Justin O'Brien

The DO Lectures – Michael Townsend Williams – Inhale. Exhale. Why we all need to learn how to do this better.

Stimulating nerves in your ear could improve the health of your heart, researchers have discovered.

For your next team building session try singing! Researches from the University of Gothenburg have used Heart Rate Variability to measure what happens when people sing together. Their heart rate variability synchronises – which means they are performing as one – they are on the same wave length. Have  a look at the video here

Presence has many interpretations and has been described in an article in Forbes as “the ability to project gravitas – confidence, poise under pressure and decisiveness. It is a persons speaking skills, assertiveness and the ability to read an audience or situation – and appearance.”

For me I feel it’s more than this. Someone has presence when they don’t have to say anything and you get a positive vibe or feeling from them.  It emanates from their being.   They are comfortable in their own skin, there is no pretence or exaggeration. That’s presence.

People who try to copy the physical traits of someone who has presence get caught out very quickly, the harder they try the worse it gets. They are perceived as a fake. They may have the knowledge and the skill but they don’t have that something that emanates from inside.

But where does it come from?  The place that it comes from is the most powerful signal generator in the human body, it has its own neural network and generates hormones, it generates an electromagnetic field 60 times greater than the brain which radiates several feet outside the human body.  It is of course the heart.

This electromagnetic field that radiates outside the body is the presence we feel – the vibe – and is a significant component of presence. The field can be coded either positively or negatively.  We’ve all felt a bad vibe from someone – which doesn’t necessarily mean they are a bad person, it just means the coding of the electromagnetic field has emanated from the negative emotional state they are in.  Alternatively, a positive emotional state will contribute to a positive electromagnetic field and a positive vibe.

If we want to develop  presence, the types of positive states we may want to achieve include being passionate, enthusiastic, motivated, content, receptive or interested. The types of negative states we want to avoid are being angry, frustrated, anxious, apathetic, inattentive and detached.

So how do we do it? For most of us it can take a lot of work, but the work isn’t hard, it’s just constant. We need to work on three areas, namely our:

1. Physiological skills,
2. Personal skills (EQ) and
3. Interpersonal skills.

There are entire books written on each of these topics so I’m not even going to start discussing them here. But I want to share one technique developed by the team at Complete Coherence called MAP.   This works particularly well with one on one conversations or small groups.

• Move your attention away from your own thinking and drop into the body and breathe.
• Appreciate the other person or your audience and have an ‘unconditional positive regard’ for them.
• Playback the underlying meaning of what you have heard, for example you might say “I got the sense that this is about…”  Not “so what you are saying is…”

Executive presence is a personal journey that involves many intrinsic and extrinsic facets. So here’s a plan to get you started.

1. Speak to your coach – if you haven’t got one get one. From one of the three areas listed above, identify with them one small and easy to do thing that you need to develop.
2. Practise it everyday, don’t stop until it becomes part of you.
3. Like most things worth doing they are not easy to do at the beginning, but they become easy later on. So be patient.

It doesn’t matter what your personality type is, your title or your physical stature, these things do not mean you automatically have presence. Our presence is ultimately determined by how well we grow and mature as a human beings.

 

Comment: Why not even exercise will undo the harm of sitting all day | SBS News.

n the environments of our distant ancestors, food was often scarce, and energy expenditure high. Three factors have all been powerful selective pressures in human evolution:

• Caloric (energy) restriction (CR) in times of food scarcity
• Physical energy expenditure ( e.g. for running, hunting, fighting, artifact making)
• Mental energy expenditure (e.g. for learning, reasoning, strategizing) – known as mental effort.

As our species evolved, individuals that were mentally sharp,  physically fit, and disease or illness-free during periods of limited resource availability and could deal effectively with these energy stressors had an adaptive advantage.

Fasting, Exercise and Mental Effort for Health & Cognition | CogPsyLab.

Yoga practitioners and others have realized the immense physiological and cognitive benefits of breathing techniques for a long time. Science has caught up with this fact and can prove that it actually works. Neurologists and cardiologists not only recognize the benefits but they also now prescribe that when doing these exercises we should breathe through our heart  whilst focusing on a positive thought or experience.  We know that focused, even and rhythmical breathing (about 5.8 breathes per minute) creates cardiac coherence which gives us a smooth heart beat resulting in clarity of thought.  But what some of you may not know is that

“more recently, it was discovered that the heart also secretes oxytocin, commonly referred to as the ‘love’ or bonding hormone. In addition to its functions in childbirth and lactation, recent evidence indicates that this hormone is also involved in cognition, tolerance, adaptation, complex sexual and maternal behaviours, learning social cues and the establishment of enduring pair bonds. Concentrations of oxytocin in the heart were found to be as high as those found in the brain”. Royal College of Psychiatrists 

So by focusing on a positive thought or great experience we can extend the physiological and cognitive benefits of breathing by the release of oxytocin as well as dopamine and noradrenaline to name but a few.

This doesn’t mean we become super chilled out and relaxed, but present, focused and sharp as a tack!

Have a look at this post to get some ideas on how to think positively.

Five brain shifts to become happier this winter, plus a few diet tips for improving your mood | National Post.

We already use all of our brain – it’s just that some parts are only in first gear.  In order to get  into top gear we need to create more pathways more connections – this is neuroplasticity. Our brains tend to be quite lazy and will conserve energy by replicating the the way we do things – habits in other words.  Sometimes these work against us and sometime for us.  But to really stretch our brains to be more creative and alert we can do some  simple things. Here are three:

• Sip water – all day.  Don’t guzzle, just sip. Hydrating the brain is like putting oil in the car.
• Just do things differently. eat with your fork in wrong hand, drive or ride to work a different way or learn a new game like chess.  Continue to do things differently.
• Learn to meditate. Try different types until you find the one that works for you. You might try
  • Guided meditation – Guided Meditation by Don Macpherson
  • White light meditation – How to Meditate in Ten Steps by D.F. Bailey
  • Binaural meditation – Ambistress by Dr Jane Maati Smith

Here’s an article from Sharp Brains for some further reading

BrainTech: Six Take-aways on Neuroplasticity and Cognitive training