| A NEW WAY OF LIFE |
Brain Friendly Living with the Skills of Consciousness
By
Jan B. Roosa, Ph.D.
"Take charge of your life," and "Be all you can be." Aren't those great ideas? Good goals? Just do them! Right? Sure, if you know how to get there. Most of us, and we don't like to admit it, don't know where to start, let alone how to get there. Getting that pep talk can be like hearing "Start the engine," when you don't have a starter.
All these nice personal goals that we have heard most of our lives have created a pressure to be better than we are, and to feel as if we are inadequate because we aren't better than we are. Beyond creating cell-destroying stress, these perpetrators of ill health, have nothing to offer you to learn how to travel the road that is right for you. They seem to assume we already know how to travel the right road if we only want to bad enough. Like many of us, they don't seem to know that personal living and learning is as much a matter of skill as doing anything else.
Rarely do we have the opportunity to understand and learn things that simultaneously improve our brains, enhance our consciousness, improve our humanity, and increase our ability to live by modes---doing things and processing information that work for us---instead of by moods that have us living vicariously, and therefore, precariously.
How do we do this? By learning and adopting a way of life that is as old as the hills, but is only now creeping into our awareness. And what is this way of life? Better Enjoyment, Energy and Empathy through Brain Friendly Living with the Skills of Consciousness. The skills of consciousness? What does that mean? It means that our brains and minds have constructed skills using the action of the brain's 'wiring' on the environment's inputs, which gives us mental and emotional skills to live in this world. What are some of the skills that bring out and sharpen our consciousness? Effort, Empathy, Decision-making, Focus, and Self-Talk, to name a few.
Skills such as these are our connections to the people, places, things,
and events in our world. Without these basic, interactive, and empowering
connections, we are like a ship in a storm with motors that run but don't
engage the propellers, and with a rudder that works inconsistently.
If we exert our full Effort and give our full Attention & Concentration
to the situations at hand, we can then relay full information to the relevant
skills such as Empathy and Decision-making to come into play. If there
are deficiencies in any of the skills, the process breaks down to that
extent, and the connections are watered down, accordingly. The results
are less Brain Friendly, less Socially Constructive, we lessen our powers
of volition, and the Flow communication or action is interrupted or diverted.
The problems encountered by young and old with severe attention deficit
problems and by those with whom they associate are extreme examples of
difficulties that are all too common.
Since our culture has yet to take on the responsibility to cultivate our brains' capacities to its optimal operational capacity, we need to have publications like this one to help us along. What good are these Brain Friendly skills of consciousness, anyway? And do we need to develop, nurture, and improve them?
These skills not only improve our mental health, the ability to live the good life, but they can prevent or lessen the occurrence of mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, and loneliness. If we want our lives to improve, we will also need to develop, nurture, and continue to improve them. Just as we can improve the ability of the heart to feed the brain and the rest of the body through rest, sleep, exercise, and nutrition, we can improve our brain, mind, and ability to live the good life by developing and improving our skills of consciousness.
Therefore, it is important that we understand what causes us to behave the way we do. It is not our responsibility, irresponsibility, eagerness, laziness, intelligence, willfulness, etcetera, etcetera. It is the presence or absence of skills to understand, see the options and consequences, to empathize, and to focus, to name a few, that determine our energy, and our actions.
Why do certain actions happen like: hurting children, yelling and screaming, or being ineffective at work. These are actions we generally call mean and irresponsible, as if there is a governor or black box within us called "I" that calls the signals to be responsible or irresponsible. As Dr. Steven Pinker ("How The Mind Works") points out, this "theory" is not true. I would also point out that it makes learning to act responsibly very difficult.
Here's why---
Responsibility is not a unit in itself, like a single trait, we learn or just have, that shows how motivated we are. It is made up of many subsets, skills. Some of these are Focus, Decision-making, Empathy, Organizing Information, Prioritizing, and Sequencing. If we break down what we call Responsibility into those skills and work on those, we can act more responsibly. If we don't, it will be nearly impossible to do so, or we could become a responsibility freak about everything and everyone.
Granted, we don't usually think of things like, Empathy, Decision-making, and Focus as skills, which we learn, albeit haphazardly. Also, from our experience, we usually don't even think we learn because we have particular learning skills. We think that we just learn, or don't, depending on how well we are motivated, or, and this is another misleading term, how smart we are.
Actually, we learn because we have skills that combine to develop our modes of learning. Thus, we learn because we know how to learn even if we are not conscious of how we are learning. And we live the way we do because we have skills that combine to develop our modes of living. Thus, we live in the ways we live because we simply know how to live those ways, even if we are not conscious of what we know.
