Anne Riches

Change Leadership

  • Home
  • What We Do
  • How We Do It
  • Why Choose Us
  • About Anne
  • Blog
  • Resources
  • Contact Us

People can see inside and through your brain – or will do very soon!

16 February 2015 by Anne Riches Leave a Comment

Another amazing advance in neuroscience and what the future is looking like.

This month, psychiatrist Karl Deisseroth, a Popular ScienceBrilliant 10 alumnus, is getting the Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences. The prize is for his work on two lab techniques that neuroscientists now use widely to study autism, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, and other brain disorders.

The technique allows scientists to look through the brain as if it is transparent. At the moment is seems this is only done of organs taken from deceased animals or humans, but in the future?????

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: misc

Are you hurting someone emotionally?

9 February 2015 by Anne Riches Leave a Comment

Someone loses it – a man dies

In the beautiful city of Sydney water restrictions are imposed. An elderly man was watering his garden. It was legal. He was watering his roses in the late afternoon, within the time limits imposed by the restrictions.

A younger man passed by. It seems that the men exchanged words about the watering and an altercation broke out. Moments later, the older man was dead. A grandfather, a father, a husband’s life snuffed out in an instant over a garden hose. The words had become blows leading to the older man’s death.

What could have happened?

The next day, in a road rage incident, a driver hurled a full bottle of water at the car of another driver. Fortunately, no one died in this incident.

On the same day, a manager at an office told a staff member that she had “!@#%ed up”, that she had to stay back late to make up for it or he would dock her pay. Her ‘error’ was a delay in delivering a report to his office caused by a power failure in her building that trapped her in a lift for an hour.

Why do so many people ‘lose it’?

When you look around your world – at work, at home, in the street, on the road, or simply watering your garden – why do we see so many examples of people just ‘losing it’, losing self-control and allowing almost animal type behaviour to take over?

We see it on the sports field – biting incidents, punching, racist remarks – where grown men and women, players and parents, lose self-discipline in the heat of the moment.

Sometimes the crowd urge them on – why? If we urge them on, what do we want to see happen? Physical harm? How much? Death? Sometimes the behaviour is seen for what it is – lack of self-control and unprofessional.

At home, we see domestic violence, verbal abuse and hurtful comments – often resulting in fractured relationships and mental and physical harm to people in the place where they should be most treasured and secure.

A woman and her son were charged with killing the woman’s husband over 10 years ago, cutting up his body and scattering the body parts. One arm and the head have not yet been found. It is suggested that extreme domestic abuse was involved.

Why are we wired with the flight/flight response?

Stop for a moment and think about your levels of self-control. Think about the levels of self control in the real life examples I have given.

In the last example, the woman may have truly feared for her life. Her amygdala may well have caused her to act in order to preserve her own life. If this is true, then it is unlikely that any amount of logic would have prevented her from seeing any other way out of the intolerable situation that she may have been in.

If she did kill her husband in these circumstances then this is flight/flight at its extreme and this is what the brain is hard-wired for – self-defence.

But watering a garden? A disagreement about road rules? A sporting event? An issue at work?

Do you have self-control?

So please consider: have you ‘lost it’ to any degree, anywhere, anytime, with anyone, over the last week?

For example:

* Did you argue with a shop assistant or a call centre operator?

* Did you ‘snap’ at your partner or your kids?

* Did you speak aggressively to a staff member?

* Were you sarcastic or make an unnecessarily snide remark?

* Did you fail to speak up at a meeting when you disagreed with a proposition, or someone clearly was distorting the truth – or worse still, stealing your ideas?

* Did you fail to tell the truth at a performance appraisal meeting?

* Did you just walk away from a discussion you need to have at home because it could be uncomfortable?

What was happening in these situations? Why did you show these aggressive or defensive behaviours? Was it The Almond Effect? ie an inappropriate response by your amygdala because, in fact, you weren’t actually ‘about to die’ even though your amygdala is geared for self-defence.

Your amygdala can’t tell the difference between a real and perceived threat to life. But your “thinking you” can.

The Almond Effect doesn’t have to play out as violently as some of the examples I have given. It happens when your amygdalae (almonds) are engaged and you are feeling fearful, anxious, irritated, defensive, embarrassed and so on. Have you felt like that this week?

Don’t get me wrong. These feelings are a ‘natural’ reaction to events that happen around us if the incident triggers patterns, memories or a history of things that we believe (mostly at a sub-conscious level) could harm us in some way.

It’s what we do about those triggers that determines our maturity and self-control and our leadership abilities.

