Relationship Matters

Ep. 8 Neuroscience & Relationship

August 18, 2021 CRR Global Season 3 Episode 8
Relationship Matters
Ep. 8 Neuroscience & Relationship
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, Katie talks with Floyd Carlson about Neuroscience and Relationships. This is the first of 2 installments on neuroscience and what it can teach us about our relationships. In Part 1 we’re talking about how neuroscience can help us to better understand ourselves because the more we are aware of what’s going on within us, the more it’s going to help us as coaches, leaders and human beings. We discuss a variety of topics including how to regulate in the moment, types of intuition, the body budget, how we create our emotions through a process of prediction and how to disrupt our prediction patterns so that we can be more at choice in our lives.

Floyd Carlson is a Front of the Room Leader for CRR Global who focuses on leaders, teams and bringing the best out of individuals based on company and individual objectives. Floyd has more than 30 years of business and military experience which he combines with his coaching, training, and organizational development to help leaders achieve professional and personal goals in alignment with company needs.

Resources:


For over 18 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time

 We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole.

Key 

 

KC – Katie Churchman

FC - Floyd Carlson

 

[Intro 00:00 – 00:06] 

 

KC – Hello and welcome to the Relationship Matters podcast. I’m your host, Katie Churchman, and we believe relationship matters, from humanity, to nature, to the larger whole. In this episode I’m talking with Floyd Carlson. This is the first of two instalments on neuroscience and what it can teach us about relationship. In part one we’re talking about how neuroscience can help us better understand ourselves because the more we’re aware about what’s going on within us the more it’s going to help us as coaches, leaders and human beings. We discuss a variety of topics including how to regulate in the moment, types of intuition, the body budget, how we create our emotions through a process of prediction and how to disrupt out prediction patterns so that we can be more at choice in our lives. Floyd Carlson is a front of the room leader for CRR Global who focuses on leaders, teams and bringing the best out of individuals based on company and individual objectives. Floyd has more than 30 years of business and military experience which he combines with his coaching training and organizational development to help leaders achieve professional and personal goals in alignment with company needs. So, without further ado I bring you Floyd Carlson. 

 

KC – Welcome back Floyd to the Relationship Matters podcast, I’m so happy to have you back on the show. 

 

FC – Ah, Katie, so great to be here with your listeners and you, I’ve been looking forward to this conversation, thank you. 

 

KC – Here we are, season three and we’ve picked a big topic - what can neuroscience teach us about relationships. 

 

FC – Wow, gosh, yeah. When we first started discussing what this could look like, you know, neuroscience and relationships… first of all the neuroscience aspect is so, there’s so many ways we could go with it so I’m just looking forward to how this conversation with you and I could unfold today. 

 

KC – Yes. I’m wondering if I could start by asking you what got you curious about neuroscience and coaching? 

 

FC – Yeah, thank you for the great opening question. What really sparked my interest was I was going through ORSC certification and as part of the certification process we have the opportunity where you submit recordings that get reviewed by an individual’s supervisor, and we have this one thing called interpersonal process recall and what’s really great about this, we also call it an amnesty tape, so in that particular piece you’re not going to get evaluated but you get a chance to deep dive into your coaching. And I remember, you know, I’d brought a recording where I was actually being triggered from my client, there was something that, it was a couple I was coaching and there was something coming up, actually it was a lot of contempt but for them that was like their love language, but for me, you know, I was so, everything I’ve learned from Gottman’s material is that, we talk about in our foundation course how contempt is that one toxin, that’s like the one that can really have a huge impact on relationships. But the point being is that we got into discussing and how that process works is you listen into the coaching, you start talking about, you know, what’s going on for you, what were you going for? So, talking about a brilliant opportunity to deepen and improve your coaching. And the thing that then made it really special is my supervisor was talking to me about this model from David Rock called The SCARF Model. And from this, you know it’s about, the model itself is about the brain treats social connections and social aspects as important as food and water. And it talks about these five areas that can either be rewarded or triggered as a threat and I’ll go into those a little deeper later. The thing being is once I got introduced to that, so I thank Janet so much for the introduction to this, that really sparked my interest in learning more about neuroscience and how it can help me as a coach, help as a leader, help as I work then with systems and individuals to help them understand what’s really going on? So that really captured my excitement and curiosity. So, from there, well I’ll talk about the books that I read, two different courses on neuroscience and coaching, one from David Rock, it’s called The Brain Based Coaching Certificate Program, another one is Ann Betz and Ursula Pottinga  Neuroscience and Consciousness Transformational Coaching Program, 10 month program that I’m currently in, in my final quarter at this time so it’s just really got me excited to bring this to my coaching and to actually talk about it today with you. 