If, however, we are conscious of our mental skills, it will immensely improve our sense of well-being and effectiveness. It is also extremely useful if we consciously use a mode of living where we operate with the formula: "We succeed to the degree we put forth our best Effort to concentrate on doing the best we can. We fail to the degree we fail to put forth our best Effort to do the best we can. We cannot measure our success or failure by results, for we have little control over them." This keeps our attention on something we can control and be focused without distractions, which waste our time and good humor. We haven't been taught that, even though that way of living seems to work best.
Let's say we learn how to put forth our best Effort---a skill in itself---to Concentrate---another skill---on being Conscious of what we are telling ourselves---another skill---about making a Decision---another skill---and how that will impact on others, Empathy---still another skill. This know-how puts us in a strategic position to consistently improve, without debilitating ourselves with blame, labels, and isolation.
Our ideal then, is to make the full Effort to Focus and learn the know-how---in this case, the psychological skills---to get where we want. And just as important, we haven't even been taught these skills. We're supposed to know how to live the good life, without instruction. You know, just do it! But how? What are some examples of skills we can learn, but have thought of them as some kind of trait that we just have, or don't have?
Have you been taught how to be deliberately aware and Conscious of what you are thinking, your Self-talk? Have you been taught how to Focus so that you know and keep in mind your Purpose and pay Attention and Concentrate so that you lose yourself in what you are doing? Have you been taught how to make Decisions? Have you been taught how to be really Empathic, so that you can understand yourself, and others, that you can have a warm collaborative relationship with them?
Have you been taught that whatever you do, whatever others may think of you, none of it is a true characterization of you, but is only an act or an opinion that can only be a description of what has been done, not the person---Ego Freedom? Have you been taught to Focus on what you can control the most---effort and execution---instead of what you have the least control over, like results of any kind? And have you been taught to be deliberately aware and Conscious of your Decision-making process, your degree of Focus, your Empathy considerations, your Ego Freedom self-talk, and your degree of Effort to do the best you can?
In my experience, I will say that the chances are close to 90% that you were not taught these Brain Friendly, Consciousness skills. To the degree you may have them, you have probably picked them up randomly, or were lucky enough to have had a role model or two who thought out loud, or whose talk and actions clearly showed their language and logic.
Now, I am going to throw you another mind twister. Be ready to go on search mode again. Before doing that, however, let me briefly digress.
For those of you who prefer definitions first, rather than letting the reasoning slowly sink in, let's define Brain Friendly. Now, here's an example of two different ways for different brains. One is Brain Friendly for some, and the other is Brain Friendly for others. Brain Friendly means there is synchronous meshing of the informational content and the methods of processing and presentation of information with the way the brain is wired so that the brain benefits. No loss of neurochemical functioning occurs. Indeed, there is likely neurogenesis---an increased neurochemical functioning and neural growth stemming from environmental stimulation. Of course, we can't yet walk into the corner drugstore and be checked for neurogenesis or neural atrophy. We can, however, determine if our functioning has improved or worsened. From that we can infer whether it is atrophy or genesis going on in our brain.
Another way to look at brain friendly is to see the analogy to other parts of the body. Appropriate exercise is heart friendly; misuse or non-use of exercise is heart unfriendly. Low fat, plenty of protein, vegetables and fruit are cardiovascular friendly and digestive system friendly. Too much alcohol is liver unfriendly.
So it is with the brain and information processing. Some content is brain unfriendly---for example, frightening information. Some ways of presenting content is brain Unfriendly, even if the content is otherwise brain friendly---for example, droning lectures on animal life instead of pictures and movies. It may be Brain Friendly to make small talk at a cocktail party, but if your brain is more inclined toward analyzing and creating ideas, the small talk is brain UNfriendly.
Has anyone taught you we have Brain Friendly ways to learn and activate what we know, AND we have Brain UN-Friendly ways to learn and activate what we know? For instance, if your mind learns relationally, (connects information with other information you already know), you are most likely to remember it well if it is presented relationally, or you can take the time to make the connections. That is Brain Friendly learning. If on the other hand information is presented to you without making relevant connections, either by you or the presenter, you are unlikely to remember very accurately. That is Brain UN-Friendly learning. Or perhaps your mind works in the reverse of that. In that case your mind would recall the rote list much better because it is not a relational learner. Brain Friendly learning increases the chances of accurate recall. Brain UN-Friendly learning decreases the chances of accurate recall.
