PERSONAL GROWTH
How to Change Behavior
Our brains are highly social with the capacity for emotional attunement. Because of this, the brain develops in relationship to others and continues to change when we chose to develop. Should we not continue to develop and mature emotionally, our brains stall and patterns of behaviour that were laid down in childhood persist. When this happens, we grow older, but we do not mature.
For the next week I will be writing about the brain, how it develops and implications for individual, relationship and leadership development. Few people have a good understanding of what happens physiologically during therapy or coaching and the importance of another person to grow in relationship to. The act of bonding in human relationships facilitates the development of the brain’s neural pathways, including those that are genetically programmed. The next time someone tells you they can’t change, don’t believe it. Science has shown us otherwise.
During the last two decades, technology has allowed us to see the brain in action. Rather than the notion that you can only learn and grow as a young person, we now know that the brain has a phenomenal capacity for development over our entire lifespan. Unlike any other organ in the body, it is able to create new neural pathways and even new cells. However, this will only occur with the exercising of the brain in the same way we exercise our bodies.
Our brains are highly social with the capacity for emotional attunement. Because of this, the brain develops in relationship to others and continues to change when we chose to develop. Should we not continue to develop and mature emotionally, our brains stall and patterns of behaviour that were laid down in childhood persist. When this happens, we grow older, but we do not mature.
The new brain science has demonstrated that our emotional brain plays the central role in determining behaviour and emotion has a much greater influence on us than we would like to believe. As the brain is evolutionary in nature, our brain is wired to receive messages first from the emotional brain before it moves to the rational brain where thinking and planning occur. Our development goal as human beings is to lay pathways between these two brains so that our emotions, over time, are not the predominant influence on our behaviour.
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