Unleash Your Smile!

Smiles brought such pleasing responses from family and friends, as a child, that I began to capitalize on smiling. As a young adult, people nicknamed me smiley.  Smiling at folks is so natural for me now, I don't even think about it.  Often people say that are attracted to me because of my smile.  I started thinking more about the power of a smile and discovered exactly why it can be so potent.

Smile for Smile  In a crowd, I find it fascinating to smile intentionally one-on-one at folks who pass by me. To make it more personal, I look each individual in the eye as well.  With few exceptions, each person smiles back, though we are strangers.

Mirror Effect  Intriguingly, the mirror neurons in another person's brain respond when she sees someone's action with a specific intent behind it.  Random actions don't have the same effect, David Rock notes.  Why?  mirror neurons seem to be the brain's mechanisms for understanding another person's goals and objectives, and the upshot is feeling connected to her.

A smile must be genuine - people easily detect a fake smile

Unleash the power of your smile by smiling...

at a spouse or colleague - especially when you don't feel like it. As the smile is returned it can transform your mood.

when introduced to someone new.  A smile enhances an opportunity to make a lifetime friendship from that connection.

at an appropriate moment as you listen intently to unique ideas or someone's story.

when you face intense events such as an accident or death of a loved one.  I find that it takes my mind to the most pleasant experiences I've had with the person and smiling calms me down.

when someone close lets you down.  Giving them a genuine form of encouragement can turn an event upside-down, which could otherwise cause a problem.

to begin your day with sunshine inside.  Your actions form inside out...

at folks many just pass by.  People in wheelchairs, from other cultures, too thin, too heavy and especially those with purple tips in their hair feel a lift from you.  I find as I go a step further to initiate a conversation by asking a 2-footed question, I am blessed.

when people serve you well - or even fail to.  Somehow it lifts the service up a notch.

when you "have to" write an essay or blog.  Missing motivation and inspiration return.

as you look for solutions to problems.  Get into an activity that really makes you smile.  In 20 minutes or less hat brings a solution aha and it might work for you.

Play it forward... Make a difference as you unleash your smile to others.  Any more ideas you'd like to share?

Practice May Not Make Perfect!

Interestingly, rote practice, the kind of practice in which you do something over and over, may not gain you much.  Mixing in a variety of skills, however, will. The idea that practice does not necessarily make perfect seems paradoxical, and it relates to the way your brain functions. 

Practicing variable skills antes up retention of the skill.  It's so, because each time golfers use a different club or vary a shot, they solve the motor problem anew... and perhaps from a fresh perspective. 

Problem solving engages the brain's prefrontal cortex, associated with higher level learning.  Some folks have no idea that sports skills reach to higher cognition in the brain, especially when some folks refer to high school athletes as "jocks." 

I'm an avid golfer.  At our local course, I noticed some golfers spend a great deal of time hitting a drive, over and over, at a golf range.  According to USC and UCLA research findings, doing the same skill over and over, leads to a lesser degree of retention - since repetition engages the primary motor cortex, associated with simple motor learning.

"We gravitate toward a simple, rote practice structure because we're basically lazy, and we don't want to work hard," Carolee Winstein, a USC researcher on the study reports.

A lot of what we do learn comes through observing how others accomplish a skill.  "Imitation learning," according to Robert Sekuler, Brandeis neuroscientist, "is crucial for acquiring many of the skills used in daily life."  It's the "monkey see, monkey do" principle.  Trick is... to duplicate that in your own life.  Try doing it yourself - shortly after giving yourself enough observation time to capture nuances involved - while these are still in the brain's working memory.  That's critical!

You can see why smart problem solving's needed to acquire a motor skill!  My practice sessions will be revamped - that's for sure.

How would you rate the methods you've used to lift up your kinesthetic skills?