 

KC – I can see your excitement and it’s so wonderful because what I’m already starting to see is it’s not just about the coaching that goes on with your clients, it’s also about the learning that goes on for you as coach and sort of understanding yourself as an instrument and knowing what you take in to a session, whether that’s good or bad, being aware of the mechanics of you. 

 

FC – Yeah, I appreciate what you’re highlighting there, Katie, is the more we’re aware of what we’re going on in us, it’s going to help us coach those systems that we most want to impact and work with because if something’s going on with us, having that ability to, you know, how do I recognize it, what can I do in the moment, you know like so one do the things they talk about in the neuroscience stuff is being able to even name that emotion and name what’s going on can help to dampen it down. So, how can I regulate in the moment so I can be there fully for my clients? 

 

KC – Absolutely. Because I think so often, particularly in this virtual world, we go from meeting to meeting to meeting, zoom to zoom to zoom and we’re not even sure what we’re taking in to that session anymore and what might that be doing to the emotional field, how might that be impacting what’s possible in that session. 

 

FC – Absolutely, and there’s a piece that we’re learning right now in the program that I’m in about intuition. There’s the intuition from the brain aspect, there’s the intuition from the body aspect and there’s also from the collective consciousness intuition. An example of that is when you’re getting images of something coming up from what’s happening in the consciousness of that whole entre group or society, something is coming, that’s intuition. But, what I have found looking at intuition is I am so overly busy I’m missing that stuff. And it’s there all the time, you know, we talk about the ability to help us as a coach because we’re going for some type of feeling, sensing what’s actually here with our clients and as we’re able to sense that, you know, we’re able to then work with it. Holding them as intelligent, generative and creative, all those aspects. But, if I’m going from meeting to meeting to meeting and I’m not picking up on that I’m actually, I see that I’m not actually fully there to support what my clients could need at that moment, that ability to not be attached to it but to be able to call what is coming up. And I always find that anyway it’s like hey I’m going to call what I see, if I get it wrong please help me learn about this system that we’re working together. 

 

KC – Yeah, I guess when you go in with that busyness or that stress you’re not utilizing the coach, you or I, as the instrument as fully as you can because the stress is perhaps hijacking your ability to sense that deeper level of intuition that shows up when you’re in a different space. 

 

FC – Yeah. So, what have you noticed? When you’re going from meeting to meeting what comes up for you? What are some of the things that help you actually regulate to be there present with your client? 

 

KC – Simple things like picking the energy, so I pick an energy number between one and 10 that I like to take in and then a word, an intention. That can be really helpful because even if it’s not the right energy or intention when I meet my client, I’m like oh gosh, this is completely off, at least I’ve been intentional about that as opposed to taking in a whirlwind from the past meeting. So that’s one thing I try. What about yourself? 

 

FC – Gosh. Well, one of them is, like you, is what’s the intention, what’s the energy? In our ORSC language we call that the Metaskill. What is the energy that I wanna bring into this particular session? And being able to adjust it as I go so there’s, you know, what’s that routine before I even go into it? Even if I have a couple minutes or a minute to just kind of stop, reflect, do some deep breathing. So, breathing techniques. Or, also if I have a chance if I can just quickly go out into my garden. Something like that actually grounds me and those are some of the techniques when we talk about healthy brain, things that we can do. Eating, sleeping, you know so proper diet, proper sleep. Exercise. All those things, trying to build that into my schedule to have that energy to be there with my clients. 

 

KC – Love that. Breathing is such a useful one. I quite often do a quick breathing exercise at the start of a session and it’s as much for me as it is for my clients because it completely regulates me, I sharpen a different way then after two or three deep breaths. So simple. 

