[No. 6a] Evolution. We apologize for the unhelpful things that happened because your brain protected you. Sincerely, The Management.

Our human bodies are nothing, NOTHING, short of amazing. While you’re reading this, your white blood cells are fighting off intruders you don’t even know you have. Your diaphragm is contracting, enabling you to breathe. Your lungs are transmitting oxygen into your bloodstream. Your eyes are receiving signals that your brain is translating into something meaningful.

We are subjected to SO MUCH input every second of every minute of every hour of every day … and so on. Our brain takes ALL of that data and works efficiently to ignore, in its best estimation, what’s not necessary and to quickly assign meaning to what should be paid attention to.

🛑 Stop for a minute here. And think about, really think about, how much data your brain processes. Smells, sounds, sights, things you touch. Think about one 5-minute segment of your day. How much raw data did your brain deal with? It’s incredible.

Now add in how many thoughts you had in those 5 minutes. I’m pretty sure our thoughts, (oh, and our feelings) get way in the way of our brain’s ability to parse and file and store information.

I’m also pretty sure that crafted messages (advertising, people with agendas; ergo – not “raw data”) are like putting nuts and bolts into the dryer.

Like any mechanism that deals with lots of information and input, it strives to make things as efficient as possible, to identify common patterns quickly so that it can decide how to “instruct” us how to respond. 

Our brains are in charge of our survival as a species. It controls pheromones and neurochemicals that ensure we’re attracted to one another … assuring our procreation. We’re not nearly in conscious control of that process the way we think we are.

Our brains are in charge of our individual survival. Its powerful fight or flight mechanism reacts to threats before we’re even aware of it, again treating us to a bunch of neurochemicals that cause physical reactions, doing its best to assure our survival.

Fun facts about the efficiencies of our brains:

① When our brain interprets a situation as a threat, it can’t distinguish between a physical threat and an emotional threat (more on that later).

② Our brain starts the fight or flight reaction BEFORE we have one rational thought about the situation – because its programming says even taking an instant to think could be the last thought we’d have – no time to think, just react.

③ Our brain maintains a huge database of previous experiences. If we don’t pause to process, interpret, and teach our brain anything different, it will keep triggering the same reaction to any situation it perceives to be similar to something in the database (also more on that later).

About ①: Our brains can’t distinguish between a physical threat and an emotional threat. What does that mean? Why should you care?

Imagine you’re at work. At work, you’re trying to put your “best foot forward.” First, you're trying to ensure your employment safety. Then you’re trying to position yourself for professional success: showing up as consistently and increasingly competent, innovative, collaborative, strategic – a valued contributor to the business.

We navigate countless situations at work:

∞ Sitting in a poorly run meeting where you have an idea to get the conversation back on track or to solve the problem, but you choose to stay silent because the meeting’s already 25 minutes over, and you know it's pointless to speak up.

∞ Having to deliver a hard performance review when you believe the company could and should have done more to help the person’s performance.

∞ Agreeing to a performance goal when you have no idea how it’s going to get done on time in this system, with this budget, and with these resources.

∞ Listening to talk around the water cooler that is offensive, diminishing, or any other kind of negative about another person ... and choosing to remain silent, or joining in.

All of these things cost you emotionally. Cause you to censor how you really feel, or what you’d prefer to choose to do in a safer environment. They are emotional threats to your brain.

When you first started working, these situations probably caused some kind of physical reaction: your brain putting you into some version of fight or flight, reacting to the emotional threat.

As you continued working, and realized that these are “normal,” that “it’s business, not personal,” that it’s “easier and safer to go along,” you started putting on your armor, deciding that “you won’t care, because it hurts to care.” You started emotionally detaching, to minimize the impact on you. You started living in shades of gray instead of full color. You became something of a shadow of yourself. Some people call this burnout.

We all do it, right?

Remember though, you will spend more than double your waking hours for most of your life involved in something to do with work.

Are you willing to keep doing that? (“No.” The answer is, “no.”)

What’s the way out?

No work environment is perfect. No person is perfect. We are all subject to these same physiological and neurological conditions. Leaders, managers, employees – all of us.

At work, we can't expect to 100% let our freak flag fly (read the room, people, read the room) while also positioning ourselves for success.

But we don’t have to join the zombie robot brigade and give up on our inner selves for all those hours, days, months, years, and yes, decades.

#1. Acknowledge the reality: You are choosing to live as a reduced form of yourself at work.

#2. Decide you don’t want to do that anymore with your one precious life.

#3. Pause for a reality check. We can’t all go eat, pray, and love on Tuesday. There are realities of families, mortgages, and bills.

#4. Bring intention and purpose to the table. “The days are long, but the years are short.” One of the most accurate sayings ever. It sucks to wake up and wonder, “Who in the heck is that old person looking back at me from the mirror? What happened to all the things, the dreams, the way I wanted it to be?” Explore and examine your inner life. What are your most important Guiding Principles? Freedom? Compassion? Determination? Authentic Relationships? Fun and Pleasure? Involvement? Wealth? Fame?  Achievement?

#5. Get a baseline: how much of what’s most important to you is compromised, threatened, or violated at work and outside of work? How much of what’s most important to you is satisfied at work and outside of work?

#6. Pick your opportunities to sustain and to improve how you are honoring your own Guiding Principles. To reframe where necessary: have you been going along with vilifying your coworkers? Try compassion – we are all just trying to survive. More of us are living in some form of detachment than is right or acceptable. To bring more bits of your life into conscious alignment with what’s most important to you, every day.

If you’re looking for help, mentorship, or coaching through this process – I’m here to help! A few conversations and some homework on your part can move you from a life of gray towards every day having more color, more energy, and more hope.

If your team is burning out, a few hours focusing on their humanity can do wonders. That’s the real heart of “team building,” and another place I can help.

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Next week is newsletter [No. 6b]: a few quick steps to interrupt and re-pattern how our brains so quickly jump to reactions.