of execution

Our results and well-being are clearly very much down to what goes on between our – and others’ – ears. Nevertheless, few of us know how to turn the brain into a co-player. It takes knowledge of what goes on in the brain – and it takes a certain mindset, characterized by flexibility, mindfulness, and playfulness, to make the most of this. We call this a musical mindset, because it has everything to do with growing an extensive repertoire, tuning in on the ever-changing environments that you are part of, adapting yourself to the demands of the situation, and coordinating activities in meaningful ways. When you “play your brain” there is an ease of execution, fluency, and improvisation — a pronounced sense of musicality.

The brain does in fact work in musical ways. We liken it to a jazz orchestra, because what zooming in on the activity in the brain, you would see a similar ability to improvise, connect in constantly new ways, and make the most of the resources currently present. The brain is in a state of constant change. It is plastic, i.e. malleable, and you can facilitate change in even very ingrained habits by playing different “melodies” in your inside and outside world.

Create brain-based change

You may come across many rumours about the number of days it takes to change a habit, or beliefs that “you can’t teach an old dog, new tricks”. But this is nonsense, and only serves to hold you back. Instead, when you have practiced something new 3 to 4 times, the “just do it” parts of your brain (also called the ‘basal ganglia’) start firing noticeably, supporting your change.

Changing habits is like tramping new paths in the forest: Each and every time you tramp the new route you make it more visible and the walk more ‘smooth’. Each and every time you walk astray, you just need to head for the desired route and continue tramping your path there. The paths once tramped can never completely disappear but they can get overgrown.

Just because you coincidentally walk down “an old path” once or twice later in life, it does not suddenly turn it into “a major path” again. But if you think to yourself: “Look! Now I did it again! I am never going to change” (and a lot of people do), you put out tripwires for your change. That is a great example of how your brain can be your opponent.

Instead, you can turn this déjà vu experience into a reminder: that you may well return to your new and more useful repertoire and leave those overgrown path behind.

Buy Play Your Brain today – and learn more about brain-based change. It is published by Marshall Cavendish and more information can be found at business-bookshop.co.uk. or amazon