 

FC – What I also appreciate about that is also… checking in can be such a powerful coaching tool also but also when we talk about meet, reveal, line and act, that’s something we’ve been definitely teaching in our programs, so even meeting and that ability to get everyone grounded into that meeting, I remember one time I had two leaders come in front of me and I could tell that they were just running to get to the meeting, so we stopped and we paused and we did a grounding exercise to get truly present in the moment. And this comes from some of David Rock’s work, so it’s naming top of mind, what’s there, and naming the emotion around it. So it can be like that quick sentence of wow, you know, I’ve been really coming through all these different meetings today and I just got here and I’m feeling a lot of anxiety and for this session I’m going to completely be here. And then it’s like an exhale or it could be some sort of essence motion, there body signal or something that they do to help ground them there. And I’d done this with these leaders through this, when I see that people are really like not here. And, wow, talk about bringing focus into hey, I’m out here, I’m here for this session. That’s quite powerful. 

 

KC – Yeah, another one I use is mind, body, spirit – how is my mind, how is my body, how is my spirit? But I think also people get trapped in oh, I’m so busy, and that’s just the one story and they might be busy in their mind but maybe their body is calm. And I think also understanding the internal system and the fact that there’s lots of different emotions and feelings there too can be helpful as well. 

 

FC – Oh, absolutely. So, understanding what’s going on in us, what are the things we do to help prepare us, be ready so we can be fully present for our clients. And then also recognizing, you know, what’s going on in this system as we talk about work, it’s calling the emotional field, it’s naming it. Sometimes that can be weather checks, we always talk about teaching our systems we work with to be able to do that themselves, to do weather checks. What have you seen with your clients? Is that a process that you use, I’m just kind of curious. 

 

KC – Yeah, it’s weird how we can relate to things like weather. It’s much easier for people to explain their emotions through weather metaphors than it is to actually talk about their emotions, particularly in corporate professional settings. It can kind of take the edge off the awkwardness in those kind of check ins so I’ve found them to be useful! But, what’s fascinating about all of this is it really shows how ancient Eastern wisdom, in many ways, is now meeting Western medicine and it’s very exciting that there’s this backing in neuroscience behind this works, take a deep breath before a session, it works, you’re going to regulate yourself and show up in a very different way. 

 

FC – Absolutely. Learning so many new things that are coming from neuroscience. So I’m going to lean in today to different resources, one of these is Lisa Feldman Barrat and she’s got a couple different books out there, one is How Emotions Are Made, a book which I happen to have right here with me next to me too is Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain and what’s very interesting about what’s emerging is there’s this classical view of how emotions are created. Like we have these finger prints that are in our brain that emotion gets activated when something occurs. Where the constructed view of emotions which she talks about is actually we create this and it’s done by a process called prediction. So, we predict based on something, you know, we’re feeling something in our body, something in our environment and something in our body based on our past. I love one of the examples she gave, she said I was out at dinner and I was with a person and all of a sudden I go gosh, am I starting to fall in love because all of a sudden she’s having these feelings and so the brain is constantly making guesses forecasting what is going on and it does it because it’s main process is to help keep us alive and to manage this thing called the body budget which is our glucose, our water, our salt, our hormones. It’s always managing the body budget and it does this through this prediction process. So she goes gosh, am I falling in love and she got home and she had the flu and she was in bed sick for like the next five days but the thing of it is is that in that term it’s called perdition area, my mind precited that hey, I might be falling in love because it took a count of that areas and then that’s what the brain did, it predicted that. But, what’s powerful is when we start thinking about this in terms of when we’re working with relationships. When we’re working with teams, couples, business partners, even individual clients is what are we predicting? Pause for a second to think about that, when we’re coming into a relationship we have all these things that are happening in our body, past experience, we also have these things happening in the environment and we’re predicting our emotions. And, we could be getting them right, we could be getting them wrong. And the thing of it is that part of the impact on our body budget could be physically happening or it could be mentally happening, it still has the same impact. And this is something that I’m really fascinated about, it’s how do we use this when we’re working with our system? But, let me pause, what questions come up for you when you hear this, and I know you’ve read her material too and watched her Ted Talk, what comes up for you when you start thinking about we’re predicting our emotions, we’re actually creating them. 

