Quick Book Review: Remember

I devoured the book Remember by Lisa Genova. It’s completely altered the way I think about and use my memory. Here are my three biggest take-aways:

• Your memory isn't a camcorder. Your brain isn’t objectively recording everything you experience. To remember something, you need to be paying attention to it. And what you pay attention to most are meaningful, emotionally-charged experiences that stand out from the pack. (This is why you don’t remember what you ate for lunch three Thursdays ago, but you do remember your first kiss). 

• Your memory is wrong. As someone who prides herself on remembering “right,” this one was a doozy. Basically, every time you take a memory file out of your brain bank, you alter it just a little bit. It’s like playing a vinyl record. Every time you slide the record out of the sleeve, place it on the turntable, and let the needle spin through the grooves, the record changes every so slightly. (This is why reframing a memory based on new information about yourself shifts the memory itself.)

• What you remember creates your life story: I found this fascinating. We tend to remember the memories that support our identity and outlook. Do you think you’re a feisty, unspoken women,? If so, you’ll more likely remember, and therefore reinforce, the memories of moments you stood up for yourself and others. What if you think you're always the unlucky one? Well your autobiographical highlight reel will feature an endless stream of painful disappointments. (This is why it’s important to examine which memories you’re holding on to and whether they’re reinforcing the type of identity you want to have?)

Neuroscience Nuggets #8: Who Am I This Time?

Have you ever found yourself deep in a Netflix binge wondering why you boomerang back night after night? 

Well that’s what it’s felt like for me the last few weeks, only the Netflix series I’ve been binging on is my past. 

Since the world reopened to travel, my mind has been accumulating massive mileage traveling back and forth in a time spiral, digging up old memories of people, situations and places that I haven’t visited in years. 

Why now? Is it middle age settling in? Or is there some secret message I’m supposed to decrypt on the great memory train I keep finding myself on?

These questions and the overarching theme of "nostalgia" have been my obsession for the last three weeks, and my fascination has led me to this neuroscience nugget that I’m excited to share with you today. 

Recent brain imaging has shown that thinking about our past self is the same as when we're thinking about another person!


That's right, when our brain consciously reflects on older versions of ourselves, it's akin to watching someone else's life unfold.


It’s the brain’s way of distinguishing “me-today” from “not-me-anymore,” which makes space for a more fluid, context-dependent narrative about who we are as we progress in time. 

This especially occurs following significant personal shifts, like changing jobs, schools, relationships, and, in my case, changing country, culture and language!

What that means is that from one moment to the next, we really do leave a part of ourselves behind. 

When I asked my neuroscience professor why this temporal-identity distancing might make sense from an evolutionary perspective, she said “It allows us to be better attuned to what we need in our lives today.” Makes sense, right?

Wallowing in the past can be an easy refuge from the stressors and responsibilities of today’s prolonged pandemic (and I must admit that’s what’s made my binge so addictive), but we can get much more out of the mileage. 

How about, when we find ourselves in a nostalgia tunnel, we ask ourselves:  "What energy from past versions of myself do I want more or less of in my life today?"  

In my case, that question has brought up some very interesting discoveries. 

1. That I’ve been hovering over my kid's school life in a hyper protective way with the same kind of controlling energy that consumed me decades ago when I tried to help a close friend academically.

2. That I want to experience the thrill of pouring myself into a complex challenge without knowing where it will take me. 

3. That I have the stamina and focus to buckle down with a long-haul writing project as long as I’m curious about what I’m learning along the way. 

4. That I desperately miss the days of my "no-longer-me" youth when my crew of friends and I would turn every gathering into a raucous dance party heavy on Stevie Wonder and Chaka Khan. 

That’s all I’ve got on this neuroscience nugget today but I feel there's more in there to explore.

In the meantime, what about you? What does your “not-me-anymore” self have to share with your “me-today” self about what you want more or less of in your future?

Hit me up and let me know!

PS. I borrowed the name for this post from one of my favorite sleeper movies ever, a short story film with Christopher Walken and Susan Sarandon called "Who Am I This Time," based on a Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. short story. It's brilliant, check it out.

Neuroscience Nuggets #6: The Progress Loop

I had a misty-eyed “goodbye for now” send off recently with a client who just wrapped up her coaching program with me. 

We went through the coaching goals created in our first sessions together, celebrating them line by line and shrieking at times because many of her wilful predictions came true in larger-than-expected ways. 

Like her goal to grow deeper in her field as a writer and journalist, develop and share her unique perspective on her subject matter with a wider audience. 

