The EmPOWERed You

Follow along for the next several weeks as we explore emPOWERed you

In a most powerful (pun intended) podcast Brene Brown interviews Elizabeth Lesser on the power of women’s stories. Within the podcast Brene mentions the components of Power Over vs. Power With. Most often I have heard this discussed as it relates to a corporation, community, organization, or even a family. For the next several weeks I am going to discuss how each component can be applied to accessing individual power.

First up: Strong/weak or Hierarchal model vs. Partnership model.

So happy to start here. This is something I have been thinking about ever since I was studying the primal brain vs. the prefrontal cortex in my coaching certification. I feel like a common discussion {especially in the coaching world} is to talk about our primitive brain vs. our prefrontal cortex in a way that suggests that the PFC is {of course} superior to our primitive brain.

Before going any further, I want to clarify that what I am going to discuss here is a gross simplification of the brain’s complex systems. There is no way {in a short blog post or in a series of books, for that matter} that I could do the brain science justice. For our discussions: your prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain that makes logical decisions, plans ahead and is basically considered the mature part of your brain. Your primitive {or primal} brain, however, is the part of your brain that wants you to stay safe and comfortable. It is the part of your brain that makes impulsive decisions to keep out of harms way. {both physical and emotional harm}

In a classic illustration. You decide {with your pre frontal cortex} that you want to lose 10 pounds. You get up in the morning and eat a healthy breakfast. One hour later your mind wanders from whatever task you are on and you think about the snacks in the pantry just waiting for your tasting. That “let’s go get in the pantry” brain= primal brain. How do I know? Well…your primal brain does not want you to be bored {Emotional safety} and so the quickest fix it comes up with for you: food+yum=not bored.

See how effective that primal brain was? BUUUUT…after you consume your snacks, you start to feel bad. ugh. What about your goal to lose 10 pounds?? And the battle of the brain begins.

What I would like to offer is that our success {or our power} is not found in our conquering our primitive brain with our prefrontal cortex but the real power comes when we partner up the parts of our brain. As we study them and appreciate their roles in our survival and basic functioning, then we have the opportunity to partner their missions and have them work with respect for each other rather than in competition with each other. 

Back to the food analogy, if we understand that our prefrontal cortex is good at planning and making goals then we can take the opportunity to make a plan for ourselves. However, as we do so, we can also appreciate our primal brain and remember what it is going to need. For example, know ahead of time that you are going to get bored during the day and stray from your task; use your planning ahead to come up with an alternate {less calorie consuming} activity…walk the dog, social media for a timed 5 minute break, call a friend etc.

If we spend a lot of energy beating ourselves up for going to the pantry then we will lose the opportunity to understand what message our brain is trying to tell us by taking us to the pantry. We got bored. Why? Do we need a more exciting or creative task to perform? Do we need to find a way to make our work more fun? All of this useful information could be available to us as soon as we stop judging our primal brain with our prefrontal cortex and actually listen to the messages within us. And..the reason this is so important is that in order for you to really thrive, your brain must be on board {all of it}.

So, our first step in becoming empowered is to truly know yourself; to understand your complexities and to accept and partner up with them. Understand your weak areas and respect them as much as you do your strengths.

After all, they are probably trying to give us a message that, if listened to, may be that one thing we have been missing.

Powerful partnership=prefrontal+primitive

Look for more posts in this series published every Tuesday

xoKathleen