 

KC – Yeah, it’s so fascinating because it really comes back to that idea we really understand ourselves in narrative, through story, because of this, because of that, and story is limiting sometimes. So I was just thinking about an example when you were talking, how I thought I was anxious the other day and it was because I was starving, I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and it was like 8pm and it was just weird that my initial reaction was oh, this feeling in my stomach is anxiety, and I just wonder how much we make up about other people as well. Like, quite often I might think my husband, for example, is grumpy but he’s probably hungry or tired and it’s just interesting how we go straight to the… perhaps the patterned narrative? And I wonder what’s possible if we set ourselves free or at least create space between this and the oh well it’s because they don’t like me, it’s because I did something wrong, and actually it’s like actually so simple perhaps or something so different. 

 

FC – Ah, thank you for the example. It reminds me of one of the examples in her book of how emotions are created where she talks about judges that are hearing parole cases.  Before lunch they’re more likely to be harsher because they’re sensing the person’s not trustworthy and then after lunch it goes back to the normal rates of who gets parole. So I guess the lesson there is if you’re up for parole you definitely don’t want to go before lunch because as soon as they eat, because there’s something that’s happening in the body but they’re mis-predicted it as can I really trust this person? When actually it was they were hungry. So, it’s really fascinating that we can be bringing all these predictions so when we’re working with systems, for me this is something that’s important to understand, what’s really here behind what is happening? And we have some wonderful tools in ORSC that might actually play in here like the dream behind the complaint. What are some other things that come up for you when we think about this massive toolkit that we have that could actually help to understand is this something that they’re predicting or is this something that’s really there? Any way we’re going to work with it but I’m just curious what starts to come up for you? 

 

KC – I wonder around sort of 2% truth because I’ve always thought that was such a lovely tool when it comes to understanding different people’s experience. But even in ourselves, if we have a body sensation that we start labeling, what’s the 2% truth in that and what’s the other potential truths going on there too? That could be an interesting way of sort of framing that because we just go to what we know don’t we? The patterned experience, the one that’s played out the most. Our brain is very good at, as you say, predicting and that doesn’t always serve us so how can we disrupt the pattern? 

FC – Yeah, well another one that comes to mind is just because if we’re continuing to run that same theme, that same script, now we’re getting triggered. And just imagine in our head, we’ve just mentioned that thing about the body budget because all of our connections, all the things we do, our relationships, are either contributing to it, so like I sleep and I eat, it’s a deposit. If I’m constantly playing a script of being triggered that can become a constant withdrawal because guess what, the body then has to spend more resources to prepare for get ready, you know, gotta give you more energy to battle through that, to go through that situation. Here’s when something then de-triggering could be quite interesting which is another one of our tools, is to understand what’s happening and have that as part of our conversation. So in a de-triggering tool when we have that thing that’s triggering us, we’re popping it out and then having that discussion with it. Could be quite interesting to have some reflection on wow, what’s here when I keep predicting this and bringing it up? And this starts to then maybe give us some more information on how we can come to some ways on how we can then work with that. 

 

KC – Yeah, the image that has come to mind is I’m lifting up the car bonnet and looking at all the mechanics of what’s going on as opposed to just driving in the way that you drive, it’s really getting under the bonnet and seeing why is it that I think that or why is it that my system in front of me is doing that as opposed to just presuming what you think. I’m wondering, with regards to body budget, we said about sort of food and how after lunch judges are very different. I’ve been reading a lot of sleep from Matthew Walker’s book Why We Sleep and I’m starting to realize how important sleep is, we’ve got all these wonderful resources when it comes to health care and yet sleep is so essential and fundamental and yet I do think, sometimes we forget about the simple ways we can create health for ourselves and use ourselves as a better resource. So I’m wondering, as a coach, armed with this knowledge of the body budget, how do you use that now? 

 