A Good Laugh Bursts from the Soul

"A smile starts on the lips, a grin spreads to the eyes, a chuckle comes from the belly; but a good laugh bursts forth from the soul, overflows, and bubbles all around”   ~ Carolyn Birmingham

Laughter's good medicine... Mirthful laughter

• helps decrease cortisol, leading to stress reduction
• increases production of antibodies
• enhances mood through increased endorphins
• lowers bad cholesterol and systolic blood pressure
• raises good cholesterol
• decreases inflammation in diabetics

Ever notice how laughter's contagious?  The mirror neurons in our brain lead us to mimic those around us.

Hope you enjoyed a good laugh with a friend today.

Who Shoulders Blame and Why Should We Care?

Ever miss seeing a person in your side-view mirror? When something goes wrong, pointing a finger's more often a first reactions rather than admitting a mistake? Ever wonder why blaming someone else comes so easily?

Photo by a2gemma

Consider this scenario...

At work, a note with an outlined project got lost in the pile on my desk. A week later when Dr. Weber inquired if the project was ready, I asked for the details. It was humbling to realize I had been careless. I confessed that I somehow lost it.

Why is it so hard to admit a mistake?

Ego and social conditioning.

We all want to look good. A natural instinct arises to protect our self-image. Over time, unless we learn to own up to mistakes and be accountable, we easily blame a circumstance to "save face."

We see many other people blaming others in the course of a week. Blaming others is soon embedded in our brains, since we witness it frequently. It works like a mirror-image. The old saying, "Monkey see, monkey do," best describes the action as discussed by Dr. Daniel Glaser.

However, letting ego and social conditioning shape our actions often spells disaster. And in this recession, fear can become more of a factor driving actions...

"Blame creates a culture of fear," Nathanael J. Fast of Stanford said, "and this leads to a host of negative consequences for individuals and for groups."

A manager can keep a lid on the behavior by rewarding employees who learn from their mistakes and by making a point to acknowledge publicly his or her own mistakes, Fast says. Managers may also want to assign blame, when necessary, in private and offer praise in public to create a positive attitude in the workplace.

Or, managers could follow the lead of companies such as Intuit, which implemented a "When Learning Hurts" session where they celebrated and learned from mistakes, rather than pointing fingers and assigning blame. The blame contagion research provides empirical evidence that such a practice can avoid negative effects in the culture of the organization.

Capitalize on more magic from your mirror neurons! By paying more attention to leaders who "celebrate and learn from mistakes," we'll create a brain-friendly work culture where people thrive and productivity reaches peaks.

How might you use these strategies to create a more brain-friendly climate that energizes others, rather than blaming them when mistakes are made where you work?

Business Words to Impress?

Ever notice that business leaders have a language all their own to impress or look good? After all, the ability to "take charge" depends on just the right words. How many of the following business expressions shared in the University of West Florida Writing Lab have you used or encountered?

1. IT 'S IN PROGRESS - So wrapped in red tape that the situation is almost hopeless.

2. WE'LL LOOK INTO IT - By the time the wheel makes a full turn, we assume you will have forgotten about it.

3. A PROGRAM - Any assignment that can't be completed by one telephone call.

4. CONSULTANT (or expert) - Any ordinary person more than 50 miles from home (must have briefcase).

5. TO ACTIVATE - To make copies and add more names to the memo.

6. TO IMPLEMENT A PROGRAM - Hire more people and expand the office.

7. UNDER CONSIDERATION - Never heard of it.

8. UNDER ACTIVE CONSIDERATION - We are looking in the files for it.

9. A MEETING - A mass mulling by master minds.

10. TO NEGOTIATE - To seek a meeting of minds without a knocking together of heads.

11. RE-ORIENTATION - Getting used to working again.

12. RELIABLE SOURCE - The person you just met.

13. INFORMED SOURCE - The person who told the guy you just met.

14. UNIMPEACHABLE SOURCE - The person who started the rumor originally.

15. A CLARIFICATION - To fill in the background with so many details that the foreground goes underground.

16. WE ARE MAKING A SURVEY - We need more time to think of an answer.

17. NOTE AND INITIAL - Let's spread the responsibility for this.

18. SEE ME OR LET'S DISCUSS - You're in trouble.

19. LET'S GET TOGETHER ON THIS - I'm assuming you're as confused as I am.

20. GIVE US THE BENEFIT OF YOUR PRESENT THINKING - We'll listen to what you have to say as long as it doesn't interfere with what we have already decided to do.