At the time she wrote that goal, the thought of speaking in public literally made her queasy. 

But guess what, not only has she been interviewed on podcasts, she just launched her own podcast and signed with a NYC literary agent who’s working with her on her first book proposal.

But how did she get there? How did she suddenly become so confident, scoring agents, speaking gigs and launching podcasts?

Those are all great questions, and they lead me to this week’s neuroscience nugget:

The common misconception is that in order to launch a new project, say the hard thing, or stand up for a cause, you first need to hit the “confidence store” to stock up on motivation like a jumbo pack of toilet paper before a pandemic. 

But the neuroscience shows that motivation and confidence are generated because of action, not before it. 

We need to first do the thing in order to reap the benefits of feeling confident and motivated. 

It’s our brain’s reward response for experiencing success at a particular task. 

But how can we hack the system so that we know we’ll be successful at a task before we do it?

The simplest way to do that is to break our goals down into small, 100% achievable steps that we know we can’t fail at.


The process is called the progress loop, or The Progress Principle, a concept coined by authors Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer during their research into the forward momentum of meaningful work. 

With each new small success, your brains says “way to go, you did it!” by creating a neurotransmitter called Dopamine that makes you feel motivated and empowered to go after the next small challenge on your list. 

For my client, Paige McClanahan, the progress loop kicked off when she said yes to a speaking opportunity even though the thought of doing it made her want to vomit. 

So, the first task was something she knew she could succeed at: just say yes to the opportunity. 

“I knew if I said no it would be out of fear,” she explains. “It was saying yes that led to the next step of growth. It wasn’t perfect, but in a sense that was the most motivating thing about it. The overriding emotion was confidence that I could do it better the next time. And then, all of the sudden, the idea for a podcast came to me fully-formed.”

“The Better Travel Podcast,” which Paige launched this week, never would have seen the day had she not begun the progress loop by simply saying yes to an opportunity. 

So, now here are some questions for you:

1. What important personal or professional goal is just so damn huge that your brain can’t muster the motivation to go after it?

2. How could you break that goal down into totally achievable bite-size chunks that you know you can succeed?

3. What’s the easiest first step you can take to kick off the progress loop and get your brain’s reward response working on your behalf?

Neuroscience Nuggets #5: Emotional Guessing Game

Novak Djokovic, the world’s #1 men’s tennis player and potentially G.O.A.T, rarely shows emotion unless he’s smashing rackets, violently screaming, or accidentally hitting balls at line judges. (Honestly, I’m not a fan though I totally respect what an outstanding athlete he is.)

Yet on Sunday night, as he teetered on the imminent edge of unexpected defeat, the crowd at the US Open Final match rose to its feet to encourage him on, shouting his nickname "Nole, Nole, Nole" in unison. 


Novak smiled, waved to the crowd and then did something completely out of character: he showed he was a real human being. 

Peaking out from beneath his towel as he wiped the sweat from his face, viewers caught sight of a twisted, anguished mouth that looked like it walked off a Francis Bacon painting. 

It became suddenly clear that the typically stoic, unflappable super athlete was having a big, ugly, uncontrollable cry. 

And it was shockingly beautiful.
 

But what was it? What exact human emotion was Novak expressing?
 

• Was it joy from feeling the love and support of a hard-knocks crowd that usually jeers at him?

• Was it the dread of letting everyone down?

• Was it a release of the weight of expectation?

• Was it frustration and fear?

• Was it physical pain?

• Exhaustion?

The truth is that no one besides Novak could really know what the tears were about because, and here comes today’s neuroscience nugget: emotions aren’t uniform, universal reactions to life that have ready-made ways of showing up on our faces and in our bodies.


You can’t know what someone is feeling just by looking at them.

You may think that when you look at someone's face you can understand exactly how they feel. But in fact your brain is guessing, and it's using your own past experiences to make those guesses. 


We construct our own emotional experience, and our perception of others’s emotions, on the spot.

“Emotions are your brains’ best guess of how you should feel in the moment,” explains neuroscientist and author of How Emotions Are Made, Lisa Feldman Barret. 

They're your brain’s “creations” of what your bodily sensations mean in relation to what is going on around you in the world, and those “creations” are the sum of three distinctly subjective ingredients:

1. Your internal bodily cues (heart rate, muscle contraction, temperature, etc)

2. Your external surroundings (what you see, hear, smell, taste, touch)

3. Your past experiences (and how those past experiences compare to the present)

“Our emotion concepts vary widely from culture to culture. They come with a rich set of rules, all in the service of regulating your body budget or influencing someone else’s," says the founder of The Neuroscience School, Dr. Irena O’Brien. "That’s why we shouldn’t assume that we know how someone else is feeling from their facial expression or body language."