FC – Yeah, so one of the tools that Ann and Ursula in their program has, and I use this with my clients, is really a simple spreadsheet. Going down and looking at all the different relationships and different areas in our life, it could be hobbies, it could be extra stuff that we do, it could be our job. And then it’s like taking on 100% and looking at each of these and go ok, my relationship with this person, what percentage is a deposit, what percentage is a withdrawal and when I’m going through that this starts to give me some awareness… can start a typical, like, have another column over there for some notes and start capturing. So, if I start thinking about my relationship with somebody how do I typically feel? So, is this somebody where I’m energized, we have a relationship where we have flow, or is it one where there’s always some conflict showing up? And what this allows us to start doing with this awareness is to be able to see where potentially then do I need to make some changes going forward? I found it quite interesting recently doing this with an individual client. As they went through this one of the areas they found that they just got so much incredible energy from was one of their passion hobbies around having a pet. You know, how important it was to have a pet in their life. It was like 95% to them being a deposit versus like a 5% being a withdrawal. And they had been without a pet for, you know, about a year now. And they realized immediately that wow, I get so much from having a pet. That was one of the actions that they wanted to take was to get a pet. But they also looked at their hobby, another hobby they had, one of the things of helping people and what they did with that was they realized there was some things there that were so strong, they started looking at their relationship with their partner and going how can I bring some of that into my relationship? So, immediately this gave them some self-awareness but also started to get them to where they could act and align through what are some of those things that I can do to increase that deposit in some of those areas of my life. Or where are some areas that I need too, how do I step back or do some withdrawing because the impact on my body budget is so huge? When I talk about that , if you kind of think about this spreadsheet idea, what starts to come up for you? Is there like areas or you’re all of a sudden going oh geez, I can see that or this area I gotta deposit, this area I gotta withdraw, what’s coming up for you? 

 

KC – Yeah, it’s a really wonderful way of looking systemically at your body budget across life, not just professionally, not just personally but the whole thing. And it really reminds me of when I started this work and I started to get more intentional about my life I remember thinking gosh, those friends make me feel exhausted, I just come away feeling so drained. And there was just that moment of I don’t have to hang out with these people anymore, maybe they’re not even my friends if this is how it makes me feel time and time again. And I think that’s the beauty of what you’re talking about, a tool like that makes you actually more intentional about how you spend your body budget because you probably have a finite amount of day-to-day body budget to use up so who and what are you going to spend it on. 

 

FC – Absolutely. Another thing that came up as you were giving that example – what Lisa talks about in her book is because one of the components of this prediction cycle comes from this past experience, that includes everything. That includes what we read, that includes what we listen too, that includes what we watch. So, a way that we can start making an impact is being very conscious about what are those things that I’m reading that’s helping me to expand? What am I listening too, what am I watching? All those things are things which start to become part of us as part of that prediction process. The other thing which is interesting about this, this means that we are actually in control. It’s always one of those debates when you look at the classic view is does the emotion get triggered by that finger print, that essence, seeing as you’re not in control. It’s actually, when you look at the constructive model, means that we’re in control. Which is powerful, it also can be scary too at the same time, it’s like wow, if something is coming up, it’s like I’m feeling this, if we go into our body and start trying to sense what it is what else could this actually be? And we can look at it in another way too, it’s like wow, I’m predicting this but jeez, I wanna be predicting this. Just another aspect of this prediction is this can be something that starts to impact us months in advance, so example is say that the last few times that I’ve had a performance review with my boss, every time it’s been a real tax on my body budget, a real withdrawal. So even like three months or six months in advance I’m thinking about that meeting and guess what’s happening? It’s already having an impact on me because I’m predicting body… you know, it might go like this and so, ok, let’s predict this. So I’m feeling it already and it’s six months later, it’s not even there at the moment. So I just wanted to highlight that, it’s not just things in the moment, it can be impacting us like oh jeez, I’ve gotta have that conversation with that person, oh jeez. But then all of a sudden we get into that meeting and they may show up different. That’s what we call a prediction error because at that moment then we have to reconcile it. It could be wow, maybe my boss has been doing some self-development and this is a new way of going, wow, wouldn’t that be great. Or it could be eh, you know, that’s not them, they’re always like this anyway so I disregard it. But the thing is I can continue to discard it but that’s then, if we start looking at our work in terms of relationships, what is the impact that that has? So, this whole thing gets me thinking about just being curious. All of a sudden something’s coming up and I catch myself doing this all the time now, I’m like hmm what am I predicting here? That I’m having this feeling because of this situation, starting to get really curious, is that what I really want? What else could I be doing? 

