Words Can Change Your Brain (16 page)

Let me give you an example. Clara and Bart were having multiple problems communicating with each other. He was passive-aggressive in his behavior toward her and she was openly critical and hostile toward him. They would fight over small things, which would lead to hostilities that were out of proportion to the infraction. They had stopped being friends in the relationship, so I decided to try the inner values exercise with them.

I had them do a brief relaxation exercise; then I asked them to visualize in their minds someone they loved dearly and to feel those feelings of love. I then asked them to focus on their greatest core value and to allow it to come forward in their mind. For Bart, it was his need to feel supported. For Clara, it was her need to feel accepted.

When we discussed their experience, they realized that they were not being sensitive to the other person’s core value. I explained that when we violate our own core value, we feel disempowered. I helped Clara become aware of how important support was to Bart, and I asked Bart to practice meditating on the essence of support for a few minutes each day, using the inner values technique. He was to focus on what it felt like receiving support, giving support, and filling his heart with that experience. I also asked Bart to think about how he could show Clara more acceptance.

Clara was asked to meditate a few minutes each day on the concept of acceptance—to feel acceptance in her heart for herself and for others, and to feel what it was like to give and receive it.

One week of practice made a dramatic improvement in their relationship. They each said that they felt much closer to the other and more understood. They were becoming friends again, and this one exercise did more for their relationship than all the other work we had done before.

I have employed this technique with other couples, and in each case it has helped them. If they practice daily, contemplating their greatest value, the results are dramatically better, because it helps both individuals feel more empathy for each other.

Is there a general rule that incorporates the most basic values of communication? We think so. It is a paraphrasing of the Golden Rule: speak unto others as you would like them to speak unto you, and listen to others as you would like them to listen to you.

Establishing Lasting Business and Professional Values

We all seem to share similar communication values, but research is beginning to show that personal and professional values frequently differ.
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This can present a problem, because when there is incongruence between inner values and work-related values, emotional burnout is likely to take place.
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In the health-care and medical community, this happens frequently. For example, physician burnout has been estimated to be close to 50 percent in some parts of the country, and a study of thirty-two hundred Canadian doctors could actually predict
who would experience exhaustion and poor work performance by identifying the people whose personal values conflicted with the values promoted in the work environment.
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This has strong implications for the business world. As researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, advise, when your management strategies match the values of your workers, greater job satisfaction is reported, and less people are likely to quit.
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Here’s an exercise created by Dr. Roger P. Levin, DDS, which anyone can use to integrate their personal and professional values
:

To identify business values, make a list of approximately 15 words that you feel are the core of your practice [i.e., business] values or beliefs. This list might include such terms as integrity, balance, profit, growth, challenge, caring, excellence, quality, trust, appreciation and enthusiasm. After you have created a list, the key is to spend the next 10 days paring it down to no more than six words. The rule is that you can add a word to the list, but only if you take one off. You can combine words that have similar meaning, such as integrity and honesty. You ultimately will have to eliminate less important words . . .

Once you know your four to six business values, you can strengthen your practice and build a high-powered team . . . [then] repeat the process for your personal values. It can be insightful and fun.
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Spiritual Values

Throughout most of history, the question of values has been a spiritual one, and sacred texts have attempted to identify which values will lead to the greatest satisfaction, in this life and whatever may lie beyond. But if we were to make a list of all the spiritual values that have been proposed, we could probably fill this book from cover to cover.

Despite centuries of theological debate, our species has yet to come up with a mutually agreed-upon list of which values are most essential for our happiness or our survival. Yet everyone has an opinion. Perhaps the easiest way to explain this lack of resolution is to compare it to the nature of the human brain. Unlike other animals, each person has a unique pattern of brain activity, and as we’ve explained previously, no two people—and no two brains—give the same meaning or value to the same word. We’re unique, and so the values we choose to live by, to speak through, are as unique as the ever-changing neurons that shape the decisions we make.

Even the word “spirituality” has defied definition within the religious, philosophical, and psychological communities. But to our way of thinking, spirituality and values are often the same. We choose to ask about your “innermost” value rather than your “highest”
value because this phrasing sidesteps theology and speaks equally to believers and disbelievers alike. An ongoing research project at the University of California, Los Angeles, takes a similar approach:

Spirituality points to our interiors, our subjective life, as contrasted to the objective domain of material events and objects. Our spirituality is reflected in the values and ideals that we hold most dear, our sense of who we are and where we come from, our beliefs about why we are here—the meaning and purpose we see in our lives—and our connectedness to each other and to the world around us. Spirituality also captures those aspects of our experience that are not easy to define or talk about, such as inspiration, creativity, the mysterious, the sacred, and the mystical. Within this very broad perspective, we believe spirituality is a universal impulse and reality.
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In this world of competing beliefs, we feel it is essential to promote a values-driven dialogue that while related to political and religious beliefs for many people, also transcends those beliefs. Thus the foundational element of Compassionate Communication is to honor the core values of both the listener and the speaker. All we have to do is to stop outside of the meeting room, or pause for a moment before we walk through the door of our home, and ask ourselves this question: what do I value most about the person I am about to meet?

