by James Brooke
Acting coach, Peter Nicholas, points out that we carry far more of our thoughts and feelings in our physical being than many of us realise. He encourages both actors and business people to understand the connection between their physicality and the way in which they feel and think.
Science is increasingly supporting Nicholas’s view. It used to be thought that the brain was the one and only seat of our emotional and cognitive life, sending instructions out to our machine-like muscles and organs. However, fascinating new insights suggest that this relationship is far more complex and interrelated.
It seems that, to a degree, we literally think and feel with organs and muscles of our body. Our thoughts and feelings can be sensed in our organs before they can be registered in the brain. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has demonstrated through a series of experiments using sensors attached to the skin that our organs can respond to situations – such as anxiety about risk, fear of loss and excitement about gain – before the brain could conceivably have registered the data that were causing these feelings.
Damasio asked his subjects to take part in a simple gambling game. There are four decks of cards, two black and two red. The subject simply has to turn over one card at a time from any deck. Each card indicates that the subject has either lost or won a certain amount of money.
It is set up to look entirely random, but it isn’t. Unknown to the subject, two of the decks offer greater amounts of money, but the risks of losses for these two decks are also greater (from these decks, the losses may be several times greater than the gains). The remaining two decks offer much more modest and balanced wins and losses. If the subject selects from the more modest decks he makes a profit. The higher-risk decks deliver a loss.
It takes a good fifty turns of the card before the typical subject recognises a pattern and adapts his strategy accordingly, but fascinatingly the hand recognises this before the brain. The sensors on the hand indicate higher anxiety associated with the higher-risk deck before the subject is conscious of a pattern.
The hand has the feeling before the brain. The hand feeds information to the brain. Imagine our ancestor in his or her threatening environment. When confronted with a predator, fear causes blood and oxygen to flow to the muscles to prepare for fight or flight. It now appears that her organs were already gearing up before her visual cortex had recognised the stimulus that was causing the fear.
Our muscles and organs, to some degree, give instructions to our brains. We know that we tend to feel more confident when we stand in a more confident way. Most people say that they feel better if they smile. Tense and highly strung people often appear to carry a lot of physical tension in their bodies. People with low self-esteem tend to adopt a stance that makes them appear apologetic, as if they are trying not to take up too much space.
Peter Nicholas adds that athletes and professional performers learn to pay attention to their physicality. But most people don’t. If you stoop your shoulders, tense up your neck and your back, foreshorten your lungs, now become aware of how much less confident you feel.
Our thoughts and feelings become encoded into our muscles and continue to send signals to our brain for some time after the initial incident that caused the feeling. Notice how when you stretch out your muscles you feel better.
Both yoga and t’ai chi operate on the principle of combining muscle stretching with the breath, and it is no surprise that both have been around for millennia. They work; they are not simply for New Age hippies. The term ‘yoga’ originates from a Sanskrit word meaning to unite or make whole. The process of stretching out the muscles creates a sense of regeneration and renewal. The top-performing tennis players can be seen to combine what author and researcher Jim Loehr refers to as ‘recovery rituals’ into their game.59 Those relaxing stretches between points are crucial and make the difference between top performance and mediocre performance every bit as much as what happens during live play.
To make your mind more bulletproof, pay attention to your body. Become aware of where you carry tensions and feelings. How do you physically stand or carry yourself when your confidence is either high or low? Where do you notice the difference? Practise yoga and t’ai chi; the techniques you learn will increase your awareness of the connection between your body and your thoughts and feelings. You do not have to join a club or go to classes. A couple of minutes a couple of times a week will make a difference.
Even visualising yourself stretching out your muscles will help to relax your mind. The reactions and responses created by visualising yourself doing something are – in a neurological sense – remarkably similar to the reactions and responses of physically doing it.
When physically getting up and stretching may look a little odd – say, for example, in a meeting – this technique will help you to become more centred:
1. Sit on a chair, with your feet flat on the floor a couple of feet apart
2. Take one deep, slow breath, and let your neck and shoulders physically relax
3. Then slowly take nice, easy breaths into the diaphragm and, as you do so, extend your arms directly upwards, until they are straight
4. Look up and picture your fingers reaching up to the sky
5. Then, with a nice slow exhale, allow your torso to bend gently downwards, feeling each vertebra stretch out one by one, until your head is hanging downwards loose, using its weight to stretch out all of the tension from your back
6. When you are ready, bring your torso back upwards, picturing yourself breathing into the small of your back. Picture each vertebra, one by one, moving back to its original position
7. Now repeat the process; move only your arms, but in your mind’s eye picture your whole body moving
8. Now repeat the process letting your arms rest still, but as you visualise your whole body going through the movement, just raise your hands at the wrist, and let them fall forward, just as your body would be falling forward
9. Do the slow, easy breath in time with the visualisation
10. Finally repeat, just moving your little fingers in time with the visualisation and the breath
Relaxation is as vital to performance as practice or feedback, but not all relaxation is the same. It’s important to be able to differentiate between active and passive forms of relaxation. What might be called ‘passive’ forms of relaxation – the unholy three of alcohol, cigarettes and television (which could be extended to internet and computer games) – tend not to have the beneficial effects of ‘active’ relaxation: yoga, sport, taking a walk. Reading a book or going to a play or movie is more effective than passively settling in front of the TV or internet, because these activities require you to invest a little more cognitive effort and as a result you have the therapeutic benefits of distraction.
