Your Brain at Work – Change

I’m so excited this week because I get to share the final one of the four webinars I attended on Your Brain at Work with Dr. David Rock.  This one was my favourite.  Anyone who knows me knows that I’m all about action.  How do I implement what I’ve just learned?  How do I change myself and help my clients change as well?

One way to achieve change is to focus your attention.  Quantum physics tells us that you change the nature of physical reality through attention.  If you think about anything regularly you can re-wire your brain circuits. So, I think we had better watch out what we think about and put our attention on, don’t you?

Dr. Rock spent some time in this session focusing on Mindfulness.  Just thinking about it is making me more mindful – ha!  Anyway, developing the skill of mindfulness (or paying attention) requires us to do 3 things:

1. Pay attention to incoming information
2. In the present moment
3. In an open and accepting way

Now, there’s this nasty tendency our brain has to intefere with our ability to be mindful by turning on the narrative circuity.  You know what I’m talking about – that little voice that says, “You are crazy, you can’t do that!” and so on.  The key to paying attention is to learn to turn down the narrative and focus on the incoming information right now in this moment.  In this way we can become better at switching attention and choosing what to focus on.  The idea, the way I understand it anyway, is to use your power to veto the thought you don’t want as soon as you notice it and get back on the right train of thought.

The final key to facilitating change in ourselves and others is to create a feeling of safety.  We can do this by focusing on where we are going, not what we are avoiding or where we’ve been.  We need to be careful to minimize status threats, we need to create certainty, we need to give people choices and help them connect.  In the end, by asking ourselves and others the right questions we can move away from focusing on the problem and move toward the solution and a new reality. 

Here’s the reason I’ve been blogging about this for the last 4 weeks – Dr. Rock says that if I focus my attention on what I’ve learned by speaking about it, thinking about it and writing about it, I will create new circuits in my brain.  Say what?  Just kidding!  Hope it’s been as much fun for you as it has for me.  I’m off to put some of these concepts into practice with my clients.  Wish me luck!

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The Need for Control

Three weeks ago we began a small renovation project in our house on our downstairs laundry and bathroom.  What does that have to do with control you might ask?

Well, I have had a very interesting revelation in the last week or so.  Let me start at the beginning.  As you can imagine, my house is pretty darn neat and tidy pretty much all the time.  It has always been that way and I feel that because I am a Professional Organizer now I am obligated to practice what I preach so it’s just something I work on every day.

As you can imagine, with a renovation going on, chaos has ensued.  The only rooms that are untouched by clutter and things being where they don’t belong are the master bedroom and bath, the kitchen. and my office.  That means that the sitting room, living room, and the entire downstairs are a disaster.  Dirt gets tracked through the entire house every day and we attempt to clean it up.  The downstairs bathroom is completely torn apart down to the stud walls and concrete floor and there is a huge pile of garbage building up outside the house.

So, here’s my discovery.  I am a bit of a control freak – no surprise to many of you I’m sure!  However, because I have no control over my house and won’t for another 2 or 3 weeks I am having trouble concentrating on work and relaxing when I’m not working.  Now I know how many of my clients must feel every single day. Somehow having an organized home and office allows many of us to feel that we have some control over our lives.  And the reverse is also true. When we feel our lives are out of control it tends to manifest itself in the external chaos in our homes and offices.

Therefore, my conclusion is that I feel in control of my entire life because I am able to keep my home and office tidy, have a place for everything, feel more focused and relax when I need to.  If your life is out of control on all fronts, perhaps getting even one room in your home organized or tackling your office, will help you regain control of your life and have a positive impact in many other ways.

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