What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: Our life is the creation of our mind.” ~ The Buddha (maybe)
While The Buddha may have said that over 2,500 years ago, today’s neuroscience helps us to understand the mind’s complex, hard-wired mechanisms with stunning speed.
A University of Toronto study showed that most of us are not consciously focused and are on a form of “auto-pilot” 46.9% of the time (I thought it was more!)
Our minds are wandering, not attentive to the tasks at hand, the people we are communicating with or our general external experience. Instead we are looking into our own thoughts.
So, where are we when we are there – and not here?
Let’s start with a little primer on the so-called mind.
According to Psychology Today, the unconscious is “where most of the work of the mind gets done. It is the repository of automatic skills (riding a bike) the source of dreams, intuition and the engine of much of our information processing.” It is where we store the beliefs and thoughts that are often too uncomfortable to handle emotionally.
Some of us tend to think of the unconscious as a “black hole of unacceptable impulses,” dark, imposing and out of control. Think of the unconscious as the warehouse of your “habits of mind,” which contain past memories and associated experiences that continue to fire neurons that keep it active and in the “present,” but out of your conscious awareness.
When we are on “auto-pilot” our behavior tends to become repetitive. On one hand, auto-pilot functioning is the brillance of the brain at work. We do not have to learn certain things over and over. I can type this article without having to focus (much) on the mechanics of typing, rather I can concentrate on the content of the material at hand.
The down-side of this smart brain functionality is that our thought patterns become hard-wired through repetition. Repetitive thinking and behavior reinfornes existing neural networks – so what we continously do, say, think, etc. tends to strengthen (literally thicken) our brain’s hard-wiring.
When we are operating with conscious awareness, we are always breaking new ground because we are generally learning (even the slightest nuance) something new. We literally form new cells (neurons) every time we shift our thinking in new directions. The brain loves to learn new information!.
How We Process Experience
Author David Rock describes two distinct systems humans use to interact with the world. The first system, called the “default network,” is the home of auto-pilot. It happens when you are mostly idle (relatively speaking) and you think about yourself.
This example illustrates it well – you’re sitting on a beach on vacation. It is a lovely day and there is a nice breeze cooling you off from the sun. Nice picture, right? But for many of us, we’re not sitting there in the present moment, relishing the experience, taking it in – we’re off thinking about what time we should be back and how much or less vacation time we have left.
Rock says, “When you experience the world using this default (narrative) network, you take in information from the outside world and process it through a filter of what everything means, and add your own interpretation. Sitting on the beach with your narrative circuit active, a cool breeze is not acool breeze, it is a sign that summer will be over soon.”
The other way of interacting with your world is through direct experience. Research shows more regions of the brain are activated when we are in this mode. We are literally more aware, taking in a far greater range of information through our senses in real times. We are as they say – out of our heads and into our experience.
When we are on auto-pilot we can often go through an entire experience without any real recollection of how we felt or the details of the experience. It’s only when something out of the norm occurs that we break through auto-pilot and that is often happening externally and not of our own volition.
People can make calls, conduct meetings and have conversations and they are just not there – where are they? Does it matter?
It matters if you want to be less reactive to external events and circumstances,
It maaters if you want to be more attentive, achieve greater attention and more focus.
It matters if you want to take in more information and experience life more fully.
And it defintely matters if you want to be seen by others as really listeniing, caring and interested in their experience.
If you’re thinking – can we change unwanted auto-pilot reactivity? The answer’s yes – over time, with consistent practice. Repetition is very important to the brain.
Here are a few tips –
- Notice more. Set an intention, even if it only one small part of your experience to notice more of what you see, feel and sense.
- Become more aware of how you breathe. Most of us don’t breathe fully. Breath controls physiology.
- Become more aware of what you feel emotionally. The auto-pilot mode is often associated with specfic emotions: anxiety, boredom, anger and frustration to name a few.
- Notice the stories you tell yourself (and others) about your experiences. Auto-pilot mode often generates the same old narratives — and consequently, the same old feelings.
Remember, when you are actively engaged in this process, you are stimulating the rearrangement of unwanted mental, physical and emotional systems. You are making the unconscious, conscious.
A favorite quote from Victor Frankl, says it all, “Between the stimulus and the response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.”
Thanks for reading.
Louise Altman, Partner, Intentional Communication Consultants
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