We all have our weaknesses: sweets, junk food, alcohol or cigarettes, to name but a few. When we feel stressed or anxious because we’re under attack, it’s very easy to obey our immediate instinct to reach for one of these familiar comfort blankets.
But just as it’s better to pause, and be mindful of the effect of going with the immediate instinct to snap back at those who are attacking us or lose our tempers with the situation or descend into defeatism and self-pity, it’s also better to pause and think about how we’ll feel if we rely on sugar, alcohol or junk food to get us through these difficult times. Of course, it’s okay to have a chocolate bar or a beer; the important thing is not to rely on these. In other cases, when our minds are distracted or our stomachs knotted with anger or fear, eating often slips off our to-do lists, but good food and a balanced diet are important for anyone looking to be bulletproof.
Remember Jim Loehr’s observation about elite tennis players: recovery rituals are essential. Your body and mind simply cannot function without regular breaks. Gentle physical activity is ideal, so try going for a walk or doing gentle stretches.
Summary
Be prepared for the physical strain that being under fire can have on your body
&nbs
p; Keep making healthy choices about diet, exercise and relaxation when under fire
Take regular and frequent short breaks, ideally combined with some gentle physical activity
Fake it until you make it
Humans express their feelings of power and confidence through open, expansive postures. The guy with his feet on the table and his elbows spread behind his head is obviously self-assured and in command. Similarly when we feel insecure or helpless, we exhibit closed, contractive body language, making ourselves seem smaller and aiming for protection with such positions as tightly folded arms.
But can this relationship between feelings and body language work the other way? In other words, can adopting confident, powerful stances actually make you feel more confident and powerful?
This is actually more useful than it might sound because feeling powerful does more than simply boost self-confidence, important though that is. Psychologists have, for instance, shown how it can enhance cognitive functions as well as make us feel more positive and constructive. Powerful individuals are also more likely to take action.
The level of testosterone, the hormone that helps us in competition and gives us drive, is greater when people feel powerful, while the natural level of the stress hormone cortisol is higher in people who feel that they aren’t powerful. Chronically elevated levels of cortisol are connected with a variety of mental and physical problems.
A group of psychologists from the universities of Columbia and Harvard recently investigated the intriguing theory that the connection between exhibiting confident, powerful body language and actually experiencing these feelings could work both ways.60
Forty-two participants were positioned in either high-power poses (open body language such as leaning forward on a desk with arms spread wide across it) or low-power poses (closed, self-defensive positions, which included sitting with hands clasped in the lap).
Tests from electrocardiographs and saliva showed that high-power poses caused an increase in testosterone and a decrease in cortisol while low-power poses did the opposite. Also, high-power posers were more likely to focus on rewards, and they reported feeling significantly more ‘powerful’ and ‘in charge’. The scientists conclude: ‘The implications of these results for everyday life are substantial.’
So, resisting the temptation to close up physically when you’re under attack and adopting, instead, confident poses can not only make you look more confident but can make you feel it as well. It can also improve your mind’s ability to work through the situation.
If you want to feel more confident, boost your levels of testosterone, the get-out-and-compete hormone. We now know that you can do this by simply striking a powerful pose and holding it for a couple of minutes.
Here’s one to try: stand purposefully behind a chair, lean forward and rest your hands on the back of the chair, with your legs relaxed and flexible. Lean forward as though you are about to talk assertively to a group of people.
Summary
Strike a high-power pose for a couple of seconds if you want to boost your feelings of competitiveness and confidence
Become aware of your physical posture and the effects that it is likely to be having on your levels of testosterone or cortisol
Distraction is preferable to rumination
Case Study 10.1
Jon and Lola are married, and they work at the same corporation. Both knew that trading conditions were tough and the organisation was looking at cutbacks. As the spectre of redundancy loomed, the climate at work was deteriorating, which, in turn, was leading to stress for both at home.
Lola knew that the small department that Jon headed up was likely to be in the firing line, suffering the most swingeing cuts, of which Jon, personally, could be one of the casualties.
