A 3-STEP PROCESS FOR TRANSFORMATION

"I've come to see that the only problem anyone ever has is believing things that are not true."
- Steve Chandler

This quote by Steve Chandler has proven incredibly true in my life. Whenever I have a problem that I am grappling with, one of the first questions I ask myself is Byron Katie's "Is It True?" followed by Katie's second question, "Can you absolutely know that it is true?" Often what I realize is the thing I am challenged with is a creation of my mind. There may be some factual truth in the story, and yet most of it, the thing that is the actual "problem" is made up. It feels true, but mostly it's a story.

This is good news, because we are not our stories. We are not the inventions of our minds. And knowing that this is what is actually causing our struggle helps us to accept it, label it and consciously choose a way forward. Further to this, changing what we experience today, broadening our perspectives, considering the world in a different light, we are helping our brain to construct a different experience of tomorrow - we are literally changing who we will become.

Here's a little science to explain why we make up so much crap and how we can transform who we are becoming.

"Neuroscientists like to say that your day-to-day experience is a carefully controlled hallucination, constrained by the world and your body, but ultimately constructed by your brain." writes Lisa Feldman Barrett in her new book, Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain. "It's an everyday kind of hallucination that creates all of your experiences and guides all your actions. It's the normal way that your brain gives meaning to the sensory inputs from your body and from the world (called "sense data"), and you're almost always unaware that it's happening."

We believe that we are reacting to what is happening around us and yet what our brain is doing is constantly predicting what will happen based on our past experiences and memories and then comparing it to the sense data we are receiving from our internal sense organs and the world around us and making meaning of it. In other words, you are reacting to your prediction of what will happen, not to what is in fact unfolding around you.

This is true of emotion as well. Emotions are not reactions to what is happening around you, but rather constructs of your brain based on a predictive cycle. As Feldman Barrett writes, "Emotions don't happen to you - they are made by your brain as you need them." Our brain draws on our past experiences to create our present. Let me write that again - our brain draws on our past experiences to create our present! This is fascinating, because it means that by changing our present, we change what we will predict in the future. Which, in turn, changes our experience of the world around us. This is friggin amazing!

By investing in new experiences and learnings today, this includes carefully curating the crap you allow yourself to read, watch and experience, you transform the person you are becoming by influencing what you brain will predict in the future.

When it comes to emotions, by being intentional and conscious about how we make meaning of the physical sensations we experience within the context we find ourselves, we can start to influence the predictions and constructs our brain unconsciously serves up in the future. This in turn transforms how we experience the world around us. This is where the 3-step process comes in.

If this line of research is as fascinating to you as it is to me, look into Lisa Feldman Barrett's work, including her Tedx Talks and her two books: How Emotions Are Made & Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain.

A 3-Step Process for Transformation

This is a hugely simplified process, but it's a damn good place to start exploring and bringing intentional awareness to.

The first step is Accept. Acceptance is critical to moving forward. Many people get stuck right here in self judgement, criticism and shame. When I'm coaching my clients, I will often hear them harshly judge themselves over their unkind inner voice or the undesired thoughts, feelings and actions they experience. As long as we're engaged in the "fight", in the judgement of ourselves (and others), it's hard to move forward - it can become a vicious unending cycle. Our first course of action is always to accept where we are - to embrace it as a strategy we designed to keep ourselves safe. The things we think, the emotions we experience and the actions we take are constructs we create (and strengthen each time we use), that are based on our best subconscious efforts to keep us alive (our brain's primary goal!). They may not be serving us from a broader sense of living a passionate and purpose filled life, however they were employed for a reason and without acceptance of the positive intent, it's hard to move forward.

The second step is Label. Labelling what we are thinking, feeling and doing involves bringing awareness to our current patterns. This is important because it allows us to gain distance from the experience of it - a useful precursor to conscious choice (hint: step 3). It allows us to embrace the fact that what we are experiencing is a construct of our brain - not reality, not fact, simply a concept based on our past experience and memories. When it comes to emotions, and "emotional granularity" specifically, research suggests that the more precise and broader our vocabulary becomes around the emotions we are experiencing, the better our ability to align our experience with the context we find ourselves. "In a collection of scientific studies, people who could distinguish finely among their unpleasant feelings - those "50 shades of feeling crappy" - were 30 percent more flexible when regulating their emotions, less likely to drink excessively when stressed, and less likely to retaliate aggressively against someone who has hurt them." (Lisa Feldman Barrett, ideas.ted.com) When it comes to thoughts, emotions and actions, identifying the common pattern and exploring new perspectives, possibilities, explanations, meanings and desires allows us to expand the available constructs in our brain so that it has more predictions to select from moving forward. Identifying common patterns also allows us to be aware of them when they show up so that we can detach from them and consciously choose how to move forward. Which brings us to step 3!

Step 3 is Choose. Once we've accepted where we are (and have been), brought awareness to our current patterns and explored new concepts and constructs that we've designed with intentionality and consciousness, we can now decide how we want to move forward. We no longer need to accept the automatic meaning our brain creates - we can consciously choose a meaning that serves us and allows us to move in the direction of our desired future.

Using this methodology, when we have an unpleasant thought or emotion, we can ask ourselves "What do these sensations mean to me in this situation? What do I want to do now to help me achieve my goal? By being aware of how your brain is making meaning out of sense data in particular situations, you can take an active part in your own constructions." (The Mind at Work, Anthony Wing Kosner)

In the end, we gain the power to choose, rather than lying victim to our circumstance and our brains constructs. With every conscious choice, with every expanded perspective and curated meaning, we transform our brains predictions and as a results our experience of life.

"Meaning isn't an evaluation in any kind of deliberate propositional sense, it's an action plan. And you can change those action plans." - Lisa Feldman Barrett

Warmly,

Lisa

Lisa is an Executive Coach, Founder & CEO of LDR Leadership Labs. For more from Lisa, join the LDR Leadership Community on LinkedIn at: www.linkedin.com/company/ldrleadershiplabs and sign up for the LDR Insiders Newsletter here.