We have Brain Friendly Skills of Consciousness. Something seems to be going through our minds all the time. The more we are Conscious of what we are thinking, or picturing---our Self-talk---all to the better. That gives us a better chance at regulating our Self-talk, which, as we shall see in that module, strongly governs our feelings and actions.
In order for our Consciousness to be most effective, it has to have modes of expression or techniques, or else it will not function and it will die out from disuse. If this happens, we are at the mercy of Automatic Reactivity---a condition that prevents us from thinking ahead, knowing others empathically, knowing ourselves empathically, problem-solving, cooperating, and learning.
This is why we need to learn as many Brain Friendly Skills of Consciousness as we can. These are the ways we can Take Charge of Our Lives. And with Effort and help we can learn them, and learn them well.
In my opinion, the chances are at least 90% that when you learn the real basic and fundamental skills presented here, you will be able to vastly improve your personal relationships, your work and learning skills, your enjoyment of your alone time, and your personal satisfaction with how you got there. You see, with these Skills of Consciousness we develop modes of living that carry us on regardless of our moods and motivations. This is very important because the best way we gain control is by operating with Brain Friendly Modes---living within the framework of Effort to Concentrate in order to Do the best we can is an exciting example. This way we are not held back by the inconsistencies of moods and motivations. Think this way: Modes, not Moods.
The noted psychologist, Dr. Albert Ellis, said a long time ago "We feel what we think." To connect that idea with the operations of the brain, we can say we have feelings due to chemical and electrical transmissions in the brain, which are caused by the brain transmitting thoughts along its neural pathways. Negative thoughts create "negative" chemical reactions that create negative feelings. Positive thoughts create "positive" chemical reactions that create positive feelings. In the same way, decisive thoughts create feelings of resolve. Thus, our feelings occur because of the chemical changes created by our mental processes---our language, logic, and pictures---which, over the span of our psychobiological development, we have shaped into what we call, Self-talk.
Also, we have a brain that long ago developed the capacity for Consciousness---the capacity to be aware of our awareness. I know that sounds a little like some politicians or evangelists. In his exciting book "The Evolution of Consciousness", Dr. Robert Ornstein helps us out as to the nature of Consciousness on page 227. "Consciousness is involved when deliberate, rather than automatic, control is needed…..Very few of our decisions get shunted up to consciousness; only those that need a top-level decision about alternatives."
I have come to believe that more decisions are available to Consciousness than we might suspect. It is my observation that the more people have adequate conscious techniques of say, Decision-making, the more likely they can be conscious of their alternatives while in the middle of making a decision. Quarterbacks on a football team are constantly making split-second decisions that they can recall in detail after a game. Fighter pilots have been trained to do the same (Boyd, The Fighter Pilot Who Changed The Art Of War, by Robert Coram).
As Ornstein points out, our brains, in part forged by our culture, have practiced the importance, nay, the necessity of thinking and doing automatically, thus holding back our development of Consciousness and Conscious techniques for living. In a complex world, this is a formula for failure, if not disaster. Witness our problems with understanding different cultures, our ecological flirt with disaster, with overheating our planet, our inadequacies in matters of marriage and family, and our failures in educating our children.
All of these matters require a great deal of Consciousness expressed in high level forms of alertness, analysis, creativity and action. They cannot be adequately confronted and solved with our present pattern of knee-jerk reactions. As a matter of fact, not only should these matters be confronted with Brain Friendly Skills of Consciousness, each confrontation should yield more Consciousness on the part of all those people even remotely affected.
Thus, if we have the instruments of Consciousness such as Self-talk, Decision-making, and Empathy, we are positioned to not only adapt to changing conditions, but to create changes. We are also in a position to function in ways that will add strength and agility to our brains. These are not done well when our mind is dependent on the automatic functions of the brain, which are very fixed, resistant to change, and quite unable to be innovative.
As Ornstein states, unless we make a point of activating and developing our Consciousness, the progress we need to continue a life of well-being will stop. And then? You? Your children? My children? Other peoples' children? And then?
It is my experience that the Brain Friendly Skills of Consciousness you will find on this website can be learned by everyone. These have now become a necessity, and are no longer to be ignored with a dismissive wave of the hand as some brainstorm of an egghead out somewhere in left field.
Some of our thinking, decisions, and actions are Brain Friendly, and some are not. That is, some help our brain run smoothly, some are disruptive and cause chemical, electrical, and neurological eruptions, causing us to feel unpleasantries of all sorts, and behave in all kinds of unsatisfying ways. When our brain runs smoothly because we think and act in brain friendly ways, we feel involved, energetic, and experience peace of mind---enjoyment, energy, and empathy.