Lola wanted to talk about the situation, but every evening, stick in hand, Jon took their Labrador for a vigorous walk across the nearby common. Lola was worried that Jon was running away from the situation, and avoiding confronting the reality. Surely, she reasoned, he needed to talk about it … unless he got these feelings out, the pressure would become too much.
Until recently the received wisdom very much supported Lola’s view – but Lola is mistaken, at least up to a point.
The word ‘ruminate’ comes from the Latin for chewing and it refers to the process in which cattle chew up, swallow, and then regurgitate and re-chew their feed. As humans we often do this with problems and worries.
The difference is that, unlike cows and grass, regurgitating thoughts and worries doesn’t do humans any good. In fact, according to research carried out by Dr Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, a psychologist at Yale University, ruminating on a problem too much can make finding a solution more difficult. Worse that than, it can lead to a loss of social support as friends and family lose patience with a ruminator. It can also cause depression, according to Dr Nolen-Hoeksema’s research. Ruminators, she calculated, are four times as likely as others to suffer from depression.61
She discovered, for instance, that following the San Francisco earthquake of 1989, ruminators exhibited more signs of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder than non-ruminators.
The temptation when we have a problem at work is to run it over and over in our minds, but, according to Nolen-Hoeksema’s findings, rumination can actually impair problem solving. Even when they come up with a solution, ruminators don’t have much confidence in it and are likely not to implement it. Women, according to her findings, are more likely to be ruminators than men, perhaps for cultural reasons.
One way of avoiding unhelpful rumination is to distract yourself. There is increasing evidence that distracters deal with stress better than ruminators. Actively immerse yourself in an absorbing activity; sports, reading, theatre, cinema or other hobbies, including a vigorous walk, all help.
Distracting is not running away from the problem. It simply allows your mind to take a break and come back to the issue refreshed.
Once you’ve controlled unhelpful, unproductive rumination, you can focus on practical solutions. Pondering a problem with a view to solving it by thinking about measures that you can take is more practical and helpful than rumination.
Summary
If you find that you’re endlessly turning a problem over in your mind that means you’re ruminating on it
Actively distract yourself from this rumination
Focus instead on practical solutions – and then make a conscious effort to implement them
Become more mindful
We’ve looked at the wide variety of mental and psychological skills that can allow you to become bulletproof but it’s worth adding another dimension: psychological well-being. This not only includes mindfulness but also its close relation, meditation.
Meditation increases the area of the brain that’s linked to regulating emotion and can bring about improvements in physical well-being by increasing blood flow, reducing blood pressure and reducing the risk and severity of cardiovascular disease. Studies show that people who have learnt mindfulness experience long-lasting physical and psychological stress reduction.
Professor Mark Williams works at the Oxford Mindfulness Centre, which is a UK-based charity that is part of the Department of Psychiatry at Oxford University and that works with partners around the world to prevent depression and enhance human potential through the therapeutic use of mindfulness. He says, ‘I was initially quite sceptical about mindfulness because it seemed a bit “alternative” but one of the things that convinced me was practising mindfulness myself and realising that it can help you see new elements of your life.’
He began to realise that mindfulness could affect all the mental processes that damage people’s mental health. ‘There is a growing interest in mindfulness among the medical community. It’s now in the National Institute for Clinical Excellence guidelines for treatment.’ The courses that Professor Williams and his team at the Oxford Mindfulness Centre run have been shown to approximately halve the rates of relapse
among people with recurrent depression.
The Oxford Mindfulness Centre is now bringing mindfulness into the workplace, as it also has important lessons for those of us who don’t suffer from depression but are experiencing temporary difficulties and challenges. Similar mindfulness programmes have already been adopted by companies such as Apple and Google.
We looked at the use of being in the moment: focusing on the sounds and sights around you as you walk to the supermarket or from the station, instead of thinking about what you’ve got to do in the future and what has happened earlier. That’s a form of meditation. Here’s a very simple exercise in meditation:
1. Sit or lie down so that you’re comfortable. Make sure that if you’re lying down you’re not going to fall asleep, though
2. Close your eyes for a moment and then start focusing on your breath. Feel your chest and abdomen rise as you inhale, and fall again as you exhale
3. Bring your full attention to this breathing. The focus is on the breath in meditation because it’s always with us, always happening, and because it’s a neutral, natural activity
4. After a few moments, your attention will almost certainly wander and you’ll start thinking – or worrying – about something else. That’s natural and it’s not something to feel annoyed about. When it happens, note the thought, whatever it might be, and let it float through your mind as you bring you attention back to your breathing
5. Try this for 10 minutes or so to start with. With practice you’ll find the time spent focusing completely on the breath and nothing else will increase. You might also want to meditate for longer periods
Another more obvious way to handle the stress that comes with being under fire is to simply plan other activities. If you like films, go to the cinema. If shopping’s your thing, then do that. It’s the same with reading, cooking or painting.