If we did this more often, the risk of engaging in conflict would recede.

C
HAPTER 8

Twelve Steps to Intimacy, Cooperation, and Trust

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peaking briefly. Speaking slowly. Listening deeply. Showing appreciation and remaining positive. Observing our inner speech and cultivating inner silence. Studying the other person’s facial expressions, body gestures, and vocal inflections and mirroring them to build neural resonance. Focusing on your inner values and bringing them into every conversation as you remain as relaxed and as present as you can. These are the twelve strategies that are essential if you want to build meaningful, trustworthy, and long-term productive relationships with others. If you ignore any of them, the research suggests that you will compromise your ability to communicate and increase the risk of conflict.

Whether we are talking to a friend or a lover or a colleague at work, and whether we are talking to a child, a stranger, or a person suffering from an emotional or cognitive disease, these communication strategies will ensure the best dialogue possible. When we choose our words carefully, and orchestrate them with the strategies above, we enhance the comprehension of the listener in a way that fosters compassion and increases friendly cooperation. But the words we speak and listen to are only a small part of the communication process. It is the
way
we say them and the
way
we listen to them that makes all the difference in the world.

To improve our conversational skills we have to do several things. First we need to recognize that the way we normally speak is inadequate, filled with habituated patterns that were mostly set in place in adolescence and early adulthood. Then we have to consciously interrupt those speaking and listening habits, over and over again. And finally we need to replace those old communication styles with new and effective ones. This requires experiential training, and training takes time.

Fortunately, the twenty-minute exercise we explain in the next chapter will guide you through these twelve strategies and allow you to practice them with a partner. Even a few rounds of practice will be sufficient to give you enough experience to take these strategies and incorporate them into your conversations at home and at work. They will significantly improve your ability to empathize with others, and, according to our research studies of similar types of exercises, you should be able to alter the structure and function of key areas in your brain that relate to improved social awareness, enhanced cognition, and greater emotional control in eight weeks or less. You’ll be actually rewiring your brain to communicate more effectively with others.

The Twelve Components of Compassionate Communication

In this chapter we’ll review the evidence supporting each of the strategies that we want you practice when talking and listening to others. The first six steps are preparatory. They’re what you do before
you enter a room to engage another person in a conversation, and they are best carried out in the following order:

1. Relax

2. Stay present

3. Cultivate inner silence

4. Increase positivity

5. Reflect on your deepest values

6. Access a pleasant memory

These steps create an inner state of intense awareness and calm, which is essential for engaging in one of the most crucial aspects of communication:

7. Observe nonverbal cues

If you are not conscious of the subtle changes in the other person’s tone of voice, facial expressions, and body gestures, you are likely to miss important clues that tell you what that person is really thinking and feeling. You won’t know if the person understands you or if they’re even paying attention to what you say. Then, when you engage in dialogue, the following five strategies should be consistently adhered to:

8. Express appreciation

9. Speak warmly

10. Speak slowly

11. Speak briefly

12. Listen deeply

How many people conscientiously apply these techniques on a daily basis? Far fewer than we would wish. It’s like weight loss: we all know what’s required, but we easily slip back into our old habits. It’s human nature, and it takes a lot of neural energy to interrupt an old behavior. To build a new habit, we have to repeat a new behavior hundreds and hundreds of times. Eventually, it will become second nature. It begins by taking a few deep breaths and relaxing as you consciously bring your fullest attention and awareness into the present moment.

Step 1: Relax

Stress is now considered the number one killer in the world. Stress generates irritability, irritability generates anger, and anger shuts down the ability to communicate and cooperate with others.
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So before you enter a conversation with anyone, spend sixty seconds doing any variation of the following relaxation exercises.

First notice which parts of your body are tense. Assign a number on a scale of one to ten (with ten being extremely tense) to signify your state of relaxation or stress. Write down the number on a sheet of paper.

For the next thirty seconds, breathe in slowly to the count of five, and then exhale slowly to the count of five. Repeat this three times. Now, if possible, yawn a few times and notice if your level of relaxation has increased. Assign it a number between one and ten and write it down.

Now slowly stretch your body in any way that feels comfortable and pleasurable, and see if you can immerse yourself completely in the sensation of each stretch. Begin with the muscles of your face, scrunching them up, then stretching them out. Then move down to your shoulders and neck, gently moving your head from side to side and from front to back. Scrunch your shoulders to your ears and let them drop, pushing them down toward the floor.

Next tighten up all of the muscles in your arms and legs. Hold them tightly as you count to ten; then relax them as you shake your hands and feet. Take a few more deep breaths and rest. Once more assign a number to your state of relaxation and write it down, noticing how much you’ve improved.

Can a brief exercise like this really change your brain in ways that will measurably improve your communication skills? Yes! Several fMRI studies have shown that a one-minute relaxation exercise will increase activity in different areas of the cortex that are essential for language, communication, social awareness, mood regulation, and decision making.
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If you increase the length of this relaxation exercise, additional parts of the brain will be activated that help you become more focused and attentive at work.
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Cortisol levels will drop, which means that your levels of biological stress will have decreased.