This is where Consciousness and Brain Friendly skills come together to insure that we are treating our brain well, evolving and enlarging its capacity. Our Consciousness directs us to our skills of assessing our state of mind, energy, and emotion. If our minds are directing their attention to putting out the best Effort to Focus, Decide, Create, Analyze, Learn, and Foresee for the good of all of us, then we can believe we are acting in Brain Friendly, Conscious and Empathic ways.
Our theme is: Better Enjoyment, Energy, and Empathy Through Brain Friendly Skills of Consciousness. But we can't stop with a simple slogan because, contrary to the demands of our brains' tiny modules of automaticity, there is no magic pill or bullet that will give us these things. Instead, it takes many skills to get them and live the good life---many of which we have and just need to be developed and smoothed out for today's world. It is our able thinking and expressive skills that treat our brain right so that it works smoothly and doesn't kick us in the rear with blocked aspirations or tension, or knock us off our feet with stress driven heart attacks.
Let's take a moment to reflect on what happens when our minds function in Brain Unfriendly ways. Here we are indebted to the work of Bruce S. McEwen, Head of the Harold and Margaret Milliken Hatch Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology at the Rockefeller University in New York. Stress in the brain and throughout the body is created. This isn't so bad if it is short-lived, but if the Brain Unfriendly Thinking continues, the brain's competence is overwhelmed. This initiates harmful chemical surges to create cellular destruction. All the body may well be affected such as your vital organs, but the research on the brain by Dr. McEwen and others is very telling and should not be ignored. Hormones, neurotransmitters, and the executive, memory, and emotional modules of the brain have been shown to shrink and lose effectiveness from prolonged stress.
Thus, Better Enjoyment, Energy, and Empathy is remarkably achieved by having and using the necessary Conscious, fundamental, psychological and social skills. I know, in our culture the word, fundamental, strikes terror in our hearts. Yet when our mental fundamentals are in good working order, whatever we want to do, from playing a sport, learning math, to making love, our enjoyment and energy flow. When they are flawed, so are our enjoyment and energy. If you want to have limitless enjoyment, energy, and the capacity for Empathy for others, increase your initiative to learn the fundamentals that are here in this website. Besides, fundamentals are not painful. Mastering them is, however, exciting.
We can perceive situations, organize the information we perceive, experience feelings, and take action in brain friendly, or unfriendly ways. 1) For instance, if we take it as a personal insult when someone tells us we are stupid, making us think we are an inadequate person, we will be unable to arrive at a peace of mind decision on what to do. The result will be a lot of conflicted thoughts and disturbing feelings resulting in recoiling, playing one-upmanship, or fighting. 2) If, on the other hand, we keep our mind on the subject at hand and simply keep talking and directing the conversation to it, we will keep our calm and our peace of mind. We can do this when we see such remarks as simply irrelevant to arriving at a sensible and relationship-building resolution.
Which of these two options is most likely to use neural pathways most efficiently and produce the most quieting chemistry, such as a good balance between the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine? Which option is most likely to strengthen the neural density, positive chemistry, and optimal brainwave speed in the prefrontal part of the brain where Focus, planning, relevance, and execution mostly take place? Which option is most likely to weaken neural density, create chemical unbalance, and reduce optimal brainwave speed, thereby reducing the brain's ability to participate in positive problem solving, objectivity, focused judgment, and creating pleasant feelings?
Are you beginning to get the idea that the way we perceive, interpret, and decide determines our brain chemistry, which governs our feelings and our actions, and then turns around to affect our thinking? And perhaps you are beginning to see that skillful perceiving, interpreting, and deciding helps our brain to flow and provide us with Enjoyment, Energy, and Empathy. If so, we are making gigantic strides. Usually, we don't really appreciate the power of the interplay of our mind and brain. What a shame that our culture doesn't teach us these connections, but here in these pages is an opportunity to learn these connections and how to manage them.
By reading this and learning the skills in this website, you can rise above society's neglect and imposed limitations on your abilities to have the good life. The skills that are described in detail in this site are basic to controlling your neural growth, chemical balance of neurotransmitters and hormones, and the optimal balance of the different speeds at which your brain operates.
By improving your ability to use these skills, you learn Brain Friendly ways of living, learning, and loving. By using these Brain Friendly skills, your brain will respond in ways that are friendly to the rest of your body, such as healthier energy, stamina, heart functioning, and immune system. (For the sake of simplicity, we will talk about brain friendly and body friendly, even though we all know the brain is part of the body).
