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Quieting the lizard brain

Guest post by: Seth Godin

Article Overview: How can I explain the never-ending irrationality of human behavior?

Quieting the lizard brain

How can I explain the never-ending irrationality of human behavior? We say we want one thing, then we do another. We say we want to be successful but we sabotage the job interview. We say we want a product to come to market, but we sandbag the shipping schedule. We say we want to be thin but we eat too much. We say we want to be smart but we skip class or don't read that book the boss lent us.

The contradictions never end. When someone shows up and acts without contradiction, we're amazed. When an athlete just does the sport, or when a writer just writes the words, we can't help but watch, astonished at the purity of their actions. Why is it so difficult to do what we say we're going to do?

The lizard brain.

Or as Stephen Pressfield describes it, the resistance. The resistance is the voice in the back of our head telling us to back off, be careful, go slow, compromise. The resistance is writer's block and putting jitters and every project that ever shipped late because people couldn't stay on the same page long enough to get something out the door.

The resistance grows in strength as we get closer to shipping, as we get closer to an insight, as we get closer to the truth of what we really want. That's because the lizard hates change and achievement and risk.

The lizard is a physical part of your brain, the pre-historic lump near the brain stem that is responsible for fear and rage and reproductive drive. Why did the chicken cross the road? Because her lizard brain told her to.

Want to know why so many companies can't keep up with Apple? It's because they compromise, have meetings, work to fit in, fear the critics and generally work to appease the lizard. Meetings are just one symptom of an organization run by the lizard brain. Late launches, middle of the road products and the rationalization that goes with them are others.

The amygdala isn't going away. Your lizard brain is here to stay, and your job is to figure out how to quiet it and ignore it. This is so important, I wanted to put it on the cover of my new book. We realized, though, that the lizard brain is freaked out by a picture of itself, and if you want to sell books to someone struggling with the resistance (that would be all of us) best to keep it a little more on the down low.

Now you've seen the icon and you know its name. What are you going to do about it?

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Article Tags: amygdala, athlete, boss, brain stem, chicken cross, compromise, contradiction, contradictions, human behavior, irrationality, jitters, job interview, lizard, purity, rage, rationalization, resistance, shipping schedule, stephen pressfield, why did the chicken cross the road



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Re: Does Anyone have any New Ideas for a Business - Yes it is good for the brain and who knows what can come out of it. Somebody one day may make a lot of money out of something that evolved from this kind of brain storming. MichelleJ
The greatest gold mine in the world - The greatest gold mine in the world is not in South Africa, nor in Ghanna. It is not in the cementry either as someone said. The greatest gold mine in the world is between your two ears: your brain. Every ideas stem from our thinking. this is the reason we need to think more than before. Every block buster movie come from the brain. Every invetion and software ideas comes from the brain. Think for 1 hour on your project everyday for five days in a week and do it for a month and you will see how many ideas that will come out of it to make it better and better.
Re: The greatest gold mine in the world - [quote="ideasuniversity":2gpyfxbp]The greatest gold mine in the world is not in South Africa, nor in Ghanna. It is not in the cementry either as someone said. The greatest gold mine in the world is between your two ears: your brain. Every ideas stem from our thinking. this is the reason we need to think more than before. Every block buster movie come from the brain. Every invetion and software ideas comes from the brain. Think for 1 hour on your project everyday for five days in a week and do it for a month and you will see how many ideas that will come out of it to make it better and better.[/quote:2gpyfxbp] The mind is a great tool to accomplish many things. I've always believed that the amount of creativity that we use also makes a large difference. I work with people who are creative and others who aren't - and there results differ from one another. Speaking of creativity, I've been amazed to find how many authors (who can be very creative in their books), but many show little to no creativity when they promote. Shri
Re: Blog For Women Entrepreneurs - I just tooka look at it. It seems to be updated only once a week... but there's some interesting info there. Here's an interesting thing: [quote:1dom82zd]While we’ve only scratched the surface of brain study, here’s one fact we do know: a woman’s brain has four times as many connections between the left and right hemispheres as that of a man’s. Does this make women smarter or more superior than men? No. Well, some women think it does. Okay a lot of women do, but usually only after a situation involving either a road map, a Christmas tree, or jalapeno peppers.[/quote:1dom82zd]
Business plans are a waste of time - I really like what Shri said in a previous post about how the usefulness of a business plan depends on the individual. However, after reading some of Martin Lindstrom's "Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy"... I'm beginning to think that all business plans and traditional market research (i.e. using focus groups, surveys, etc.) are a total waste of time. No joke, I'm serious. Lindstrom says "That's because, just like market research, economic modeling is based on the premise that people behave in a predictably rational way", but "Most of the brain is dominated by automatic processes, rather than deliberate thinking. A lot of what happens in the brain is emotional, not cognitive." ("Buyology" pg 28). Basically, consumers will tell you one thing, and do simply do another with their unconscious minds.


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