 

KC – Yeah, when I think about the power of story it’s such a… it’s a double edged sword in many ways because those worries that we play out in our mind about our worst fears, losing someone we love or perhaps losing a job or whatever it is, even when we’re rehearsing them in our minds which we think is a way to control them in some way, we’re living them because the body doesn’t know any different. The body responds as if it’s in that moment and I just think about the long term damage of that that we do to ourselves through these worry stories, these worry narratives, and like you’re saying, if we can disrupt that pattern through what am I predicting now? You know, what is the 2% truth in this worry or this concern? And, I guess, how can we see it differently? Stepping back, using that wider lens, that systems lens to see the whole picture of what’s potentially going on. 

 

FC – Well, one thing that comes to mind is one of our foundational tools is the third entity exercise. What if I started to have a conversation with whatever that is? A lot of times people think of the third entity, you know, it’s just a conversation I have with another person over there. And for those listening who’s not familiar with it we have this exercise where we get into, you have a hot spot, like a five, four, five out of a ten and it could be another person or it could be a situation and imagining having that conversation, you’re having a discussion with it to say what I feel about this, what do I want? And then actually embodying it, that could be quite interesting because then when you get to that position of the relationship, the third entity at the top of the triangle, what’s trying to happen between me and that subject or that area that’s also triggering me or, in this case, is bringing up those particular emotions? What are your thoughts on that one? Think about that. 

 

KC – Yeah, it’s actually a good example Floyd because it’s actually so physically, often we get our clients to move around the triangle. And I think taking the worries or concerns or whatever it is out of our brains and embodying them in a different way is powerful because I think a lot of this stuff does just get locked in the brain and it’s quite hard to process it in a more clear and systemic way when it’s just locked up there. 

 

FC – Another one that’s really coming to me recently and it’s brilliant, it was one of our people, they’re actually going through the program right now, they have their system integration as their next course and they were sharing with me about how they’ve been using the paper constellation with themselves. And the paper constellation, you know, we draw the as is and we can draw the how we want it to be. And so, I applied that with a scenario that I had and what it gave me was a visual immediately – what was I having a conflict with? And so, you know, it can be events, it can be things, not just people. And I found that started to give me some insights about wow, on this particular subject my relationship with this thing, event, it’s either strong, weak, it’s conflictional, and what that did was it started to give me some thoughts as like wow, what’s behind it? And I loved going back to that example you gave of under the hood, what’s under the hood? And from now it gave me not only the awareness, it gave me some thoughts about how can I know be an action, what are some of those things I can do to go wow, that’s my relationship with that? That’s not the relationship I wanted with that particular event or that thing and start to change that. 

 

KC – I love what this conversation’s opened up for me because I realize that quite often human beings are complex but sometimes, if we look under the bonnet to use our metaphor of today, it could be something more simple perhaps, like we were saying, the body budget is tired because we haven’t slept enough or haven’t drunk enough water, you’re dehydrated. And I think it’s so useful that it encompasses all of those things, it encompasses those primal needs and then it builds and there’s the social needs and relational pieces and I think it’s important that we hold all of that as coaches, both for ourselves and our clients because it may be something really complicated and it could be that you’ve got a headache right now not because you’re stressed, just because you haven’t drunk enough water today! 

 

FC – Oh, absolutely. And what I also appreciate what you’re highlighting is in Lisa’s work she talks about how we’re such a social species that actually we regulate each other’s body budget. So, when a child is born the care takers, the one’s helping to regulate, feeding, taking care of, and we find that in our relationships. So imagine in a work environment if the situation is we’re together and we’re actually taxing each other’s body budget look at the impact that that has. Now think about us coming to work with that system. And if we can get them to where they’re now having this belongingness, this connection together, and we have a wealth of tools, we have a wealth of skills that allow us to help teams to do that, guess what happens if now that they’re body budgets are regulated together. So they as a system, they’re sitting there and they’re like wow, they’re getting a deposit each day. That energy that was being used up because of things that was happening in that work environment or that couple, that relationship, now can go to something else. Think about, you know, that resources that are being tied up can go to creative ideas. What’s possible? What’s really powerful about starting to learn and read more about neuroscience is understanding how this stuff can actually help support not only me as the coach, you know, how I regulate myself when I’m in those coaching sessions so I can be best there for the systems, but also understanding what’s potentially also happening under the bonnet with my clients and being able to, with my coaching plan, where we’re taking them too, help support them, to get them to where their body budgets are actually having a deposit, not a withdrawal. That really fascinates me. 