By self-talking---thinking to ourselves---and behaving in Brain Friendly ways, our brain, in turn does brain and body friendly things. It produces and uses optimal amounts of norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin.
It induces our endocrine system to produce enough cortisol and other hormones to respond to temporary stress and then return to normal. It can demand that the adrenal gland produce enough adrenaline to give us energy for average daily events as well as for emergencies.
Because of brain un-friendly self-talk, however, it can drain the supply of adrenaline and cripple the adrenal gland. Self-Talk can require the pituitary gland to produce enough growth hormone to maintain responsiveness to our environment and nourish the other hormones and neurotransmitters to optimal activity. On the other hand, the brain, overloaded with brain un-friendly self-talk, may cause endocrine overload, and drain the capacity to produce growth hormone.
Keep in mind, these brain and body-friendly productions of chemicals can occur only under favorable circumstances of Brain Friendly psychological skills of Consciousness, and those provided by nutrition, rest, and exercise. If we do not provide the right circumstances for the brain to operate in a way friendly to itself and the rest of the body, the chemistry, including the immune system, is unable to operate in a brain and body friendly way. Hence, a pathological feedback circuit is completed.
Thus, brain un-friendly mind processing creates havoc with the brain and body chemistry. It can also defeat or severely limit the efforts of treating emotional and energy problems by chemical means. If the brain and body dysfunctions are solely a result of physical insults due to injury, dna, or disease, and the mental processes have a history of Brain Friendly functioning, the chemical approach in itself may be sufficient, or the best one can do. Otherwise, the brain and body dysfunctions are usually best assessed and treated psychologically and chemically, for a maximally effective approach.
Bringing things together for the moment, our brain makes it possible to develop language, logic, and pictures, which in turn influence the manner in which the brain is wired and functions. Hence, the mind becomes the dictator, but it succeeds in creating a life of Enjoyment, Energy, and Empathy only if it speaks in Brain Friendly language and logic, like Conscious situational analysis and options instead of automatic absolutes and argumentation. If it does, the brain will reciprocate by giving itself more pathways to enlarge its own and other systems of the body. If the mind speaks in brain and body un-friendly language and logic, like a language of extreme adjectives and over-personalizing logic, the brain will provide more pathways to increase the mind's un-friendly language and logic, making for Un-enjoyment, De-energizing, and Un-empathy.
Thus, our mind is so powerful it can regulate the chemistry and speed of the brain, the heart, and the rest of the body. Although that information has been around for a long time, our culture has neglected to teach us the powers of our Conscious minds. We have suffered much pain and lost opportunities from our culture's neglect to teach us brain and body friendly skills of Consciousness. This neglect has wrought many serious and crippling circumstances such as unsuitable marriage partner selection, disabled marital functioning, inadequate jobs and job skills, crime, poor choices of elected officials, inadequate schooling and school performance, numerous mental health problems, and recycling of poverty.
This has affected all of us---you, me, our parents and grandparents, and now our children and grandchildren. It has been conservatively estimated that approximately 50% of visits to physicians are due to psychological distress. Classroom learning is greatly affected by students' daily living skills. Neither our teachers, nor our parents, nor our children know much how each child learns. Low ceiling aspirations and giving up are largely a function of many basic skill deficits of Consciousness rather than intelligence and lack of desire.
These skill deficits then result in pruning neurons and connections in the brain, making ongoing learning without instruction very difficult to achieve. With the instruction such as in this website, a great deal of Brain Friendly conscious skill development can take place, even if it didn't during your early years. Tremendous gains can be made. Obviously, this is a good time to work with children and youth on these skills whether at home, in the classroom, on the playground, or on trips to the store. Teach, teach, and teach some more, in Brain Friendly ways---that is, the way your student learns, and that student may even be you.
Keep in mind-A world, nation, community, and family guided by people-to-people
spirituality-Consciousness and Empathy-is Brain Friendly. I want it this
way. How about you?
Welcome to the inner sanctum of Brainspire where you have the opportunity to learn and practice very important and basic psychological skills to achieve Enjoyment, Energy, and Empathy that you would not otherwise experience.
Read through the list in the table
of contents. You may think, "Anybody knows these things",
but don't be fooled into thinking you already know them unless you download
them and read them thoroughly because there is more than meets the eye.
This is an excellent opportunity to give to yourself, contribute to your
loved ones, your work, and your community.
Don't put it off. Do it now.
Contents of this paper are not to be reproduced without the written permission of the author.
Jan B. Roosa, Ph.D.
9229 Ward Parkway, Suite 365
Kansas City, Missouri 64114-3311