So what do Novak's mysterious tears have to do with you?

1. It’s easy to assume you know someone’s emotional state through observation, but you’re really just guessing through your own experiential lens. If you want to know what someone is truly feeling, you need to ask them.

2. Be it your boss, your spouse, your kids, your friends, you shouldn't assume that any one can correctly read the emotions you’re feeling either. Best way for them to know what you’re feeling is to go out on a limb and tell them. 

So, what emotion was Novak truly expressing on the courts? Click here to hear all about it from the "Joker" himself. 

Neuroscience Nuggets #4: The Science Of Self-Compassion

I like to know what I’m having for lunch before I land at the office. 

The reason is that I have a short window between clients and that time is precious. 

On this particular Tuesday morning, my plan was to pick up a salad at my favorite neighborhood spot on my walk over to work. 

I already knew that the Thai noodle salad I had in mind would pair well with the mushroom soup leftover from yesterday’s lunch. (By the way, am I the only person,  who does this, dream up lunch plans at 9am?)

Anyhow, as I walked by my favorite spot I saw someone sitting outside I wanted to avoid. He's close with someone I no longer have any contact with. I didn't want any potential awkwardness, so I picked up my pace and let my adored salad fade into the distance. 
 

I continued on, undeterred, and my eyes lit up as I remembered another great spot for salads. But when I got to that bakery I discovered a barren display case where the salads usually reside. It was too early. My plans were foiled once again!

Arriving salad-less to my office I heard myself saying “Zeva! Why you were so weak? You should have been more brave and got what you wanted! Now you need to go out again! You don’t have time for that!”

I could feel my throat tensing up, and feelings of weakness, inadequacy, and not-enough-ness coursing through my body. 

And then I remembered this neuroscience nugget I wanted to share with you: negative self-talk is the worst possible thing you can do to yourself.  It is toxic as all hell. 

Scientific evidence shows that speaking to ourselves harshly, judging ourselves negatively, being unforgiving whenever we feel we like we’ve made a mistake, does exactly the opposite of what we think that kind of self-policing will do. 

Harsh self-criticism doesn’t motivate us. It does just the reverse: it convinces us there’s something wrong with us, that we’re flawed, weak, less valuable and less worthy than other people. 

Those beliefs lead to emotions like shame and guilt. Since those feelings feel like crap, we'll resort to anything to numb ourselves from them. Like giving into whatever immediate, mood-repairing, instant gratification we can find (more social media browsing, more Netflix, more snacks, more procrastination, more negative speak). It’s a very slippery slope. 

When our mindset tells us that we are broken and weak it makes it hard to tap into our willpower, our strength, our convictions, our purpose. By repeating those beliefs over and over and over, we just reinforce our sense of brokenness and weakness. 

So how do we change that pattern? 

When we shift the question around and ask ourselves "How can I make it easier to tap into my willpower, my strength, my motivation and my sense of purpose?" the answer becomes clear: 

It’s not through criticism and self-judgement, but through self-compassion and encouragement. 

Basically by speaking to yourself the way you would speak to your best friend. 

So if my best friend told me her salad story, I’d say something like:

“Listen, darling, you wanted to avoid a complex conversation. You wanted to preserve your energy for more important things. You protected yourself from a body budget energy withdrawal. Getting out of the office to grab something will be good for you. You’ll get some fresh air and a change of scenery. And who knows, maybe you’ll even use this story in one of your neuroscience nuggets newsletters.” 

PS. There are some amazing resources and references to the science of self-compassion so if you’re interested in going further you can start here with this wonderful TedX talk by self-compassion expert Dr. Kristen Neff. Her website also has a self-compassion test you can take with exercises to help increase your self-compassion self-talk. 

PPS. Another self-compassion mentor of mine is Tara Brach, who wrote an exceptional book all about it called Radical Compassion. 

Photo by Giulia Bertelli on Unsplash

Neuroscience Nuggets #3: Know Your Body Budget

I'm sorry to break the news to you, but your brain couldn't care less if you have a meaningful job, make a positive impact, or feel inspired daily.

It's got one main subject on its mind: to keep you alive and well. Basta! 

The brain's #1 job is to regulate your body’s energy so that you can grow, survive and sow your seeds. This is called allostasis, or the body budget. 

Think of your brain as a brilliant (albeit not-so-fun) bank account manager. She knows (even when you try to convince her otherwise) the amount of money coming in and out of your accounts at all times. She has exclusive analytics and back-end prediction algorithms that can anticipate and satisfy your spending needs based on your past experiences in order to keep you on track and out of trouble. 