 

KC – Yeah because, I guess even just having an awareness of what’s going on, there’s a lot of busyness or tiredness in the system right now, and then getting them to tune into that so they can turn towards with their energy as you say and sort of share that collective body budget as opposed to turning away. I’m sure that’s very healing for a system in stress or conflict. 

 

FC – Well, this is one of those things she talks about in one of her chapters in How Emotions Are Made that those chronic being tired all the time, insomnia, how that has an impact, because guess what then that can start leading too? Some bugger health issues. So if this system we’re working with is tired, even using some of this as education we talk about in our work, bringing in some education to help support, you know when we talk about Gottman, and also Gottman’s work helps you, that turning towards versus turning away, what he realized in his love labs in Seattle, he and his wife Julie when they’re looking at what’s happening, those who turn towards versus those who turn away. And recently, in one of your podcasts there was a beautiful example of this, in one of the World Works recent bonus series sessions where such a great example, they were talking about how they’re actually being coached by the Gottman’s and how turning towards, what that did, because now imagine the impact that that has because it starts to create a deposit in our energy versus if we turn away there’s that withdrawal. So, us being aware can help, because imagine, you know, when you’re working with that system, go wow, that’s a repair bit, catching those things, catching them doing those things that actually help support them to help regulate each other’s body budget and to help create these deposits versus withdrawals, that can have lasting impact way beyond the coaching that we’re doing with that particular system. 

 

KC – Gosh, this is such a wonderful conversation because it reminds me once again that we’re just human. We’re just human, our clients are just human, we’re not superhuman and we have this limited operating system up here that has a limited budget! And actually being aware of that, for ourselves and our clients, it’s heartwarming and humbling because it makes you realize that we are a lot more similar than we often realize. 

 

FC – Absolutely. Yeah. There’s a lot here, if you’d ask me the question where do you begin, Lisa Feldman Barrat has a Ted Talk, you can start somewhere like there, David Rock has a lot of material out there, we also in our community we have Laurie Shuck, she does stuff with neuroscience, there’s different, you know, resources out there and you can just start to become aware or familiar. And then if you wanted to go into something like Ann or Ursula’s program, things like that, to even deepen the knowledge. All that’s there, the possibility, and I hope that’s what helps your listeners just to keep curious. How can knowing some of this help me and my coaching? And as your first question was how did I get interested in this, it’s from the certification process, going through that IPR, where I was learning so much about myself, going under the bonnet and getting really fascinated and curious about this and then I started reading and attending different programs to bring that knowledge to my clients and our vocation. 

 

KC – What a wonderful conversation Floyd, I can’t thank you enough for helping us to get under the bonnet of ourselves as coaches, as human beings and then also for other people, for our clients, our friends, our families, our communities. I think it’s such a wonderfully important topic to bring to the community. 

 

FC – Ah, thank you Katie, it’s always a pleasure to be doing this with you. 

 

KC – Take care Floyd, thank you. 

 

[Music outro begins 38:40] 

 

KC – A huge thanks to Floyd for that fascinating discussion around neuroscience and what the latest research can teach us about the relationship with ourselves. Here are my key takeaways. There’s a classical view of how emotions are created, that emotions get activated when something occurs. Where the constructed view of emotions suggests that we create these emotions and it’s done through a process called prediction. We predict based on feelings in our body, signals in our environment and past experiences. The brain is constantly making guesses and forecasting what is going on. If we can disrupt this pattern by questioning this prediction process we can start to live more intentionally. One of the components of this prediction cycle includes past experiences and that includes everything, what we read, what we listen too, the things we watch. So, one way we can start to take back control is to interrogate all those things you’re digesting on a daily basis, the things that become part of us as part of that prediction process. When we look at the constructed model we start to see that we have much more control over our emotions than we might realize. When we start to understand our body budget we can start to be more intentional in how we spend our energy. Start to think about what people, project or places give you energy and what things drain your body budget. For more information about work of brain researcher Lisa Feldman Barrat, do check out her Ted Talk which we’ve linked in the show notes. Also as mentioned by Floyd we highly recommend her books Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain and How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. I’m happy to announce that Floyd will be back with another episode around neuroscience. In the mean time for more information about his work do check out CRRGlobal.com. For over 18 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time. We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole.

 

[Outro 41:14 – end]