Be a STAR

In previous posts, I have written about being a STAR. using my STAR model to Stop – Think – Act – Rewire.

S:  When you catch yourself being worked up or feel an unhelpful emotion coming on, like fear, anger, frustration, STOP. Stop yourself from immediately reacting. Take a deep breath. Count to 10 or whatever it takes.

T:  Then THINK about what is really going on. What are the consequences/ outcomes you really want to come from this situation?

A:  Then ACT – do whatever you decide is the best thing to do for the outcomes you would want outside the heat of the moment.

R:  Finally reflect and review what went on. Where did the reaction come from? What caused it? How can you learn to manage that reaction in future? In other words, how can you REWIRE your amygdala?

Stop – Think – Act – Rewire

The biggest challenge is to catch yourself experiencing The Almond Effect. Learn to watch for the signals – increased heart rate, perspiring, clenching your fists, your teeth, simply feeling agitated – everyone has a different signal.

If some of the horrible examples of The Almond Effect that I have given don’t motivate you to reflect on when this happens to you – let me be provocative: do you think that you have ever hurt someone emotionally because of your lack of self-control? Are you proud of it? Did it get you the result you wanted – in the short term, in the long term?

Self preservation in the 21st C

The Almond Effect® is a powerful emotional reaction – hard-wired into humans for self-preservation hundreds of thousands of years ago.

But this is the 21st C. If you are reading this it is likely that you live in a society where your elementary and basic needs met, as set out, for example, in Maslow’s hierarchy ie you are fed, sheltered, and secure.

Of course, there are external threats that we cannot control – terrorism being a key example where The Almond Effect ® is exploited for appalling outcomes.

I urge you – become really conscious of examples of The Almond Effect around you. When you read the newspapers and watch the news, when you observe people at work, when you look at sport – actively consider: how many examples of The Almond Effect do you notice?

Even this exercise will help you become aware of the conscious and unconscious moments we later regret – when we have allowed The Almond Effect to rule our lives inappropriately instead of us being in control of how we act and our impact on others.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: misc

Dealing with Resistance to Change

18 December 2014 by Anne Riches Leave a Comment

Do your employees like change?

When I ask this question of participants in my change leadership workshops, the answer is almost overwhelmingly no.

But when I ask part two of the question: do YOU like change – the answer is usually overwhelmingly yes!

Isn’t that curious? What happens when you become the boss? Do you go through some magic door and change your mindset about change?

I think the answer is often yes.  And if we think about why this happens, it may give us some clues to getting our people on board not just in the short term but for the long haul so change is part of ‘business as usual’.

And change is ‘business as usual’, so why does it still consume vast amounts of our time? Why do managers still find themselves dealing with pockets of resistance and negative attitudes?

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: misc

Do you have anxious and scary situations at work?

11 December 2014 by Anne Riches Leave a Comment

Alone at the station

 8.15pm – alone on a long empty platform waiting for the 8.30pm train from London Paddington to Heathrow. Another person appeared. He had the entire platform to choose a spot to wait but he came and stood next to me. My heart started to race.

‘Stop it’ I said to my amygdala.

‘Calm down’ I said to my hypothalamus but it continued to flood my body with adrenaline.

All my amygdalae could see was a “young man of middle eastern appearance with a backpack.”

My pre-frontal cortex was appalled and embarrassed at my limbic system response. My cortex had no idea whether the young man was from the Middle East or not – and even if he was, so what?

I used the STAR model:

  • I Stopped. I took deep breaths. 
  • I Thought. I kept telling myself that my reaction was irrational and that my body should calm down.
  • I Acted – I stayed put but was consciously reframing my ridiculous thoughts for what they were – limbic mania over rational awareness.

Eventually the 8.30pm train arrived. I stepped on, sat down and my heart rate slowed.

Deep in the ocean

Two months later, off the Neptune Islands in South Australia I was in a cage heading towards the ocean floor hoping to get up close and personal with some Great White Sharks.

One came soon enough – ‘Cheeky Girl’ – 4.2 metres and 1000 kg. She was BIG! And I saw her many teeth as she passed several times within a metre of me while she attempted to snatch the bait hanging off the back of the boat!

The 30 minutes in the cage passed in a flash.

Did my life flash before my eyes?

Back on board I realised that my heart rate had hardly increased when I came face to face with this enormous predator. All I felt was awe and wonder as I watched one of the most amazing animals I have ever seen.

So what was the difference?