The way she works her magic is by:

1. Perceiving the sensations within your body (which she reads without your conscious awareness).

2. Perceiving the information from the outside world via your skin, your eyes, your ears, etc.

3. Interpreting your internal and external worlds to decide the best way to allocate your body’s energy to keep you alive based on your past experiences.

While she's fussing over all of this data, you, my friend, are doing normal life things that may strain your body’s budget in small and big ways: filling your to-do lists will impossible tasks, meeting up with friends four nights in a row for drinks, bing-watching Netflix series and going to bed each night after midnight, eating take-out because you have no time to cook, feeding yourself a steady stream of anxiety-producing news. Sound familiar?

Your day-to-day habits can take a toll on your body budget, resulting in a distressed bank manager who can resort to extreme behaviour to get your attention (like burning out, having a panic attack, lashing out at your kids at the end of an exhausting week).

But, more often than not, she’ll just send out a more subtle vibe or outlook on life. 

In scientific terms, this is called “affect.” In common language, it’s called mood and it’s the energetic budget our brain is working with. 

Affect is the general sense of feeling you experience throughout your day. It’s much simpler than an emotion and is based on the intersecting levels of two general feelings: pleasantness (aka valence) and intensity (aka arousal).


The combinations of high to low valence and high to low arousal look like this: 

When your body budget is unbalanced, it colors your mood. But a general bad feeling doesn’t always mean that something major is wrong (e.g. Like you need to leave your life and move to Brazil). It could mean that, or it may simply mean that you are taxing your body budget. 

What's the best way to maintain your body budget and positively influence your mood and energy? Healthy diet, exercise and optimal sleep are the three main ingredients to a balanced body budget. 


So, what's the moral of the story then? Before you jump to conclusions about what's wrong with humanity, or make big life decisions, you might want to first stop and look at your body budget. Are you hungry? Exhausted? When did you last get some exercise?


These very basic factors have HUGE implications on our moods, and therefore on everything. 

Neuroscience Nuggets #2: Fantasy vs Visualization

I use images and visualization regularly in my coaching and workshops. So naturally I was thrilled to hear that my neuroscience program devoted a lesson to visualization.


But when my teacher prefaced the class by saying there was a right and very wrong way to use it, my internal doubting alarm went off.

"Yikes," I thought! "What if I’ve been doing something wrong? What if scientists scoff at it? What if it's a just a feel-good technique that doesn't really move the needle?"  

First off, reader, we can both breathe a sigh of relief. Visualization isn't going anywhere in my practice. Au contraire, it's about to get very next level. 

But let's back up the tape and get some terms straight before I tell you how: 

• Visualization is using your imagination to conjure up a future scenario that you can see in sharp detail in your mind’s eye, and even feel in your body.
  

• It can be a very powerful tool when you need to get creative, dream big, try on different versions of the life you'd like to live, and see what feels right!
  

• It can also motivate you to accomplish something super hard, messy, and meaningful (e.g. feeling the joy and relief of giving birth without an epidural; hearing your name called at the graduation ceremony after four grueling years of studying; feeling the warm, smug smile on your face after finally beating your son at tennis).
  

BUT, and this is a very important BUT, if you don’t back those delicious images up by also visualizing the process of getting to your goal, the vision simply stays a fantasy. 

According to my professor, Dr Irena O’Brien, "Fantasies can actually hinder success because they embellish future events regardless of past performance and the probability of future occurrences. Therefore, they fail to be a solid basis for acting." 

When you visualize the steps you need to take to move yourself along your path, however, you not only feel less anxious and more confident about what you need to do, you make it much more likely to achieve your goal.

By visualizing the process as opposed to just the result, you’re giving your brain a practical road map to understand and anticipate the resources needed to move you forward.

So, in a nutshell, if you want to go after something specific, you can’t just visualize the end-game, you also need to: 

• Visualize the process to get there.

• Be sure to include any potential internal or external roadblocks or temptations you might encounter along the way.

• Then come up with a plan to overcome those road blocks, or better yet, create an environment that helps you avoid them entirely (more on that in the next neuroscience nugget newsletter).

Photo courtesy Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/aPNE3B0WHTM

Neuroscience Nuggets #1: Vanilla Yogurt Victory

Since the third lockdown ended in France last month it feels like the hose has come off the hydrant. All of my pending projects are suddenly “on! “and coming at me full blast. 

