You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack

When I was a kid, our family drove from Ohio via the Pennsylvania Turnpike to visit relatives in Philadelphia. The turnpike had a very unique feature. It was built with slabs of cement that had expansion filler between the slabs. So the predominant noise when driving the turnpike was the rhythm of the tires hitting the expansion filler for 10 hours. Ta-dant, ta-tant, ta-tant, ta-tant.  This pace of the rhythm often lulled us kids into a trace-like state and often to sleep. This was back in the day when our cutting edge technology was an 8-track player for all passengers to listen to and enjoy.  (side note: We had a total of two 8 tracks for the trip  out AND back. Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel and Déjà Vu by C, S, N & Y)

Like the turnpike, the rhythm of our lives can lull us into a trance like state as well.  If you are even moderately aware of the rhythm, pattern or tempo of your life, you notice how your days quickly turn into weeks, which turn into months which turn into seasons and then into years. It’s so easy to slip into a comfortable pattern or trance.  You know what I mean. That pattern or set of behaviors that address only the surface, urgent matters we face on a daily basis leaving the more important aspects of our lives to sometime later down the line “when I have more time”.  Besides it’s much more fun to put out fires and slay imaginary dragons than it is to create a “life plan”.

“I’ll get to it eventually” is the motto of our modern world. Maybe your motto is “Don’t do today what you can put off until tomorrow” because we have an unlimited number of tomorrows – right? Then one day you snap out of your trance and receive a huge shock to the system, not only are far from your 20’s but when you simply look at where you are in life, it’s not at all what you expected it to be! New flash: If you are doing incredibly well – it’s probably a not surprise to you at all.

So for the other 99% you are at a cross roads of sorts. You can stick to what’s comfortable but don’t expect any major improvements in your life situation. Remember that insanity, a quote attributed to Albert Einstein, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Old habits do die hard.  It’s because our habits are hard wired physically in our brains. The good news is that we can change our habits but it means we have to change our minds – literally.

I discovered an interesting paper called The Neuroscience of Leadership. It should actually be called The Neuroscience of Change – but hey, I didn’t write it, so I didn’t have a say in its title.

You want to make personal (or organizational) change? The authors, Jeffrey Schwartz and David Rock say you need to understand the following:

Focus is power. The act of paying attention creates chemical and physical changes in the brain.
Attention continually reshapes the patterns of the brain. Among the implications: People who practice a specialty every day literally think differently, through different sets of connections in the brain, than do people who don’t practice the specialty. In business, professionals in different functions — finance, operations, legal, research and development, marketing, design, and human resources — have physiological differences (in their brains) that prevent them from seeing the world the same way. That kind of explains a lot about your perception about those odd folks down the hall in that different department.

Expectation shapes reality. People’s preconceptions have a significant impact on what they perceive.
In fact, people experience what they expect to experience.  Cognitive scientists are finding that people’s mental maps, their theories, expectations, and attitudes, play a more central role in human perception than was previously understood. This can be well demonstrated by the placebo effect. Tell people they have been administered a pain-reducing agent and they experience a marked and systematic reduction in pain, despite the fact that they have received a completely inert substance, a sugar pill.

Two employees individuals working on the same customer service line could hold very different mental maps (views) of the same customers. The first, seeing customers only as troubled children, would hear only complaints that needed to be allayed; the second, seeing them as busy but intelligent professionals, would hear valuable suggestions for improving a product or service.

Employees need to “own” any kind of change initiative for it to be successful. For example the customer service employee who sees customers as children won’t change the way he or she listens (even with a carrot or stick approach) without a flash of insight in which his or her mental maps shift to seeing customers as experts. Leaders wanting to change the way people think or behave should learn to recognize, encourage, and deepen their team’s insights about their work.

Attention density shapes identity. Repeated, purposeful, and focused attention can lead to long-lasting personal evolution.
The greater the concentration on a specific idea or mental experience, the higher the attention density. In quantum physics terms, attention density causes new brain circuitry to be stabilized and thus developed. With enough attention density, individual thoughts and acts of the mind can become an intrinsic part of an individual’s identity: who one is, how one perceives the world, and how one’s brain works. The neuroscientist’s term for this is self-directed neuroplasticity.

You want to make personal (or organizational) change? Schwartz and Rock say you need to do the following:

Start by leaving problem behaviors in the past and focus on identifying and creating new behaviors. Over time, these may shape the dominant pathways in the brain. This is achieved through a solution-focused questioning approach (eg. coaching) that facilitates self-insight, rather than through advice-giving.

As the authors opine – “Perhaps these findings about the brain can start to pull back the curtain on a new world of productivity improvement: in our ability to bring about positive, lasting change in ourselves, in our families, in our workplaces, and in society itself.”

It’s time for a change – don’t let your life continue to be same as it ever was…, same as it ever was…