21. WILL ADVISE YOU IN DUE COURSE - If we figure it out, we'll let you know.

22. TAKE SOME DICTATION - Correctly type this document for me.

When you consider all these phrases, you'll think twice when you hear one!

Interestingly the brain's mirror neurons give away intentions behind these words to folks on the other end...

"Understanding the intentions of others while watching their action is a fundamental building block of social behavior," said principal investigator Dr. Marco Iacoboni, an associate professor in-residence of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute's Ahmanson Lovelace Brain Mapping Center and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "Our findings show for the first time that intentions behind actions of others can be recognized by the motor system using a mirror mechanism in the brain. The same area of the brain responsible for understanding behavior can predict behavior as well."

Goes to show that words can work for or against us! Check out Brad Shorr's Word Sell to see how.

Heard any other expressions you could add to the list?

Does Monkey See, Monkey Do, Describe You? New Research

At your workplace - monkey see - monkey do? Well...it depends. Researchers recently learned that we resonate more with actions we can already perform. Here're very intriguiging findings that show why and what that means...

Daniel Glaser, at University College, London, studies brain cells called mirror neurons. These cells're active when people jump, twist and turn, give a high five, or simply move their bodies. But the exciting part is that Daniel Glaser and other researchers have discovered mirror neurons activate when we simply observe someone else make those moves. Glaser concludes that watching or doing for these brain cells works precisely in the same way.

And interestingly, to learn more about this phenomenon, Glaser used the Royal Ballet and experts in capoeira, a Brazilian martial art in his quest to know how human experience shapes the way our brains see the world.

"I chose dance because in dance you've got this vocabulary of movement, these standard moves that all dancers can do," Glaser explains. "Also you've got a system of professional regulation—you get to be a professional dancer. So we didn't have to worry about measuring people's skills. We had this whole population of experts that we could just tap right into."

Glaser and his team found results fascinating...

The team zeroed in on results in different areas of the brain. Broadly ... the visual brain, which does the seeing and the movement control brain, or the premotor cortex.

When research participants were lying in the scanner, watching movement, the team hypothesized the visual brain would see differently. However, they were surprised! It was the movement brain that determined whether the style observed was a move that they could perform or not.

Here's Dr. Glaser's take on the findings...

There's a form of resonance if you like, that your own motor control cortex, the bit that would control your own movements, is more excited, it turns out, when you see other people doing moves that you can do. And that's probably because it's resonating with those movements better. It can interpret them in its own terms in a way that it can't when it's seeing a movement style which it doesn't know how to perform.

How might people benefit from this research?

Some people who find it very difficult to read the emotions of others. Among these are people with autistic spectrum disorders. For people who have difficulty reading emotions, one hypothesis, which has not yet been tested, but one possibility is that they have a problem understanding the movements of others, and this may contribute to or have caused their difficulty in reading the emotions of others.

Glaser is excited that there are some disorders which other researchers could help. "Possibilities include disability or spinal injury, right the way through to disorders of emotional cognition," he says, especially "autism—inability to read the states of others."

Here's how Glaser frames his findings overall...

But what we're discovering more and more, and in truth the Greeks and the Renaissance scholars also had an understanding of this, is that vision is an active process. Seeing is a process of projecting what you expect out into the world and constantly matching your experience, your prejudice, your expectation with what's out there. For me the mirror neurons are a particular system which embodies this principle...

So, what does all this have to do with your work? Glaser's research shows in part why it's hard to change the status quo. People naturally fall into comfort zones since they resonate with familiar activities they can do. To learn new movements or skills requires the brain's working memory.

Mirror neuron research can inform professional development or training in many work settings. Though dancers resonate much more watching movements they can do, they also work hard to learn new steps and moves.

In similar ways, critical changes at work tax peoples' working memory. New skills take focus, high energy, time and practice. Thoughts?

More on mirror neurons and Daniel Glaser's work.