Why did I experience the fight/flight response so fully on a London train platform but not at all when within touching distance of a Great White Shark?

How much can you can prepare for scary situations?

The answer lies in preparation and learning (Rewiring) from experience.

Some of you will recall from a previous post that I searched for GWS once before. But even with 3 days of turning the ocean red with burly including tuna heads, blood and guts – no shark appeared on that trip. So much for ‘blood in the water attracts sharks!’

However what we did do on that ‘no show’ trip was to talk a lot about GWS with experts, practice descents in the cage, watch videos, look at GWS photos and listen to research – all of which prepared us for the recent trip – and took away the fear.

In contrast, the man on the platform was a complete surprise. It was the end of a fabulous trip to the UK; I had just been shopping in Oxford Street and was looking forward to returning to Sydney.

I simply wasn’t focussed on what was happening on the platform or that any risks or dangers could be lurking there.

So I was unprepared for the possibility that a man could appear on the platform and trigger an ANT (automatic negative thought) that cracked my almonds (amygdalae) with a sledgehammer!

And I had no previous experience from which to train my amygdala not to react to a racist stereotype automatically stored in my brain’s ‘database of nasty things’ after September 11, 2001.

Face the fear and defuse your amygdala

At work, ‘the man on the platform’ might turn up as a surprise outburst from the boss; an urgent deadline abruptly imposed; a retrenchment to be made, a dramatic fall in share price or an unanticipated cut in funding.

But ‘Cheeky Girl’ could show up when you anticipate the performance appraisal next week, a future presentation to the Board, an interview for a promotion, the switch over to a new system.

In other words, there will be some sudden and unexpected events that will catch us off guard. At those times, it is likely that we’ll experience The Almond Effect® – the fight/flight response in a pyschologically not physically threatening situation- even though our lives are not at risk.

When that happens, use the STAR technique – and focus especially on Rewiring afterwards – what can you learn from the experience? The more times you experience something confronting, the less confronting it becomes. Your amygdala learns that it is nothing to be overly concerned about.

But do not beat yourself up for reacting even though your pre-frontal cortex knows you should not have. We are hard wired for survival and our amygdalae do not know the difference between physical and psychological threats.

However when you know that a ‘scary’ situation is coming up (Cheeky Girl) – do everything you can to minimise the impact of The Almond Effect® by preparing as much as possible. Show your amygdala that there are no potentially fatal consequences to what you are about to do.

Then perhaps you’ll even enjoy coming face to face with your Great White Shark!

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: misc

Sleep off your toxic memories

9 December 2014 by Anne Riches Leave a Comment

Would you like to simply sleep off toxic memories?

This may be possible one day due to the work of John O’Keefe the first neuroscientist to win a Nobel Prize.

Some french scientists have inserted a new memory into a mouse when sleeping.

And you thought that it was still a sci-fi notion …….

Check out the short news item here

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: misc

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 29
  • Next Page »

Free Newsletter

More info here

Anne was a terrific facilitator for our State meeting that featured leading experts in Australia, and her work contributed to it being our most successful event of the year. As an event organiser, it’s always good to know you’re in safe hands!
– Phil Preston, President NSW PSA

Read more client recommendations

Latest from the Blog

Destroy one fear, Change your life

15 February 2016

Scared of spiders? Performance reviews? Speaking in public? Love this post by Shawn Hunter: Destroy one fear, Change your life. It suggests that if you can conquer one fear, you can develop

Do you stress eat?

9 February 2016

I like this TED talk on breaking a bad habit. It has a practical approach that I think could help.  

Look at me when I’m talking to you

1 February 2016

When I was growing up and my mother wanted to "point out the error of my ways", I remember that she often prefaced her no doubt well-intentioned words of advice with: "Look at me when I'm talking to

CSP Professional Speakers AustraliaNeuroLeadership Institute Member
Change Management Institute MemberPRISM Brain Mapping Accredited Practitioner

Services

  • Workshops and Seminars
  • Facilitation in Challenging Situations
  • Conference Presentations and Breakouts
  • Executive Coaching and Mentoring

Recommendations

Fantastic. I have come away with tools to use everyday! I felt inspired, motivated and energised. Thanks very much.
– Call Centre Supervisor, Qantas

Read more client recommendations

Resources

 Newsletter |  Webstore |  Resources

Contact us

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
Client Access Click Here
  • Home
  • What We Do
  • How We Do It
  • Why Choose Us
  • About Anne
  • Blog
  • Resources
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy

© 2021 The Riches Group Pty Ltd · site by accurate expressions