I’m not complaining, I’m excited about them all, especially the neuroscience for coaches certificate program that I’m taking at  The Neuroscience School

This program is quite literally BLOWING. MY. MIND.

I’m dying to spill everything I’ve learned so far out on this page but I’ll start with this seminal nugget:

Neuroplastic changes within our brains translate into concrete behavioral changes in our daily decisions and actions. And it goes both ways. The more you practice and perpetuate certain behaviors, the deeper and faster the grooves in the brain become to support them.

As a coach, my job is to help my clients define and achieve their goals. And the gold standard to see if the brain has re-organized itself to achieve those goals is to look at how our behaviors have changed over a period of time.

Which takes me to the victory of vanilla yogurt.

Around mid-way through my coaching program with my clients I do a recap session to inventory every single thing that has changed or shifted in my client’s life since we began together.

Every item counts. Even the smallest, seemingly-random thing is relevant. Like a change of haircut. A new musical obsession. A shift in diet. 

These may seem insignificant when viewed on their own, but when you connect their dots together you can start to see some emerging themes appear—evidence that the neural pathways are starting to shift and strengthen inside the brain. 

Recently when taking inventory with one of my clients she told me she had started eating vanilla yogurt after a two-decade ban on that yummy yummy.

As a child, vanilla yogurt was her jam. She adored it. But as she grew older she told herself that eating it didn’t fit the rational, cerebral, mature habits associated with the serious adult she needed to become personally and professionally. 

Vanilla yogurt was the embodiment of a certain playfulness and joy she believed didn’t have its place in adulthood.  

She would still buy it at the supermarket and offer it to her four kids for dessert, but she would never think of eating it herself. That’s just not what adults do. 

But as our discussions around the value of playfulness, humor and joy in her life unfolded, her relationship to the yogurt changed too. And she allowed herself to eat a small pot of vanilla yogurt whenever she felt like it. 

For my client, the yogurt is much more than fragranced, sweetened, bacterially-fermented milk: it’s proof of a perceptual and behavioral shift towards creating and celebrating small, simple pleasures in life. 

It’s about assigning value to joy. 

And making space for it daily. 

Not in a six months or a year, but right now. 

In addition to the vanilla yogurt, she’s also buying bouquets of flowers at the market each week for no specific occasion, she’s starting to sculpt again, she’s dancing with her kids, she’s cracking more jokes at the dinner table.

And all of these changes are training her brain to find even bigger ways to bring joy into her life, as well as her career. 

What vanilla yogurt behavior changes are brining you closer to your goals?

How to avoid brain drain

Lice, strikes and no more mozzarella in any of the stores when you plan on making New Year's Day lasagna.
 

1. Is it the title of a new Coen brothers movie based on the Odyssey? 

2. A feminist podcast starring Tina Fey?

3. Or some of the energy-depleting experiences that decorated my winter break?

What's your guess?

If you think I'm using my random holiday turmoils as an excuse to complain, you've got another thing coming. 

They're actually awesome examples of how brain-drain works— meaning when your mind says "pas possible" to creative work because it's been depleted generating solutions to totally annoying problems. 

I always though that the long ramp-up to making a decision (be it ordering from a bible-size NYC Greek diner menu to deciding whether to pivot professionally) was what drained us the most intellectually, emotionally and physically. 

But Dr. Tara Swart, author of The Source, the book I'm currentIy obsessed with, says that it's the act of making the decision that's the most draining for our brains. 
 

"It is perhaps surprising that although the rumination that leads up to a decision requires mental energy, it's the point of decision making itself that is the most energy-intense for our brains. This explains why reducing the number of unnecessary choices in our day (what to wear, eat, watch, react to on social media) is an effective way to conserve decision-making energy for bigger and more important decisions."

This is why Steve Jobs wore the same outfit each day and why so many people do their most creative work in the morning before their brains have been zapped to death on emails and deciding what to eat for lunch.  

It's also why supermarkets strategically place the candy by the cash register: your brain's made hundreds of small choices by the time it gets to the counter that it's much more likely to crack for candy then. 

So, here are some suggestions for you:

• Reduce the number of small decisions you need to make daily. (e.g. mono wardrobe, batch cooking, delegating)

• Audit your most important decision making moments and your energy when you're making them. 

• Create a fail-safe, energy-generating morning routine that you do without having to think about it.

• Come up with a contingency plan before heading to the supermarket when you're vacationing in a small mountain village and plan on making lasagna for 12 people: what will you make if they're sold out of mozzarella or don't have the right size lasagna pan? 

Sending you much love and brain-saving energy. 

Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash